Alhaji & the 36 Almajiris

 It is unthinkable that just a handful of persons, undeservedly privileged to the gross disadvantage of the rest of society, could enjoy sound sleep in the comfort of their homes of stinking opulence, knowing that the so many who they have direly impoverished, roam the streets as waifs and strays. Yet, this is a norm prevalent in the predominantly Muslim Upper North of Nigeria.

These few, who become outrageously rich through corruption, greed and graft—by mal-appropriating what rightly belongs to all, into their exclusive private teals, make the fulfilment of the religious injunction of being charitable to the poor, a point of duty. Therefore, they let these wretched of the earth, which they have deliberately cultured, always gather by their homesteads to receive regular food rations. The few stupendously rich create poverty among the majority. They ensure that the conditions for the festering of poverty remain perpetually with them, so, they will always readily have the poor multitude on whom to display their disgusting charity. This amounts to merely honouring a religious injunction in the breach. What a way to observe a religious tenet!

And so, these dregs of society, conditioned through ignorantly interpreted religious teachings and indoctrination, to see their miserable station in life as God-decreed, cling to such a dehumanizing belief in their hearts and minds, by which they are condemned to live out the rest of their pathetic lives in unmitigated misery.

Huddled in the open. Left at the mercy of the harsh, mindless weather. They cower and grovel at the feet of their ‘rich benefactor’ Alhaji patrons, who they hail constantly with shouts of ‘ranka dede’, as they struggle to attract the revulsive charitable favour of those ‘baba mutums’—big men, of pretentious humility.

 

In May 1967, Gowon dismantled the four semi-autonomous Regions of Nigeria, and carved out twelve nominal States from them. In 1969 also, under the nominal headship of Gowon and the de facto leadership of the Feudal Muslim North, Awolowo as the formulator and pilot of Nigeria’s economic policies, saw to the removal of the rights of ownership and control of crude oil and other mineral resources from the rightful owners—the federating units, and put it exclusively under the control of the federal government.

Ever since then, the warped system of government being practiced, which aptly should be called ‘Almajirism’,  has only continued to produce rulers who are only good at ruining the country. This prevailing political/economic model is glaringly fashioned after the Almajiri scheme of the Muslim Upper Northern Nigeria.

By the way, the Almajiri scheme is a system whereby many children mostly of questionable parentage are placed under the tutelage of a mallam—a ‘teacher’, who sends the children out daily to roam the streets with bowls, as beggars. They must surrender all they realize for the day to the mallam who grudgingly gives a tittle to each as it pleases him.

‘Almajiriism’ is a badly flawed governance design in which all supposed federating states perform the monthly ritual of lining up cap in hand—hapless, cringing beggars, at the doorsteps of a self-righteous, bigoted ‘filthy-lucre-wealthy Alhaji’ Federal Government, that has brazenly misappropriated the people’s commonwealth into his private ‘babanriga’ bottomless pockets, from where he condescendingly fingers out wretched monthly stipends to them.

This inherently corrupt system, ‘Almajiriism’, is designed to dispossess the people, of that which naturally and rightfully belongs to them, only to disproportionately share it out using a dubious, flawed distribution formula created specifically to benefit some favoured units against those whose livelihood and environments are being destroyed in the process of exploiting their revenue spinning resources.

‘Almajiriism’, the political/social system of the present Nigeria, breeds and promotes nepotistic resistance to fairness. It enthrones inequity, inequality and falsehood. It is a system that extols corruption, promotes mediocrity, and rejoices in envy, blood-lust, religious and ethnic terrorism.

Copyright: Chike Nwaka