By Emmanuel Elebeke

Almajiri in the Islamic tradition is actually a high caliber word, it arose from Alima Jirud, people who are moving from one part of the world to the other, looking for Islamic or Arabic knowledge. In Nigeria, it has dropped to the lowest level, that it has now become a stigma. Today, no discerning and educated person wants his child to become one, particularly, the elite class, having been tagged the begging group in the society.

According to available statistics, there are over 30 million of these children in the northern part of Nigeria, who have become willing tools in the hand of hoodlums and enemies of the state. It was in realization of this ominous situation that prompted the buildings of over 125 Alma Jiri model schools by federal government, mainly in the affected states of the north, and stuffed with state of the arts equipment.

The idea is to reform the endangered species and offer them the opportunity to determine their future through the provision of basic and qualitative education. But to take the initiative further, the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, NOTAP felt the boys deserve better. This time, it has begun the process of digitizing all the Almajiri schools across the country.

The Director General of the agency, Engr. Umar Bindir, said the decision was taken by NOTAP in order to raise the knowledge of the Almajiri boys to the next level, believing that in the long run, they would be turned into a critical mass of highly skilled man power, with the 30 million of them currently in the country.  He said: “We have to learn from other countries to produce these critical mass of skilled people.

With this initiative, they will go through education system, from primary school up to university and research institutions, which are the factory that can reform and produce these people as highly skilled man power. Now the government has magnanimously introduced the modern Alma Jiri schools, so to a certain extent, I see it as a third tier frontier education below even the public institution, where at least people are mopping the children. It is avenue to catch them and whatever we want to do with them we can be able to do it.”

Almajiri education is usually recognized with the image of wooden tablet and every child has one. They make inks, using charcoal and pen using sharpened sticks sitting on the floor to be taught by a Mallam but the NOTAP boss said all these will become history with the digitization process. According to him, NOTAP hopes to use this government project to kill two birds with one stone by introducing the Alma Jiri slate (Aloha) with an inbuilt device, which is the image of the Almajiri.

On this device, the popular digital tablet will be embedded stuffed with different problem solving software soured locally at cheap rate. With the creation of the digital Aloha, he said those Almajiri school pupils, probably, will be more educated, because they have access to the highest level of knowledge source, because they will have everything in one place.

“The tablet will still be the same as before but we have graduated to a different level. The digital tablet has an application for even the Koranic teaching or Arabic teaching. We will take the video of the Mallam go into the production system, break it into chapters; we will create an interactive video using the power of ICT. By the time the software is downloaded from the internet, you have options to go backwards or forward.

“Because we are in a digital world, it has gone beyond Arabic. We can fix arithmetic or any other form of education, including videos to educate young children on how to make different kinds of things such as pastries, cooked food. All forms of educative videos can be uploaded into the tablet for use. “We are creating the digital aloha, those Alma Jiri schools probably will be more educated if care is not taken because they have access in the highest level of sourcing knowledge, because they will have everything in one place,” said Bindir.

Apart from the digital tablet, he explained that the wooden Aloha will be changed to plastic, meaning the project would be environmentally friendly and would be a manufactured uniform product in size and cost. Though, the product will come out of Nigeria, it is expected to be have international rating, manufactured in Nigerian, designed  and sold from Nigeria to mainly all the Almajiris with the Alos along the whole coast of West Africa, Central Africa and North Africa.

Affordability

To bring the price of the new device down to affordable level, the NOTAP boss said, he had gone into negotiation with a Chinese manufacturer, to make it a special tablet that the plastic and the whole things assembled with the landing cost, should not be above N10, 000. According to him, the project is a whole market for Nigeria to actually produce the digital tablets subsequently with over 30 million out of school and street begging children.

Putting these together, he said, the project is expected to translate into a N300 billion naira industry in Nigeria alone. This he said, excludes the implication of  software gurus from various universities that will do all these things.

“The hope is that, a parent or guardian can go to a village with  maybe N10,000 of these blank ones and can   go to an entrepreneur to produce for his child. There is a board listing all the education materials at N100 each, which can be recharged at just N50 and download  six educational software because you are thinking of your own constituency, your child or the children in the village.

Powering system

For this Nigerian born enterprise, solar trees are going to be introduced in every village for charging of the device. NOTAP said, the umbrella would be solar panels while the trunk would be the battery so that the entrepreneurs can charge the new device and other gadgets such as phone.

How it works

He said the software can be developed in any language, it can offer the Yoruba language with the Yoruba traditional knowledge, becoming a source of high level knowledge for children. The user also can spend time, listen to people, learn other languages just by getting package for as low as N100, especially at this level of children where they are like magnet for knowledge, where anything that enters their brain never comes out.

The target is that the new digitized Aloha can teach the child in absence of the teacher, teaching things where there is no teacher; teach high tech under a tree and have housewives participating in the education of their children with the inbuilt videos.

Project Scope

The project is said to have been designed as a national project for education. It is also about knowledge to lift the out of school children to the next level with the hope that in the coming years, the Nigeria will get refined English speaking children at the age of six.

Level of readiness

Bindir explained that the project is presently at the level of the prototype innovation, said his target is to launch the new device in the last quarter of 2015, saying that: “this type of project when launched does not need to have a political sensitivity since there is no enemy in education.” “I think all problems can be solved by education. Education is the master sector, it is the key sector. I have not seen one child of an educated man doing Alma Jiri, so education is an antidote to Alma Jiri.

“Once you are educated, your children will never beg, even in cases where women are uneducated, the men that are uneducated probably are the ones pushing these children, the woman will never allow her child to go down to the lowest level,” he added.

The NOTAP henchman said the initiative is part of the agency’s ways of regulating the inflow of foreign technology into Nigeria.  His position is that Nigeria is consuming foreign technologies because it does not have them and by digitizing the Alma Jiri Schools, the consumption level of foreign technology in Nigeria will be drastically be reduced in all sectors.