In their battles against Covid-19 pandemic, eight governors in northern Nigeria have continued to deal with added challenge of over 1,500 almajiris abruptly evacuated from Kano City to their states on the orders of Gov. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
According to the State Commissioner for information, Muhammad Garba. the states include Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Nasarawa, Yobe, and Zamfara.
In the first phase of the “deportation,” a total number of 1,595 children were evacuated from Kano City to the eight states, in addition to those sent to various local government areas in Kano State and the Republic of Niger.
Garba promised at the time that the evacuation would be carried out on a continuous basis until the children are all united with their families.
Jigawa State promptly quarantined 524 of the kids from its sister State (Jigawa was carved out of Kano State) while seven of 38 almajiris initially brought to Bauchi State have tested positive to the Coronavirus.
Yesterday, Kaduna State lamented that the Kano evacuees constitute over 90 percent of the 72 active cases of Covid-19 infections being managed in the State.
Gov. Ganduje on 19 April 2020 announced that his government has begun evacuating thousands of street children (almajiri) from the State to States where their parents reside.
Although he claimed that the action was to reduce the risk of exposing them to Coronavirus and related hardship from the lockdown, subsequent reports from many of these states indicate that the unfortunate children were already infected at the point of evacuation.
It could not be confirmed whether the Governor was aware of this reality before he launched his evacuation bid.
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