Jonathan’s almajiri schools initiative a failure – Kano governor

The Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, on Saturday described the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Almajiri school initiative as a poorly executed and wrong policy which was at variance with modern realities.

Ganduje said this in an interview with reporters in Abuja.

He explained that the former administration was ill-advised to pursue a policy which inadvertently helped to perpetuate the stigmatisation of Aljamiri children.


According to him, the Aljamiri school system is limited in scope and only able to absorb an insignificant number of pupils who are likely to have bigger problems integrating into the larger society.

To address this challenge, Ganduje said his administration had put in place strategies to fully integrate the Almajiri schools’ pupils into the normal school system.

The governor, who admitted that his state accounted for the largest number of Almajiri children, revealed that he had written President Muhammadu Buhari about the matter.

He said in the letter, he articulated the challenges, his plans and possible areas of partnership with the Federal Government.

Ganduje said, “The last Federal Government introduced the Almajiri schools but the school is not well articulated, it is a wrong policy.

“For example in my village, we have this school with only 50 students and in Kano, we have over 3 million Almajiris and the number of Almajiri is almost a problem to the number of schoolchildren so, the issue is not creating a school.”