Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have come together to advocate the revival and integration of western education into the Tsangaya system.
The organisations, at the Unveiling of Training Manuals on Gender Responsive Education Sector Planning and Tsangaya Reformation, in Abuja on Tuesday, said the integration would tackle out-of-school challenges.
The County Director, Plan International, Charles Usie, said that reforming the Tsangaya was critical toward the reduction of out-of-school children in the country.
Use, represented by Helen, Idiong, Director Programme Quality and Influencing, Plan International, said there was need to give the Tsangaya students numeracy and literacy education to complement their Quranic education.
“Tsangaya system has been in existence for years when we have children coming into a religion setting and they are given some form of skills educational training.
“Over the years, the context has been somehow changed and the children in this sector are usually on the streets as they don’t have the educational qualification required to help them in the current content that we live.
“The idea is to see how we as CSOs advocate to the owners and implementers of this Tsangaya education system to see how to transform it without losing the religious value,” he said.
Also, Mr Duke Ogbureke, National Moderator, Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All (CSACEFA), called for adequate investment in Tsangaya education.
Ogbureke said that not training the children will have a multi-sectoral effect on the Nigerian polity.
According to him, the children must be trained in some level of education to understand the implications of having very many children that they cannot cater for, leading to population growth.
Meanwhile, the Sokoto State Commissioner for Religious Affairs, Dr Jabir Maihula, emphasised the need for collective efforts to address the insecurity challenge in the northern states.
Maihula explained that if 50 per cent of the insecurity issues were tackled, the number of out-of-school children would be reduced.
He noted that children from refugees camps, who were displaced as a result of insecurity in their domain, contributed to the high number of out-of-school, explaining tha this must be addressed headlong.
In a keynote address, Dr Murtala Mohammed Executive Director, System Strategy and Policy Lab., said addressing the challenge of out-of-school required stakeholders collaboration.
According to Mohammed, the country is having conflicting figures of the number and coming together to get accurate data of the out-of-school in the country would go a long way in addressing the menace.
He also urged state governors to be deeply committed to addressing the issue of out-of-school children by putting in place strategic plan and having the plan in their budget.
“We need to work collectively to solve our problems. We need to know the exact number, the struggling we are having is that we have no idea of the number.
“We must address the issue of disjointed statistics before we come up with policy recommendations that will clearly address the challenges,” Mohammed said.
He called for the integration of Tsangaya Education Management Information System into the existing education management information system.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Tsangaya system is one of the legacies of former President Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2014, to take care of ‘almajiri’ system of acquiring Qur’anic knowledge.
The Tsangaya centres were however, abandoned shortly after the former president was defeated in the 2015 polls. (NAN)
