How the Fulani buried generations to retain power

By Khaleed Yazeed
Katsina State

An Investigative Exposé by Khaleed Yazeed

For two centuries, the Fulani elite have maintained a stranglehold on Northern Nigeria not through superior numbers or divine mandate, but through the deliberate engineering of ignorance. The talakawa, the Hausa masses have been kept uneducated, impoverished, and politically docile, because an educated Hausa man is a dangerous Hausa man. He asks questions. He reads contracts. He refuses to bow. The most devastating proof of this criminal strategy is the story of the N15 billion Almajiri Model Schools, a project that was never allowed to fail; it was murdered in cold blood by the very politicians who claimed to champion the North.

The Uncomfortable Truth Buried Under Decades of Propaganda

The structural suppression of the Hausa masses did not begin with colonialism. It began with the Sokoto jihad of 1804, when a Fulani-led army conquered the Hausa city-states and replaced Hausa kings with Fulani emirs. The British later inherited this structure and perfected it under Indirect Rule, turning Fulani emirs into tax collectors for the Crown. But the most insidious weapon was always the mind. A hungry man votes for the man who gives him food. An uneducated man believes the lie that his poverty is destiny. A man who cannot read cannot challenge the narrative that his conquerors are his brothers. This is the foundation upon which the Fulani oligarchy built its enduring power.

The Evolution of the Almajiri System From Scholarship to Destitution

Originally, the Almajiranci was a noble tradition: boys leaving their homes to study the Qur’an under renowned scholars, living frugally, and returning as learned men. Over time, especially after the British conquest and the subsequent neglect of Islamic education by colonial authorities, the system decayed. The Fulani emirs who collaborated with the British did nothing to modernize or fund the Tsangaya schools. Instead, they allowed the system to become a dumping ground for impoverished children. By the 21st century, millions of Hausa boys roamed the streets, begging for alms, vulnerable to radicalization and disease. The oligarchy watched and did nothing – because an uneducated Almajiri is a voter who can be bought with a bowl of rice.

The Jonathan Intervention That Threatened the Oligarchy’s Existence

When President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger Delta, launched the Tsangaya Model Schools Programme on April 10, 2012, in Gagi, Sokoto State, he committed an unforgivable sin. He dared to offer the Hausa child a future. The programme was designed to build 165 integrated schools across the North, each equipped with language laboratories, vocational workshops, dormitories, clinics, and free meals. The curriculum merged traditional Quranic education with modern primary schooling, including basic computing and English literacy. For the first time, an almajiri child could learn to recite the Quran and also learn to read a contract. That was the threat. That was the heresy.

The Almajiri as Political Currency, Not Human Beings

To the Fulani oligarchy, the millions of Hausa children roaming the streets were never a social crisis. They were a strategic asset. An uneducated almajiri is a weaponizable voter. He can be fed a bowl of rice and told to vote for a candidate he does not understand. He can be incited to riot against a “Christian infidel” without ever reading the constitution. He can be recruited into banditry when the rice runs out. The Jonathan administration’s intervention threatened to convert this army of beggars into an army of clerks, technicians, and small business owners. The oligarchy saw the writing on the wall: an educated talakawa would not vote for a Fulani emir’s puppet. The project had to be destroyed at any cost.

The Apparatus of Deceit How a Humanitarian Project Was Turned into a Blasphemy

In the buildup to the 2015 elections, the opposition APC, with the active support of conservative Fulani clerics, launched a sophisticated psychological warfare campaign against the Tsangaya schools. Since they could not argue against free food, free housing, and free education, they attacked through the only lens that would resonate with the impoverished Hausa masses: religious paranoia. They spread rumors that Jonathan’s schools were designed to “spoil” the Quran, to dilute Islamic memorization with Western infidelity. They told vulnerable mothers that a Christian president was building these schools to convert their children to Christianity. The lie was repeated in mosques, in markets, on rural radio stations, and at political rallies. The truth never stood a chance.

The Weaponization of Patience Jonathan’s Words

The most potent weapon in the APC’s arsenal was a single, ill-advised comment by First Lady Patience Jonathan. She allegedly described the Almajiri as “born throw away,” a phrase she later denied ever saying in Hausa. Whether she said it or not, the Northern elite seized upon it with the fury of a thousand preachers. Sheikh Hassan Musa, President of the National Centre for Quranic Recitation, later boasted openly that “sixteen million of us supported the APC because Dame Patience insulted us.” He bragged that the Almajiri “used their voting powers to vote out Goodluck Jonathan.” A clumsy diplomatic error was twisted into a national electoral weapon, and the Tsangaya schools, the very solution to the Almajiri crisis, were buried under the rubble of manufactured outrage.

