The Kano state Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, on Saturday, said that the Almajiri school system set up by former President Jonathan was a misplaced priority.

Gov. Ganduje expressed this sentiment at a round table discussion of his party, the All Progressive Congress.

The governor, who won the state elections in 2015, noted that the Almajiri should have been integrated into the conventional school system to save cost and avoid stigmatization of the students.

He also said the decision to build the schools was wrong and the execution of the project, was poor.

According to the governor, the Almajiri school system is unable to provide the needed educational training to be integrated into the society.

It would be recalled that the Jonathan administration had built more than 50 Almajiri schools in the northern part of the country, as a way of providing basic education for the region, which has the highest number of children that are not in school.

The school system was styled in a way that would accommodate the Islamic teaching.

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 three million Almajiris.”

“If you are creating an Almajiri school that is abnormal, who will like to be tagged Almajiri? Is it that after completing your studies your certificate will be tagged Almajiri? And later in life you will be called a graduate of Almajiri school? Which means you were an Almajiri before, so it has some social problems.”

“What we are adapting is integration. The Almajiri are integrated into the normal school system and from our investigation most of the Almajiris in Kano came from other parts of the North state, from Chad and Niger.”

Mazi Emeka