Re: The Forgotten History: the Effect of Coloniality on Islamicate Education in Northern Nigeria
A Thread
@ScholarAkassi1
@dj_kere
@Jikan_Katuma
A Thread
@ScholarAkassi1
@dj_kere
@Jikan_Katuma
The documentary is a good exercise in correcting the perennial revisionism and historical misrepresentation of the Almajiri system of education. And I commend the efforts of Mr. Sunusi Abubakar and the scholarly clarifications of the interviewees. 1/
The documentary has done remarkably well in differentiating (NOT dissociating) Almajiranci from Child Begging. However, the Almajiri system, as presently constituted, is one step away from child begging. What are the supposed virtues or flagrant flaws of the Almajiri system? 2/
The relentless criticisms and call for the abolition of the Almajiri system by many, I believe, is not borne out of the doubt of its scholarly past but due to its present abuse and untoward hardship it subjects its subjects to. 3/
....And the fact that children can acquire Islamic knowledge without being subjected to all sorts of societal indignities lays credence and legitimacy to the call. 4/
Colonialism, as repeatedly mentioned in the documentary, and its aftermath consequences are part of our history that we have to accept and learn to deal with. We cannot undo it. 5/
...however, to romanticise the glorious past at the expense of working hard towards correcting the effects of colonialism on our psyche, tradition and scholarship is to voyage into Alice's Wonderland. 6/
As once expressed by Ahmed Musa Hussein, if the Almajiri system was primarily conceived in humility and borne out of intellectual necessity, it has since ceased being so. What's happening 2day, of parents abandoning their parental responsibilities by disposing their wards...7/
to distant lands for economic reprieve but ostensibly for scholarship, and of small children fending for themselves and the luxuries of their selfish Mallams is neither Islamic nor northern. It is pure exploitation bordering on sheer parental dereliction and irresponsibility. 8/
The Almajiri system may have served its purposes in the past, but it is incompatible with our present realities and future aspirations. It is time we begin a debate on how best to confront it either through radical reform or total abolition. 9/
The north must never get it right politically and developmentally until it stops seeing the Almajiri system as a tradition and starts seeing it as the menace that it has become
10/10.
10/10.