The Role of the Mosques, Cursing Jonathan from the Pulpit

It is a documented fact that during the 2015 campaign, Muslim clerics across the North routinely cursed President Jonathan in their Friday sermons. They framed the election as a religious war, calling on the faithful to vote against a “kafir” who was plotting to destroy Islam. No cleric was ever arrested or sanctioned for incitement. One famous video showed Sheikh Isa Ali Pantami, later a minister under Buhari, weeping during a sermon as he blamed Jonathan for the deaths of northern Muslims. The same clerics who now preach peace were the ones who lit the fire of religious hatred. The Tsangaya schools were collateral damage in a war for political power.

The Orchestration by Northern Governors and Emirs

Behind the scenes, northern governors and powerful emirs actively collaborated to sabotage the Tsangaya project. They instructed local government chairmen not to allocate land for the schools. They pressured traditional rulers to discourage enrollment. They whispered in the ears of influential mallams that accepting Jonathan’s schools would be a betrayal of Islam. The Emir of Kano, the Sultan of Sokoto, and other Fulani traditional rulers who owed their thrones to the British and the jihad, remained silent or actively hostile. They saw the education of the Hausa masses as a threat to their own hereditary privileges. A literate Hausa farmer would no longer bow to a Fulani emir. That was the real fear.

The Election Victory. The Oligarchy Seizes Power, Then Abandons the Children

When Muhammadu Buhari took office in May 2015, the political purpose of the anti-Jonathan propaganda had been served. The Almajiri had done their job: they had voted en masse for the APC. Now they were no longer needed. The new administration expressed a cold, institutional indifference toward the Tsangaya schools. Federal maintenance funding was cut. Northern state governors, who had just used the Almajiri as a political battering ram, refused to provide counterpart funding. The multi-billion-naira facilities were left to rot. Roofs collapsed. Desks were stolen. Weeds reclaimed the classrooms. The children returned to the streets.

The Evidence, Rotting Schools Across the North

Investigative reports by Daily Trust, The Guardian, and Premium Times paint a devastating picture. In Sokoto, the launchpad of the scheme, seven out of ten classes at the first Tsangaya school are unoccupied, the facilities starved of operational funds. In Zamfara, purpose-built complexes were stripped of their identity and converted into conventional secondary schools, shutting out the core Almajiri demographic. In Katsina and Kaduna, multi-million naira boarding infrastructures stand completely abandoned, with roofs caving in and furniture destroyed. In Nasarawa, specialized Islamic integration hubs were converted into IDP camps and later handed over to correctional services. In Niger State, the eleven centres built across the state are now described as “an eyesore” due to neglect between 2015 and 2023. This is not neglect. This is systematic sabotage.

The Admission of Guilt, Former Minister Adamu Adamu’s Confession

Former Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, himself a Fulani from Bauchi, attempted to deflect blame by admitting that the program collapsed because Northern state governors “systematically damaged primary and nomadic education by withholding matching grants and administrative oversight.” He confessed that the governors refused to pay teachers or provide basic security. They watched the schools crumble and did nothing. This admission is a confession of a deliberate policy. The oligarchy did not fail the Almajiri. They chose to fail them.

The Silence of the Northern Elites. No Accountability, No Apology

Not a single northern governor who presided over the destruction of the Tsangaya schools has apologized. Not one. The Sultan of Sokoto, who claims to be the spiritual leader of all Nigerian Muslims, has never issued a statement condemning the abandonment of these schools. The Emir of Kano, who sits on a throne built by the jihad, has never visited a rotting Tsangaya classroom. The northern political class simply moved on to the next election, the next contract, the next opportunity to loot. They have no shame because they have convinced themselves that the Hausa masses deserve their fate. This is the arrogance of a conqueror who has forgotten that conquerors can be conquered.

The Security Fallout. From Begging Bowls to AK-47s

The destruction of the Tsangaya schools has a direct line of causality to the banditry epidemic that now consumes the Northwest. Research explicitly identifies the Almajiri system as the single largest source of recruitment for insurgency and banditry. Without access to the hybrid skills that could have granted them employment, millions of Hausa youths were left with no options. The same population that APC politicians used as a tool to grab power became the foot soldiers of the regional insecurity that now cripples the North. The bandits who collect harvest taxes in Zamfara, who kidnap farmers in Katsina, who burn villages in Kaduna, many of them are the same children who were sent back to the streets after the 2015 election. The oligarchy created a monster, and now that monster is eating the North alive.

