Despite their prominence in the Nigerian imagination, almajirai and their experiences in health have been overlooked in research. Socially-grounded research models may offer some ways to address this.
Almajiranci as an educational system and the almajirai that fill its ranks have been prominent in discourse throughout the Fourth Republic (1999-present). Hannah Hoechner, a University of East Anglia researcher, has argued that this reflects the usefulness of almajirai as scapegoats for other prominent anxieties around Nigerian life, such as the country’s crisis of out-of-school children, persistent extremist insurgency, worsening economic despair, overpopulation, social neglect, and ongoing sectarian conflict.
Some of these concerns have considered almajirai and health, though many still have painted almajirai as threat to health. That almajirai live on city streets and in other open spaces means they are seen as unclean, and so carry the stigma of suspected contagion. This was shown in dramatic fashion during the COVID-19 pandemic, where several states expelled many of their resident almajirai, returning them to their supposed states of origin for fear they might spread the new virus. Whether almajirai actually made it back to their home states, and any evidence of increased COVID-19 transmission among almajirai, were less emphasized in the logic around these expulsions than the assumption of contagion, and the wisdom of government action to eliminate this risk...
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