Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52617551
Powerful politicians in northern Nigeria are pushing for the scrapping of controversial Koranic schools after some pupils found themselves at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, write the BBC's Nduka Orjinmo and Mansur Abubakar.
Tens of thousands of Koranic school children were recently crammed into open vans and sent back home from cities and towns across northern Nigeria in a controversial move by state governments to prevent the spread of coronavirus within their territories.
There was a ban on travel, but the vans, with children sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, were allowed to criss-cross the country's highways to get the boys to their homes in villages, often thousands of miles away.
All of Nigeria's 19 northern states had two-way movement - some children were leaving for home while others were returning home.
It was probably one of the biggest ever state organised mass movements of minors in Africa's most-populous state, whose population of around 200 million is divided roughly equally between Muslims and Christians.
Powerful politicians in northern Nigeria are pushing for the scrapping of controversial Koranic schools after some pupils found themselves at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, write the BBC's Nduka Orjinmo and Mansur Abubakar.
Tens of thousands of Koranic school children were recently crammed into open vans and sent back home from cities and towns across northern Nigeria in a controversial move by state governments to prevent the spread of coronavirus within their territories.
There was a ban on travel, but the vans, with children sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, were allowed to criss-cross the country's highways to get the boys to their homes in villages, often thousands of miles away.
All of Nigeria's 19 northern states had two-way movement - some children were leaving for home while others were returning home.
It was probably one of the biggest ever state organised mass movements of minors in Africa's most-populous state, whose population of around 200 million is divided roughly equally between Muslims and Christians.