News
Nigeria’s Alms Race
You probably thought I misspelled or you misread. Sadly, that is the title.
Location: Borno
Temperature: 40C/104F degrees scorching hot days and 12C/54F freezing cold nights.
Time: 2am approximately, some day in 2009
Two 9 year old almajiri boys were in bed; well, on the floor actually, inside or beside a mosque or nondescript shack somewhere in Borno state, north east of Nigeria.
One woke up to use the “bathroom” that fateful cold night and when he got back, the second had pulled his, and the only blanket over himself.
‘Give me my blanket,’ the almajiri boy demanded. The other “bully” would not let go, not just because he felt stronger, but because the nights get so cold in Borno, you just can’t give that up.
At the end of the fight that ensued, one of the 9 year old almajiris, the smaller one who owned the blanket had pulled out his life protective dagger they always have on them, one of…actually the only asset they ever have, and stuck it into the bully.
He lay dead in a pool of his blood.
Fast forward to 2012, Amanda meets a nice, passionate lawyer who described this incident to her. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said, ‘I just can’t let this boy keep rotting in jail.
You need to understand the predicament of these almajiri boys. They have nothing, they belong to no one.’
Amanda tells me how she once held conversation with an almajiri – about 7-8 years old, making his rounds on the dusty, harsh-weather roads of Borno.
Borno where they say, in the winter morning, you must open your mouth with care, else you hear your lips crack and see the blood gush from them.
‘Where are you from?’ Amanda asked him.
‘I think somewhere in Katsina,’ he replied.
‘Who are your parents?’ Amanda asked.
‘I do not know, I came here when I was 3. … I am a child of the world.’ The boy replied.
It brought tears to her eyes. It brought tears to mine too, hearing her narrate it.
This is the typical tale of the almajiri boys in the nuclear alms race on the dusty roads of cities in northern Nigeria.
The north eastern extremes of Nigeria which by Soludo’s account, compares economically with places like Somalia and Eritrea.
With a 72.2% poverty rate in the North East region, the highest level of poverty in Nigeria, followed closely by North West (71.1%).
On the contrary the South East at 26.6% has the lowest level of poverty of poverty in Nigeria followed by South/South (35.1%) and South West (43.05%).
With such poverty levels, it is not surprising that the Boko Haram terrorist cult easily finds recruits.
What is even Boko’s story? A people disgruntled with the system.
Who knows, its founders and top leaders may have all been almajiris, abandoned by their parents, their country and their traditional and religious leadership.
The Muslim mualims (teachers), almajiri’s are hooked up with are slave masters at the best. They show these boys no love.
They whip them, sparingly teach them any quality Islam, and send them out to go race for alms.
Psychology and psychological trauma is a very important factor in propensity for criminality and terrorism.
Just last week, two Nigerian boys, both Michael Adebos, were reported to have killed a soldier in Woolwich, UK.
After the horror of the event was endured, details about circumstances leading to the extreme actions of Michael Adebolajo started slowly trickling into the news.
A serious Muslim revert with staunch views, Adebolajo visited Kenya for some form of Islamic experience.
While there, the Kenyan police allegedly picked him and a few others up from their village and interrogated them.
Adebolajo’s friend, Abu Nusaybah recounted on BBC interview, that Adebolajo who told the security men that he would not speak, was promised,- ‘this is Africa, not UK, we torture here.’
The torture and sexual abuse he was put through made him a changed man, his friend said. From then on, the young man with two wives became ‘changed and withdrawn.’
To top it up, according to his friend, the British security services who it appears brought him back to the UK from detention in Kenya, routinely paid him visits and ‘harassed,’ and ‘bugged,’ him to work for them, as he reportedly complained to his friend. The rest is history.
A boy reportedly abandoned by his parents when he reverted to Islam and played hard cards by the local and foreign security, went to pick and kill a security related officer.
Their actions can never be justified in today’s world; however a history of family, and societal abuse and dysfunction is hardly uncommon in so many cases related to the propensity for social oppositional and gravely violent behavior.
Research reveals that children from domestically violent homes are several times more likely to be abusive parents with up to half being involved in violent relationships and marriages.
These social and psychological developmental correlations are as many as there are disorders.
Amanda was on a journey with the lawyer who told her the story of his almajiri inadvertent murderer youth client.
