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are three main types of Islamic schools in Nigeria of which 79% of Muslim children attended at
least one of them. As summarized in Appendix Table 3, a majority (57%) attended Qur’anic
schools 38% attended Islamiyya while 5% attended Tsangaya schools. Qur’anic schools teach
recitation and memorization of the Qur’an under four main educational levels: kotso (nursery
stage), tittibiri (elementary stage), k’olo (middle-level) and, culminates (higher level). The
Islamiyya is structured to provide advanced religious education that combines Qur’anic
scriptural instructions and legal subjects. There currently exist some kinds of traditional and
integrated Islamiyya schools. The traditional kinds are largely extensions of Qur’anic schools
while the Integrated Islamiyya schools offer some selected circular academic subjects such as
English, mathematics, science and social studies. The Tsangaya schools are learning centres in
Hausa language and are accompanied by itinerant or boarding institutions that serve mainly
males (NPC & RTI, 2011).
The 2015 NEDS shows that 85% and 91% of children in northeast and northwest are Muslims
of which 29%and 35% respectively attended only religious schools a 29%and 44% respectively
attended both formal and religious schools in 2015 (see Appendix Table B7 ). In the north-
central and south-west, less than half (43% in the north-central and 38% in the south-west) of
the children were Muslim and much less percentage attended religious only schools.
Information was not available for the Southeast but in the south-south, only two percent of the
children were Muslims in 2015. One remarkable trend in the NEDS data is the decreasing
number of a number of Muslim children and their participation in religious schools across
various geopolitical zones down from 2010 records (NPC & RTI, 2016).
An early grade reading and arithmetic assessment in Bauchi and Sokoto states shows that pupils
in integrated Quranic and Tsangaya schools recorded high scores in both English and Hausa
reading (they were better in Hausa reading) and mathematics in comparison with other schools
though general performance was low (USAID (2013), see further discussion on this in section
4.3.
While the initiative to integrate Western education with Qur’anic in Nigeria began in the 1920s,
various challenges have made it not generally successful some of these challenges are (i)
resistance from Qur’anic education proprietors to the integration of their centres due to their
preference for the pristine and purity of Islamic tradition and prevention of contamination by
circular affairs, poor supply of infrastructural facilities in the schools, parental rejection of and
negative attitude towards Western education (Adediran, 2015).
Almajiri Education
Over the years, the practice of Islamic education in Nigeria mixed with local tradition and
produced widely misunderstood and discriminated category of young people aged between five
and 15 years old in Nigerian streets that are currently called the almajiri (almajirai in plural).
The term came from the corruption of the Arabic ‘al-muhajirin’ or ‘almuhajirun ', which referred
to ‘emigrant', including those that migrated for learning purposes. In the context of northern
Nigeria, it refers, as Hoechner (2011: 719) explains, to “pupil, student, learner of Koranic school”,
and also “destitute or poor person”. The Almajirai are distinguishable in most northern Nigerian
towns with their poor dresses and plastic bowls for begging alms. Traditionally, the almajiri are
considered as itinerant Qur’anic school pupils but as far as formal education is concerned they
are out-of-school (OOSC) and street children (Hoechner, 2011; Ezegwu, et al 2017). The actual
number of the almajirai is unknown. In 2012, when the estimated number of Nigeria’s OOSC was