On Talibés and Almajirai

The talibés in Senegal and almajirai (plural of almajiri) in Nigeria are remarkably similar. Both groups consist of young boys sent away from their rural families to live in urban residential Islamic schools, where traditional practices have increasingly devolved into systemic street begging and child exploitation.

Both are rooted in traditional Islamic boarding systems—called daaras in Senegal and tsangaya or almajiri schools in Northern Nigeria—where students focus intensely on memorising the Quran under a religious teacher (maramu or mallam).

Parents typically send their young sons (often starting at age 4 to 7) away from impoverished countryside villages to major cities, trusting they will receive a pious religious upbringing. Rather than being fully provided for by their teachers or communities, many of these children are mandated to spend hours each day roaming the streets to meet daily quotas for money or food.

International bodies and NGOs classify the systemic neglect, lack of formal secular education, malnutrition, and forced labour surrounding both groups as severe child protection and welfare crises.

The systems of both the Talibés in Senegal and the Almajirai in Nigeria began as highly respected, community-supported networks for higher Islamic education. Over centuries, economic pressures, colonisation, and rapid urbanisation transformed them from prestigious academic traditions into the marginalised systems seen today.

The Almajiri System in Nigeria, Pre-Colonial Prestige: The word almajiri comes from the Arabic al-Muhajirun, meaning "the emigrant." It historically referred to students who travelled to gain knowledge. In the pre-colonial Kanem-Bornu Empire and Sokoto Caliphate, these schools were elite institutions. They produced the region’s judges, clerks, and scholars. The traditional schools (tsangaya) were heavily subsidised by the ruling emirs, wealthy patrons, and the local community through zakat (charitable giving). Students did not need to beg because the community willingly fed and clothed them as a religious duty.

The British Disruption: In 1904, the British colonial administration conquered Northern Nigeria. They abolished state funding for Islamic schools and refused to recognise them legally. At the same time, they introduced a Western-style secular school system that required fees, which most poor Muslim families rejected. Deprived of state financial support, teachers (mallams) and their students lost their livelihoods. To survive, schools migrated to urban commercial centres, and students were forced to work or beg for food and charity, transforming a system of prestigious scholarship into a survival mechanism.

The Talibé System in Senegal, Pre-Colonial Integration: In Senegal, traditional Islamic schools (daaras) were deeply integrated into rural agrarian societies. Young boys (talibés, from the Arabic talib, meaning "student") studied the Quran under a religious teacher (marabout). Historically, talibés did not beg for money on city streets. Instead, they worked alongside their marabout on communal agricultural land, growing food to feed the school. This labour was viewed as character-building, teaching the boys humility, discipline, and the value of hard work.

The French colonial administration in Senegal marginalised traditional daaras, choosing to fund and promote French secular schools instead. This isolated the Islamic schools economically, restricting them to rural areas. During the 1970s and 1980s, severe droughts devastated West African agriculture, making rural farming unsustainable. Desperate marabouts moved their daaras into large cities like Dakar to survive. Lacking land to farm and unable to afford city life, the teachers adapted the traditional labour model, sending children onto urban streets to beg for daily cash and food quotas.

Equivalent systems and student populations are found in Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire.

While colonial education policies are a major historical catalyst, they are not the sole ultimate cause for the widespread street begging associated with almajirai (in Nigeria) and talibés (in Senegal/West Africa). Widespread rural poverty leads many families to send children away to daaras or tsangaya schools because they cannot afford to feed them at home. In addition, secular post-colonial governments often failed to integrate or properly regulate traditional religious schools, leaving a legal vacuum where abusive teachers can exploit children for economic gain. What was historically a minor or non-systemic practice of enduring hardship or seeking alms has morphed in urban environments into commercialised, forced begging managed by exploitative networks.

