11:30 - 13:00
Room: Poynting – Lecture Theatre S02
Stream: Open Stream
The Almajiranci System of Northern Nigeria: Tensions Between the Modern and the Traditional - Privilege, Contempt and 'our' Collective Hypocrisy.
Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman
University of Lincoln, Lincoln

The Almajiranci system of northern Nigeria is a classical system of Qur'anic schooling which sees young boys sent away from home to study the Qur'an under the tutelage of a teacher called a Malam. This form of education, many centuries old, has of recent been the subject of various negative representational discourses, and it is constantly seen as a radicalising influence in the lives of the Almajirai. When many 'Western-educated' Nigerians look at both the system and its practitioners, all that they see are, beggars on the streets and Boko Haram in the headlines. The system is seen not only as backward and damaging, but also, no longer regarded as an ideal preparation for the modern Nigerian citizenry - either educationally or socially.

Analysing these mainstream discourses however, reveals the existence of various tensions and paradoxes, in not only its representations, but also in the ways that the wider Nigerian society engages with the system and its practitioners. The Analysis alludes to a postcolonial society struggling to straddle two epistemic worlds.

What do the discourses therefore say about how the 'Western-educated' Nigerian elite engage with the Almajiranci system beyond the rhetorical and superficial? How and in what ways are these discourses more about these elites than the practioners of the Almajiranci system themselves? A postcolonial and discursive lens as the backbone of this paper, shows not only how this system of education is kept relevant by a people who hold simultaneously noble and degrading stereotypes of it, but also how they themselves might have been subjectified by the very mainstream discourses used againt the Almajiranci system.


Reference:
Tu-OS Representations and Silence: Violence in Nigeria-P-004
Presenter/s:
Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Poynting – Lecture Theatre S02
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
12:15 - 12:30
Session times:
11:30 - 13:00