But before the journey started, an almajiri boy had come to try to board their bus, with less than enough for the fare.
Amanda chipped in to enable him travel with them. The boy sat quiet till they got to Bauchi.
At a food and prayer stop in Bauchi, the boy came back and Amanda noticed he had had something ‘spiritual,’ not from the Mosque, behind it perhaps, or somewhere else altogether, ganja, marijuanna possibly.
Suddenly he was all loud and talkative. ‘Those in this bus who think they are better than others….who think they can control what happens here… We have killed before, we will kill you here…’ The almajiri revealed the inner ambitions of his heart.
His desire to subdue and control society. To revenge, to prove he is someone, that he has influence and power too.
He was not speaking in relation to any event or person on the bus. Hadn’t Amanda, one of the passengers, given him money to enable his travel? He was talking to society at large.
Those were the kind of statements he was uttering, to everyone’s distress. The driver was bothered, soon he parked.
The lawyer now went up to the boy and landed him a hot punch. From somewhere on his body, his dagger fell. The journey continued without him, as can be expected.
But he’ll be just fine, like the cave men of the beginning of time, like animals in the wild; the almajiri has learned to get by in the dusty thatched jungles of the north.
Many crisscross countries in their race for alms. Oblivious of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad’s borders, these nuclear beggars traverse any type of terrain, with no one to miss them if they die; who cares.
Life is merely worth your pocket load of alms. Hopefully the picture you see attached to this UNICEF article is one I came across a while back, March 2012, of almajiri refugees who fled Nigeria to Chad due to early on Boko Haram-government clashes.
I spent a few minutes looking at the pictures. I still can’t get over it. It was written in that story in 2012, that the boys were in the cross hairs:
Migrants told UNICEF they fled the villages of Douri and Madaye in eastern Nigeria when members of the Boko Haram militant group attacked them, burning down houses. Police and military forces then arrived and started firing at those who remained, claiming they were Boko Haram supporters, according to witness accounts.
The last few weeks have been weeks of reflection for north Nigeria. A region where the leaders – from the parents, to the traditional/religious leadership and up to the governors, and presidents, have failed in absolute proportions.
The governor of Kano, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso put it out straight and unglazed. ‘Our problem, the insecurity is the failure of us as parents, the society at large and the leadership.’
Of the children, he said, “they grow up to hate themselves, hate their parents, hate the leaders, and hate the government and the society.
They feel they were deprived, they feel injustice and they become enemies of the state and constituted authorities; and thereby becoming vulnerable to crime and violence.”
He further explained that typical northern parents have 20-30 children and keep two or three they like, while sending off the remaining dozens out into the almajiri world to never know love.
Senate president David Mark said the same thing days later, alleging that he spoke Nigeria’s Sharia master who told him categorically that the almajiri system is Haram (forbidden in Islam).
Boko Haram’s uncontrollable terror is the reward for this wickedness. Amanda told me the then Governor of Borno, hired these almajiris and defunct schools like that of late Muhammed Yusuf, arming them to be his political thugs.
For the first time in their lives, the almajiris got a job; they got some sort of social belonging, some meaning and relevance and along with it came finance.
How will they ever abandon such lucrative lifestyle, and opportunity to tell the world, we are better than you, we harass you, duck western civilization, duck the government of Nigeria, duck anyone who stands in our way.
To be on TV every day, on radio. To kill parents like theirs who abandoned them and sentence children, hitherto lucky, into a cold world without the shelter of a loving home? To revenge and get paid.
Cap that with the free flow of more potent ‘spiritual’ uplifting concoctions Boko Haram is said to be availing its recruits and the likelihood of surrender approaches the likelihood of the United States and Israel willingly accepting a Nuclear Iran.
The almajiri’s are not going back. Nigeria must urgently find a way to start giving them something else, other than the permission to beg. Parents must be fined and incarcerated for child abandonment. A social welfare system must be immediately constituted. This is available in all developed societies.
The lack of it predicts sure and certain chaos. And the Mosques must preach that Islam does not permit riots and nonsensical violence, that hooliganism is not Jihad.
The Mualims and proponents of the almajiri system must know the prohibition in Islam of sending able-bodied young men to beg. To them, this message from the prophet of Islam:
Whoso openeth unto himself the door of begging, God will open unto him the door of poverty.
