Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje has vowed that his government would arrest and prosecute parents who fail to send their children to school in the state.
He issued the warning in a bid to curb the menace of streets begging in Kano.
Speaking during an interactive session with United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Youth Advocacy in the state’s Government House, Ganduje said: “Children begging on the street instead of going to school will be arrested and their parents arrested and charge to court for prosecution because begging is not our religion. Begging is not Islam.
“Those children who are begging will be arrested and their parents will be taken to court for allowing their children to be begging instead of attending school.”
Disclosing that his administration has seen to 30, 000 primary and secondary school teachers get qualified certificates, the governor said: “we are ensuring that they go back to school for their qualified certificate.”
Ganduje added, “We hope you as development partners when we are being accused by mischievous people; we want you to come forward and defend us. Anything we do for the development of education, if we receive undue criticism, I urge you to demonstrate and we will give you protection. That is the only way we can get a change. Otherwise, all that we are doing will remain theoretical.
“I wish what is happening now happened 20 years ago. It would have been a different story by now. Kano state is the most populous state in the federation.
“We want our population to be a quality population. There are some countries in the world that don’t have a drop of oil, but yet their economy is strong. The main reason is education, even development, and technology.
“So, we being the most populous state in the world, we want our population to be an asset. As China has conquered the world as a result of the population that is how Kano will conquer Nigeria as a result of population.”
EduCeleb.com earlier reported that the Kano State government was conducting a survey on the traditional Almajiri schooling system in the state as part of its fresh effort to reform the system, which had largely churned out most of the Child-beggars.