Both Senegal and Nigeria have introduced several legal reforms, modern curriculum integrations, and bans on street begging to address these crises. However, enforcing these laws remains incredibly difficult due to political pressure, deep-rooted cultural traditions, and severe enforcement gaps. In Nigeria particularly, the federal government launched major initiatives to build "Model Islamic Schools" (Tsangaya schools). These schools fuse traditional Quranic memorisation with basic English, mathematics, and vocational training, funded by the state, to eliminate the financial need for begging. But neither government has the budget or infrastructure to house, feed, and formally educate the millions of children who rely on these systems for shelter. Also, many rural, conservative parents still distrust state-run secular schools, viewing them as elite institutions that do not teach moral values.

In Northern Nigeria, the almajiri system is deeply scrutinised as a critical national security concern. Security analysts and organisations like the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) highlight how the system functions as a vulnerability pipeline. With an estimated 30 million out-of-school and almajiri children in Nigeria, violent non-state actors like Boko Haram, ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province), and northern bandit groups look to these children as prime recruitment pools.

While the system itself does not inherently teach violent extremism, it produces hundreds of thousands of boys who grow up experiencing severe poverty, isolation, and a lack of parental love or state support. When they outgrow the schools, they often have no secular education, no literacy, or job skills, leaving them economically desperate and susceptible to the financial and ideological promises of insurgent groups.

Also, because almajiri children are highly visible begging on city streets, they face intense societal stigmatisation, sometimes being pejoratively labelled by the public as "urchins" or future criminals. This social exclusion deepens their detachment from the state, making anti-government insurgent narratives more appealing.

Ref: Exploring Youth Radicalisation Within the Almajiri System in Northern Nigeria

Talibés beg in Senegal's St Louis's main market. The boys can spend up to 10 hours on the streets in search of food and money, with severe beatings awaiting some. Photo by Pete Pattison/The Guardian

Are Homosexuals Human Beings?

By Ogaga Ifowodo

The theme of the 1993 United Nations world conference on human rights in Vienna was Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. I was with the Civil Liberties Organization then and attended the conference. Why was it necessary, you might ask, to state that incontestable fact 45 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the very first article of which asserts unequivocally that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights?” Aren’t women human beings? Funny as it may sound, the status of woman as human wasn’t always “settled.” Indeed, a much earlier conference is believed to have been convened in France, circa 586 A.D., to resolve the question whether or not women were human!  It was my former colleague at the CLO, Chidi Anselm Odnkalu, now chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, who first mentioned this outrageous outcome of prejudice born of the fear of difference—whether it be racial, gender, religious, sexual, or even plainly ideological.

In having her humanity doubted, woman, the primal Other of history, the first to embody difference (ab-normal-ity, deviance from the perceived norm), shared a common fate with Africans, other so-called persons of colour, and many oppressed groups. Thus, as the great white men behind the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed the fact that “all men are born equal” to be a “self-evident” truth, their diction betrayed the exclusion of women from equal humanity. And it was not until 1920 that the 19th Amendment ensured political equality for American women by making them voting citizens in the self-vaunted land of freedom.

One of the disingenuous yet appealing justifications for the frightful antipathy to gays and lesbians in Nigeria is that same sex relations are foreign to African culture. Those who bay for the blood of homosexuals, who would have them jailed for 14 years even when billion-dollar thieves in government and business are awarded national honours—not to mention election riggers, wife beaters, child deserters and abusers, rapists, paedophiles, Daddy Overseers who fleece their flock and sleep with their female congregants (married and unmarried), etc.—justify their lack of Christian love, charity, or plain fellow feeling by resort to a cheap and convenient cultural nationalism. Respect for the equal humanity of gay persons, they say, is a foreign concept being imposed on us by the imperialistic West. And then without batting an eyelid, they quote from the Bible or the Koran—as if Christianity and Islam were African religions! But they fail to cite one African religious or cultural practice that punishes homosexuals with the force of law. Or an African jurisprudence that sanctions imprisonment as a form of penal justice.

