For years, Almajiri children have been one of the most visible faces of Nigeria’s education crisis. They are easy to spot. Children moving around communities with bowls in their hands, asking strangers for food or money.
Some are sent away from home to study the Qur’an. Others end up spending more time on the streets than in classrooms or
Everyone knows it’s a problem, and some have tried more than others to fix it. Tinubu is the latest to try. We can’t help but wonder: will his solution be the final bus stop, or just another policy waiting to fail
On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, the federal government, through the Ministry of Education, unveiled the National Policy on the Enhancement of Almajiri Education in Nigeria.
The policy promises to regulate learning centres, integrate formal education with Qur’anic instruction, introduce vocational and life skills, improve welfare and, importantly, stop children from being sent onto the streets to beg. Sure, this all sounds good.
But the country has been down this road before. Between 2010 and 2015, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration constructed and equipped 157 Almajiri/Tsangaya Model Schools across the country, with the intention of combining Qur’anic education with conventional basic education.
A few years later, investigations found some of those schools rotting away, under-equipped or abandoned. Now, President Bola Tinubu’s administration has introduced another attempt to reform the system.
The new policy is not an attempt to shut down the traditional Almajiri system. Instead, it wants to regulate it.
Under this policy, Almajiri learning centres will register with the appropriate authorities and maintain records of children. The policy also provides for monitoring and inspection by government agencies.
The curriculum will also change. So, apart from Qur’anic and Islamic education, the children will receive literacy, numeracy, life skills and other forms of basic education.
The government is also introducing minimum standards for learning centres, including requirements for learning rooms, sanitation, healthcare and the separation of learning spaces for male and female children.
Centres that fail to comply will be given a probation period to adjust before sanctions are imposed.
And there is one big rule that could change what Almajiri looks like on Nigerian streets. Learning centres must not send children out to beg.
The government warned that centres that violate the provision could face sanctions, including closure.
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This is where the policy gets more complicated. For a child already living away from home, begging may just be how they get food.
Historically, the Almajiri system was not necessarily built around street begging. Research on the system by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies notes that it originally operated through different forms of community, parental and institutional support.
Over time, poverty, weak support systems and changes in the social structure contributed to the conditions in which some children were sent out to beg for food or money.
UNICEF has also reported that many children in the system come from poor rural families and that some Almajiri children are forced to beg to fund their education or meet basic needs. So if the government tells a learning centre not to send their children out to beg, the next question is obvious.
The new policy recognises this problem to some extent. It provides for welfare measures, including support for learners and facilitators, school feeding, scholarships and learning materials.
The National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children Education is also expected to mobilise resources and work with states and other partners to implement these interventions.
But that brings the conversation back to implementation, an area in which many Nigerian laws and policies often fail.
Anthony Amedu, PhD, a public policy researcher at Lead City University, tells us that the success of the ban will depend largely on what comes alongside it.
“You cannot ban street begging without putting a sustained welfare programme in place to support these children and the learning centres.”
He said the government also needs to be clear about who will pay for that support and how long it will last.
Tinubu’s intervention appears different from Jonathan’s. The former president’s administration focused heavily on building schools.
The Almajiri Education Programme between 2010 and 2015 resulted in the construction and equipping of 157 Almajiri Model Schools. The idea was to provide an environment where children could receive both Qur’anic and conventional education.
The intervention was ambitious, but things didn’t quite go according to plan.
By January 2025, the Federal Government was talking about taking back the 157 schools. Idris Sani, then Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children, said the commission was preparing to take over and rehabilitate the schools, which had been handed to state governments but were later abandoned.
This history matters because Tinubu’s policy is more than just building schools. The government wants to regulate the entire Almajiri education system.
Education Consultant Olayinka Akinwale appears to agree.
According to him, the new policy does not leave the work to the federal government alone. It also gives roles to state and local governments, parents, communities and the people running the learning centres.
“The difference is that this policy is looking beyond just building schools. They want to monitor how these children are taught, who takes care of them, what they learn and how the learning centres are run.”
He explained that the policy also brings Qur’anic education together with reading, writing, numeracy, vocational and life skills, while giving the government more power to monitor the centres and stop them from sending children out to beg.
“So, compared with what we had before, this is a better approach. However, we’ll have to wait to see whether they can actually carry it out.”
Nigeria has never really been short of big government plans. The problem has always been what happens after the launch party.
UNICEF says Nigeria has more than 11 million children out of school, while millions of Almajiri children are among those living outside conventional systems of education and protection.
So, will Tinubu fix what Jonathan couldn’t? Maybe. It is still too early to say
If children are still walking the streets with bowls in their hands, if learning centres remain outside effective regulation, if the old schools are once again falling apart, and if governments are still announcing fresh interventions for the same problem, then Nigeria will have learnt very little.
But if the new policy can keep children in safe learning environments, preserve the religious character of Qur’anic education while giving learners access to literacy and practical skills, eliminate begging and create a system that states and communities can actually sustain, then perhaps this will be more than another government programme.
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