The Economic Cost of Ignorance. A Region Trapped in Poverty

The North, once the agricultural heartland of Nigeria, now produces a fraction of the food it needs. The groundnut pyramids are gone. The textile mills are closed. The cotton fields are empty. And the children who could have revived these industries are begging on the streets. The oligarchy siphons billions in security votes, but not a single kobo is invested in vocational training for the Almajiri. The governors who destroyed the Tsangaya schools now preside over states with the highest infant mortality, the lowest literacy rates, and the worst poverty indices in Nigeria. This is not a coincidence. This is a direct consequence of deliberate underdevelopment.

The Complicity of the Federal Government Under Buhari and Tinubu

The destruction of the Almajiri schools was not only a state-level crime. The federal government under Buhari actively refused to maintain or expand the project. Ministers like Adamu Adamu and Sadiya Umar Farouq looked away. President Buhari, a Fulani from Katsina, never visited a single Tsangaya school during his eight years in office. He never spoke a word of condemnation about their abandonment. Under President Tinubu, the silence continues. The Tsangaya schools remain ruins. The Almajiri remain on the streets. The federal government has no policy, no budget line, no sense of urgency. The children are invisible to the people who claim to lead them.

The Hypocrisy of the Religious Narrative, Exposed by the Numbers

The same clerics who preached that Jonathan’s schools were a Christian conspiracy have remained silent about the collapse of those schools under a Muslim president. The same politicians who swore that the Almajiri were the future of Islamic scholarship have done nothing to recover that future. The religious narrative was always a weapon, not a belief. It was deployed to win an election, and then discarded. The Hausa masses were fed a lie, and they swallowed it because they had no alternative source of information. That is the tragedy of manufactured ignorance. And the numbers prove it: 18 million out-of-school children, the highest in the world, in a region that claims to be the bastion of Islamic learning.

The Ongoing Betrayal. Banditry, Politics, and the Silence of the Elites

Even today, as bandits terrorize the Northwest, the Fulani elite who enabled them are busy negotiating peace deals and collecting security votes. The same governors who refused to fund the Tsangaya schools are now building palaces and buying SUVs. The same clerics who cursed Jonathan are now praising Tinubu. The Hausa masses continue to suffer, continue to beg, continue to die. And when they ask why, they are told to be patient. They are told to pray. They are told that their suffering is a test from Allah. The oligarchy has perfected the art of outsourcing blame and hoarding power.

The International Dimension, How the World Ignores the Crisis

The United Nations, UNESCO, and other international organizations have documented the Almajiri crisis for years. They have issued reports, held conferences, and made recommendations. But no international body has ever called out the Nigerian government by name for its deliberate neglect. No sanctions have been imposed. No diplomatic pressure has been applied. The international community is complicit in its silence. They see 18 million out-of-school children, the largest such population on earth and they look away. Because these children are black, because they are Muslim, because they are Hausa. Their suffering does not fit the news cycle. Their lives do not count as a crisis.

The Verdict. A Genocide of Potential

The destruction of the Tsangaya schools is not a policy failure. It is a political crime. It is a genocide of potential, a deliberate annihilation of the future of millions of Hausa children. The Fulani oligarchy would rather see its own people uneducated, impoverished, and dead than see them liberated by an “outsider.” The ruins of Jonathan’s schools stand as monuments to this crime. And until the Northern elite publicly apologize, until they rebuild what they destroyed, until they acknowledge that they weaponized the vulnerability of children for political gain, the blood of every Hausa youth recruited into banditry will be on their hands.

The Awakening Has Begun. A Call to Action

But the silence is breaking. The Hausa are waking up. They are reading the history that was hidden. They are asking why their children beg on the streets while Fulani children fly to London for university. They are demanding a Hausa emir in Kano, a Hausa governor in Katsina, a Hausa future that is not dictated by a Fulani oligarchy. The Tsangaya schools may have been destroyed, but the hunger for education cannot be destroyed. The truth may have been buried, but it is digging itself out. And when the Hausa fully awaken, the Fulani elite will finally understand that you cannot keep a people down forever. You can only delay their rise. This article is not the end. It is the beginning. Share it. Debate it. Act on it. The children are waiting. The ancestors are watching. And history will judge us all.

Yazeed is
Founder, Wakilin Yamma YouthKhaleed Yazeed Development Network
Katsina State, Nigeria