In a series of essays published in December 2011 and January 2012 on the dangerous tide of homophobia in our land—see “Homosexuality and Nigeria’s Enochs and Josephs,” “Homosexuality, Biology and the Bible,” and “Sex and the Church’s Missionary Position” (The Guardian, 19 and 28 December 2011 and 9 and 10 January 2012), as well as “Ekwe and the Raging Army of God’s Protectors” (Vanguard, 23 January 2013); also available online, I asked the venerable Rev. Jasper Akinola, the spiritual-cum-political leader of the anti-gay movement, why, if he was the über-cultural nationalist that he claims to be, he scorned the Church of Orunmila and chose to be a priest of the Church of England? An Anglican congregation, if he needs to be reminded, founded and headed by King Henry VIII in protest against the Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to indulge his appetite for adultery.

A church, moreover, that was the ideological bulwark in Britain’s imperialist mission of colonial conquest through the “wiping out of the tribal (read cultural) memory” of the natives (to adapt Major Pilkings’s apt rebuke, in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, of Joseph, his native houseboy who, converted yesterday, had become the next day an unwilling native informer on the “primitive,” unchristian, ways of his recently colonized Yoruba people). I am yet to receive an answer from the retired primate of King Henry’s Nigerian converts. We know, however, that the purported defence of African values (defined by whom?) is only a fig leaf to cover an onerous legacy of the Abrahamic faiths: making a sin of sexual desire, whether it be hetero- or homo-social in nature. Not even after marriage—a social undertaking not to be confused with the natural, hormone-driven, impulse of sexual orientation—was sanctioned as an inconvenient solution was the problem solved.

But in blaming the West for something that has been present in every human society and in the animal world as well from the origin of time, the self-righteous army of God forgets that the West persecuted homosexuals until quite recently. Now more Catholic than the pope, they cannot bear to hear the same West that brought them the bible change its mind about any of its creeds and catechisms. “How dare you admit,” they shout, foaming at the mouth and wagging a finger at the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that gay people do not choose their sexuality any more than heterosexuals choose theirs, and then proceed to treat them as human beings equal to us virtuous heterosexuals? How dare you ordain a gay bishop in OUR church?”

The zealotry of Nigeria’s army of the faithful fits perfectly the ungovernable fervour of the reformed sinner who, once converted, must prove him- or herself more devoted to the cross or crescent than his pastor or imam. Thus, if Pope Francis, reminded of Christ’s admonition, “Judge not that ye may not be judged,” can say in response to the question of gay priests, “Who am I to judge?”, Nigeria and Africa’s religious leaders say, “We are the ones to judge and punish. God is too merciful and his judgement too long in coming.” This is the sort of holy frenzy that makes full-grown African men and women sing with all pious sincerity, “Wash me [Lord Jesus] and I shall be whiter than snow!”

But the question is inescapable: are homosexuals human beings? If the answer is yes, then they must be accorded their human rights and dignity. Sexual relations among consenting adults are no more harmful to society in same sex relations than in opposite sex relationships. If there be any harm, it is the mad rush in the name of a strange and false notion of African values and the dictates of foreign religious doctrines imposed by conquest, to erode the laws of privacy and civilized behaviour to criminalize what is at worst a sin, as if God cannot be trusted to punish that among other sins on judgment day. Yet, by pandering to the prejudices of a majority closed to reason, that cannot be persuaded by logic—recall that it was the majority that freed Barabbas the murderer and crucified Jesus—or scientific evidence such as is changing the mind of the West that once thought homosexuality was a disease, the result of a psychiatric disorder, to authorise the Draconian re-criminalisation of same-sex relations, President Jonathan may have unwittingly done the gay and lesbian community, all of rational humanity, a favour.

For the law will not make homosexuals disappear from, or cease to be born in, Nigeria. After all, where do homosexuals come from, if not from heterosexual parents? Persecuting them will only make that barbaric stance solidify Nigeria’s reputation as a country quick to descend on the weak, poor and vulnerable while straining every muscle to protect and honour the rich and powerful. Yet, it is invariably the case that whenever power has to resort to maximum force to have its way, it has lost the moral ground and is very close to defeat. And so to our brothers and sisters persecuted for being gay, I say take courage: the darkest hour of night is just before dawn.

This was originally published here and here.

Homo what?

The African/ Caribbean opposition to homosexuality, is somewhat disheartening.

