In Kano State, the Hisbah Board (Hisbah) operates with all the power and authority of a religious police, which it is. Backed by the state government and drawing what it considers its extensive moral and spiritual authority from the Quran and Sharia Law, the body has been a force to reckon within the state for many years now.
From seizing and destroying alcoholic drinks to prevent the consumption of alcohol in the state, to enforcing public decency by enforcing modesty among residents by sometimes shaving young boys, to banning the public display of mannequins by cloth sellers, the morality police has been at the center of maintaining public decency in Kano State for many years now. Its efforts have sometimes seen it enter into the very eye of the storm. But in a country where it is easier to become controversial than correct or credible and creditable, it is no surprise that Hisbah is controversial with all the work it does and how charged its encounters can be in the course of doing its work.
For decades now, Nigeria has had its hands full of an unprecedented crisis, one which is growing more complicated by the day. All over the country, the harrowing specter of out-of-school children has grown from a trickle to a flood, becoming the full-fledged menace it is today. Many children who are of school age are nowhere near any school. Rather than being out of school, they are out on the streets where different forms of vicious abuse have turned them into ticking time-bombs waiting to detonate and cake their immediate environment in conflagration.
In Nigeria, the North clearly has the highest number of out-of-school children. A large chunk of these kids are resident in Kano State.
A lot of these kids are cast-offs of the Almajiri system of education, a prominent feature of life in Northern Nigeria. Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, the Minister of State for Education, may have recently sought to draw a dichotomy between almajirai and out-of school children, but the spectacular failure of her attempted categorization in the face of the sheer number and destitution of children who beg every day for a living while they should be in school put paid to any further hopes that almajirai are not out-of-school children.
In the light of the darkness that the out-of-school children represent, Hisbah must be commended for recently relocating about 230 of these children from the streets of Kano. It is clearly a step in the right direction. Kano State witnessed the dangerous use to which these innocent children could be put during the End bad governance protests of August 2024 when many of them were conscripted by criminals to wreak havoc on public property in the name of peaceful protests.
The children should be sent to proper schools with the full support of their parents and guardians. Alongside school, they should be made to learn technical skills and entrepreneurship to prepare them for the future.
They could also be used as peace ambassadors with a special remit to stand against terrorism in its many dangerous forms.
That is what the Kano State Government is doing by keeping them in Hajj Camp and away from the streets. This is highly commendable.
Kene Obiezu,
