That Nigeria’s estimated 15 million out-of-school children are a dangerous nursery for future Boko Haram Islamists is a notorious fact that can hardly be challenged. But even that is underestimating the peril: out-of-school children are not a northern monopoly. On the contrary, they are a growing pan-Nigeria pestilence.
Speaking at the 2022 Murtala Muhammed Foundation Annual Lecture, former President Olusegun Obasanjo nailed it right on the head: “It does not matter how we deal with Boko Haram, bandits, kidnapping and abduction today,” he declared, “those 15 million children that should be in school [but] are not are the potential Boko Haram of 15 years from now.” Nothing to add.
But a few days earlier, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouk, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, gave a gloomier pan-Nigeria picture, though her own reference was 10 million out-of-school children.
“We sent a team to Lagos. They went to Makoko. They met 7, 000 out-of-school children picking things from the dirt. The guy came shaking,” she told Vanguard. “We sent another chap to Jos. He came shaking also. We sent another guy to Enugu — and for the first time,” she confessed, “everybody realised that out-of-school children is a national problem.” Indeed!
It is dire that Makoko (though a lagoon-front community in Lagos and a bastion of the dirt poor) could harbour up to 7, 000 children fiddling with dirt, while they should be in school. This is because Lagos lugs far better public education records than most of its 35 peers. Yet, that the city sometimes convulses with cult and sundry youth restiveness, and their attendant violence, gives the Makoko shock find some credibility.
If tiny Makoko has 7, 000 children idling and wasting away, how many do Mushin, Ketu, Ojota, Kosofe, Ajegunle and the close-cropped communities of Lagos Island, from Idumota to Obalende boast? Same valid questions could be asked of Jos and Enugu; and other Nigerian cities. That is rather frightening and chastening.
But that frightening national outlook cannot take away a possible future Boko Haram blast in the North, as Obasanjo rightly warned. The thing though is that, if we don’t act now, the plague from our abandoned children could come back to haunt us all, though in different forms: Boko Haram (North); cults and sundry violent crimes (in other parts of the country).
Already, children-abandonment and youth restiveness have midwifed teen indoctrination and radicalisation in the North. Also, they shaped oil militancy in the Niger Delta; and are possibly shaping the current Biafra anomie in the South East.
Incidentally, Boko Haram Islamists and oil militants morphed from youths, armed to muscle elections but abandoned after by unscrupulous politicians. Out-of-school children, therefore, would seem to produce a ready stream of these young hoodlums. The omen that everything could continue, unabated, is well and truly scary!
Obasanjo’s recommendation for massive education to capture all of these kids is spot on; minus his thumb-down on safety nets, which he claimed may be unsustainable. The policy should not be “either or”. Rather, it should be an emergency package that should move as many children as possible to school but still offer little succour to these children’s vulnerable parents.
It’s good that some states in the North are already taking responsibility. Kaduna, for instance, made news when it was reported that many children it enrolled, with the lure of mid-day meals, often vanished after taking their meal! Kaduna should never tire of this scheme but continue fine-tuning it until it blossoms into a near-permanent magnet for its out-of-school kids.
Borno too, though the epicenter of Boko Haram, is distinguishing itself with big futuristic schools to accommodate the schooling needs of its war-displaced minors and teens. More states should take advantage of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) national policy. By paying their counterpart funding, they can seize UBE to massively expand educational opportunities for their teeming kids and youths.
But beyond states’ efforts — and many more in the North should compete with, nay outdo Kaduna and Borno — the northern elite (social and religious) should mainstream a culture that frowns at children dropping out of school. The Almajiri practice, for instance, would draw less traction were the religious elite to de-couple it from its general perception (false, many insist) as a core Islamic belief.
The spectre of out-of-school children turning into an avoidable future plague is scary. Now is the time to move against it.