I read this article that seems to include a lot of what is currently circulating as valid reasons for opposition of a basic human right.

Here is the article.

Link to the article called "Homo what?"

I won’t address all points, as the author covers other topics like female prostitution and child sex.

1) Changing the “natural order”.Sex has been around as long as marriage has. Homosexuality is not a recent invention. It was not imported into Africa, indigenous cultures were already familiar with it.  There was no issue, then the Europeans came and brought their Victorian values, which outlawed homosexual behaviour. This is what the author is referring to by the “natural order”.

This means there was a time, when heterosexual couplings and homosexual couplings co-existed. The foundation of “heterosexual marriage”, did not dissolve. It continued, so why now when homosexuals are calling for their rights to be respected, heterosexuals view this as a threat?

2) What is this “moral” meltdown in the West the author is referring to?  What makes African/or Caribbean people more “moral”, is it poverty?  Many social vices which exist in the “West” exist in Africa/Caribbean also. You name it drug abuse, alcoholism, child abuse, spouse abuse, you name it, it exists.  So this idea, that the “West” is somehow morally worse for recognising that sexual minorities have rights too doesn’t make them any more morally worse than people elsewhere. On the contrary by recognising the basic human right to freedom and equality, makes them a better society in my opinion

Link for article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

3) Defiance for the sake of defiance, is meaningless. African countries are using the stand-off with Britain and other “Western” nations  by denying and in many cases actively persecuting homosexuals as something to be proud of. They should separate defiance from reason, then re-think whether defiance is  wise and sensible. It is disposable worthless political capital. When famine or natural disaster strikes, where is their defiance then?

4) It is true, that same sex relationships without intervention don’t produce children. As we all know there are ways to have children; by coupling with the opposite sex specifically for that purpose or medical intervention like artificial insemination.

African countries are not lacking children, they are not facing a shrinking population. In the case of Nigeria, there are too many people.

But because a union/marriage doesn’t produce children, that is no reason for denying same sex couplings? According to this argument then, any childless heterosexual couple should have their marriage forcibly dissolved. Which would be totally wrong and unnecessary. So why is it accepted for same sex attracted persons?

5) “More than a purely private decision, intimate pair bonding is a public commitment to conform to the valid interest of society reflected by law and the Law is a sieved collection of society's principles, attitudes and values to build a secular cathedral that serves as a sanctum for all”

This statement totally dehumanises marriage. According to this statement, freedom of choice and emotions have nothing to do with it. What a dreary of unwanted existence!

They talk about building a secular cathedral that serves as a sanctum for all. I thought secular societies, differentiate between religion and the state.  One of the main pillars of opposition to gay rights/homosexual rights is that it is opposed to the religion as practiced in those societies. Yet these societies claim to be democratic and inclusive, which they are not. So I’m not too sure of what the author means by that statement. It seems to be filled with inconsistencies. (They talk of a secular cathedral, when they make no distintction between religion and the state. They mention the use of "all", when they don't wish to include everyone).

6) They go on to talk about the need to identify who they are and what they stand for. It would be interesting to see what label they would use for themselves. As things stand now they certainly aren’t democractic, or inclusive or egalitarian.

7) According to the author, “the foundational flaw in the homosexuality argument is their inability to show, why the children of heterosexuals should be allowed to fill the void” – to use her words.

Obviously checks have to be put in place before any orphan or homeless child is sent to a foster home. True in the “poisoned” atmosphere in Africa this will be very challenging to find individuals who are just looking at the facts, and nothing else (but it is not impossible).

Just because a child is raised in a homosexual home doesn’t mean they will turn out homosexual. Similarly, not all heterosexual homes have children who turn out to be heterosexual. As long as no abuse is occurring, and that the interests of the child are better served by being with a foster family than being left to languish in state institutions, then this shouldn’t be a problem.

This whole issue has become blown out of all proportion, and people should take a step back and assess things with a clear and reasoned mind. Rather than throwing insults and going on the rampage to attack sexual minorities, be it physically or using the law.