A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Almajiri Support Initiatives of Nigeria (ASIN) has disclosed how the group rescued a teenager jailed for stealing two tubers of cassava, and other underaged boys who couldn’t afford to pay the fines imposed on them in the alternative.
Chairman of the NGO, Comrade Shehu Umar, who disclosed this while briefing newsmen on the activities of his organisation in the past 23 years at the NGO’s head office in Birnin Kebbi, lamented the challenges his NGO faces in its work, especially in tracing the parents and or relatives of these Almajirai and other less privileged teenagers whenever are involved in petty criminal cases.
He stressed the need for northern parents to stop throwing their kids on to the streets without caring for them.
Narrating a series of cases they have resolved, Umar explained that, often, some of the Almajiri children, in the course of searching for what to eat in order to survive, do commit petty crimes and end up in remands.
“For the past 23 years,we have graduated about 5,000 Almajiri in various vocational skills such as tailoring, cosmetics, and others, while some are now in tertiary institutions studying various courses and programmes.
“However, these less privileged sometimes commit petty offences and since they have nobody to assist them,they end up in prisons.
“Take, for instance, a teenage boy aged about 17 or 18, who entered somebody’s farm and stole two tubers of cassava. Because he couldn’t settle his fine,he went to jail. When we got the information, we rescued him and freed him.
“There was another boy from Suru Local Government; he was accused of stealing something and no witness against him, nobody saw him with the item they accused him of stealing. But because they just wanted to punish him, they ganged up against him, he was jailed but we helped him out.
“Again, a little boy accompanied his friend, who was accused of stealing a generator, to the Court. The primary suspect was able to pay the fine but the friend, who knew nothing about the stolen items, was jailed because he couldn’t afford the fine. When we got wind of the case, we went and rescued him too.
“We have many cases like that that we have sorted out, as long as their cases were not high profile cases. Many of them, since they have nobody to help them, suffer for offences they didn’t commit,” Umar agonised.
Umar who commended many stakeholders in the state, who have been assisting the NGO in cash and kind, further narrated that every so often, the NGO has had to pay the hospital bills of some less privileged in the society with health challenges that took them up to the tertiary hospital level.
He appealed to philanthropists and the general public across the country to assist the NGO in its “noble” mission solving as many social problems as possible, especially the Almajiri syndrome which, according to him, is getting out of hand in the Northern part of Nigeria.
