By Barometer
As if it mattered, many commentators from the North have indicated that the hordes of young northerners migrating southward are not almajirai but youths looking for opportunities.
But southern governors are up in arms over the avalanche, and are cross with their counterpart governors from the North who make light of the problem.
Northern governors insist that Nigeria is one country, and youths as well as adults can go anywhere to seek opportunity. Southern governors, however, argue that the South has enough problems of their own than to open their doors to welcome more problems.
They had taken steps to limit population growth and structured their states and communities in such a way as to avert the crisis being witnessed today, they averred.
Beyond the linguistic conundrum of defining itinerant youths and almajirai, a class of urchins abandoned to the care of quranic teachers and expected to beg their way and fend for themselves through school, northern governors who complain about the South erecting barriers must begin to reconsider whether it is proper to shift their burdens to others.
It is true the itinerant youths are not alamjirai, but whether youths or not, those swamping the South from the North are putting a strain on the resources of the South.
A change of attitude has become indispensable.
As northern governors themselves have begun to discover in the expulsion of almajirai back to their home states in the North, no state has unlimited resources to take care of other people’s problems, one country or not.