Verily it is better for any of you to take your rope and bring a bundle of wood upon your back and sell it, in which case God guardeth your honor than to beg of people, whether they give or not; if they do not give, your reputation suffereth, and you return disappointed; and if they give, it is worse than that, for it layeth you under obligation.
Whoever hath food for a day and a night, it is prohibited for him to beg.
It is time to start ending the nuclear alms race.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah
Every Nigerian Do Something [ http://ENDS.ng ]
Contact: [email protected]
Article References:
http://www.irinnews.org/report/95014/nigeria-chad-migrants-fleeing-boko-haram-violence-await-aid
http://saharareporters.com/news-page/kano-governor%C2%A0kwankwaso-blames-government-and-society%C2%A0for%C2%A0nigeria%E2%80%99s-insecurity
http://newsrescue.com/poverty-in-the-north-a-mayday-call/
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/05/abolish-al-majiri-system-mark-tells-northern-govs/
Police Special Fraud Unit (PSFU), Ikoyi, Lagos, said its operatives have busted a syndicate who used Point of Sale (POS) terminals and other technological tools to gain access to financial institution’s database to steal more than N3 billion.
Police did not name the financial institution where the money was stolen but DSP Ovie Ewhubare, spokesperson for the Unit, in a statement Friday, said that while a member of the syndicate has been arrested, other remained at large.
The PSFU spokesperson said the suspect was apprehended following an extensive investigation into a sophisticated cyber intrusion targeting a financial institution.
“The members of the syndicate allegedly used Point of Sale (POS) terminals and other technological tools to gain unauthorised access to the financial institution’s database.
“The breach enabled the suspects to initiate fraudulent transactions worth more than N3 billion,’’ he said.
According to him, investigations reveal that the proceeds of the alleged fraud are quickly laundered through multiple bank accounts in an attempt to conceal the source and movement of the funds.
The spokesperson said that the detectives deployed advanced digital forensic techniques and financial analysis to trace the transactions, identify members of the syndicate and recover key evidence to support prosecution.
Ewhubare said that Mr Eloho Okpoiakpo, commissioner of Police in charge of the PSFU, commended the investigating team for its professionalism in uncovering the alleged fraud.Law Enforcement
He said that Okpoiakpo directed the detectives to intensify efforts to apprehend other fleeing members of the syndicate, assuring that every effort would be made to bring all those involved to justice.
A new case study by Moniepoint Inc., Africa’s all-in-one financial ecosystem platform for individuals, businesses and their customers, traces four decades of Nigeria’s food service industry and reveals how the sector’s most persistent payment problems, that include settlement delays, unreliable confirmation, unchecked theft and inaccessible credit have been resolved by real-time digital infrastructure, turning food commerce into an $11.09 billion market in 2025.
The sector has undergone a massive structural shift marked by food-delivery super-apps, as well as a new generation of cloud kitchens operating without a single dining chair, with the food service industry poised to experience unprecedented growth as the Nigerian market is projected to reach $19.31 billion by 2030, growing at 11.73% annually.
The study traces the industry’s roots from the UAC-owned Kingsway Rendezvous of 1973 and the 1986 launch of Mr Bigg’s, through the rise of Chicken Republic and other quick-service chains, to the present day, where food and drinks form the second-largest merchant sector on Moniepoint’s platform, trailing only retail.
Tosin Eniolorunda, group CEO of Moniepoint Inc., noted that “Moniepoint believes financial inclusion is not just about access. It’s about dignity, about enabling people to transact on their terms. What’s happening in the food service sector today is significant. The real competitive question today is how deeply that payment infrastructure is woven into the way the business actually runs day to day.
“Moniepoint is sitting right at the centre of that shift. We are ensuring that payments are connected to inventory, inventory to recipes, recipes to procurement, procurement to credit, and credit to growth plans. By building out tools like Moniebook and Orda that match the operational reality of these culinary entrepreneurs, who act as mini-factories converting perishable raw materials into time-sensitive output, we are providing the digital operating system that drives sustainable scale for Nigeria’s socio-economic development.”
The report finds that for most of that history, Nigerian food businesses ran almost entirely on cash, with multi-location operators managing cash across a dozen or more outlets, facing constant exposure to loss, theft and human error. The rise of bank transfers in the 2010s introduced a new pain point around confirming that the payment had actually landed before releasing an order. At peak hours, the study notes, this manual verification could add two to five minutes to every transaction, with digital infrastructure most likely to falter precisely when demand and stakes were highest, especially during Christmas, New Year’s and Eid celebrations.
The study also documents how disconnected payment and inventory systems enabled operational leakage that was structurally difficult to detect, from unaccounted stock in the kitchen to under-ringing at the till and how Nigeria’s collateral-based lending system routinely locked thriving food businesses out of credit.
The International Finance Corporation estimates that the country’s unmet MSME credit demand was $32.2 billion in 2022, a gap that falls disproportionately on women, who, the report shows, own 86.8% of businesses in the accommodation and food services sector, the most female-dominated sector in the Nigerian economy.
To address these bottlenecks, Moniepoint introduced three structural interventions that reshaped the industry’s economics. Moving away from the traditional $T+1$ bank settlement cycle, it provided instant, same-day access to funds, allowing operators to finance the next morning’s inventory directly from the previous day’s sales.
This was paired with automated transfer confirmation at the terminal to eliminate manual verification queues and an embedded lending model that used verified transaction history instead of property collateral to unlock bulk purchasing power ahead of seasonal surges. Driven by these updates and the tightening of the cashless policy, Moniepoint witnessed a 2,823% surge in QSR terminal usage.
Beyond payments, a unified business banking dashboard replaced month-end spreadsheets with real-time, role-based visibility to curb financial misconduct across multiple branches. With Moniepoint’s launch of Moniebook and the acquisition of Orda, analysts say that the business is transitioning from a payment provider to a complete operating system, in line with its ecosystem ambition.
This integration allows culinary businesses to track ingredient depletion against precise recipes to expose hidden theft or portioning errors, while simultaneously consolidating fragmented orders from delivery apps, social media, and walk-ins into a single inventory ledger.
Some other insights from the study:
- Transaction volume across the industry peaks at lunch, between 1 pm and 2 pm, with a second evening peak at 7 pm reaching 10 to 15 times its level at 7 am – except online food delivery, which peaks and remains strong past 10 pm.
- Card payment activity records its biggest month-on-month jump of the year between November and December, while April is the industry’s quietest month for payment activity, running 46.3% below December’s.
This food service case study joins Moniepoint’s expanding pool of definitive thought leadership materials curated for the benefit of stakeholders, including regulators, investors, and the general public, aimed at enhancing their understanding of how digital payment ecosystems are transforming Nigeria’s commercial landscape across diverse sectors and market structures.
Flutterwave has secured a strategic investment from Circle Ventures, the venture capital arm of Circle Internet Group, to accelerate the expansion of its USDC payments and settlement infrastructure across Africa.
This comes as demand for faster and more efficient cross-border transactions grows.
The investment strengthens Flutterwave’s ambition to integrate USDC settlement into its existing payment ecosystem, allowing businesses to receive payments in local currencies while settling in the dollar-backed stablecoin.
The company said the move would reduce settlement delays and transaction costs while enabling near-instant settlements beyond traditional banking hours.
The announcement comes after Flutterwave participated in the launch of the Circle Payments Network in 2025, marking a deeper collaboration between the two companies in advancing digital payment infrastructure across the continent.
Flutterwave said the investment aligns with its strategy of positioning stablecoins as a key component of Africa’s financial infrastructure, while ensuring blockchain-based payment services operate within existing regulatory and compliance frameworks.
Commenting on the development, Flutterwave Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Olugbenga Agboola, said the investment would help build the infrastructure required for the next phase of global money movement from Africa.
According to him, stablecoins have evolved beyond experimentation into core financial infrastructure capable of transforming how businesses move money across borders.
“This support from Circle Ventures is about backing the rails that will power the next era of global money movement from Africa. Stablecoins like USDC are no longer an experiment; they are becoming core financial infrastructure.
“By embedding USDC settlement into our current payments infrastructure, we are building a system that lets businesses move money at the speed of the internet. This fundamentally changes how payments from Africa connect to the world, and it positions Flutterwave as the default stablecoin gateway for the continent,” Agboola said.
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