Despite the wide acceptance and ratification of the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child- a human rights treaty which outlines the civil, political, economic, social, health, and cultural rights of children—by 196 countries in 1989, children all over the world continue to be abused, neglected, and exploited.
In most Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) like Nigeria, the rights of children are violated daily and almost with impunity. Children are raped, maimed, starved, deprived of education, neglected, and engaged in child labour with inadequate judicial systems or institutions to seek redress.
In Nigeria, 18.5 million children are currently out of school. This figure constitutes half of the population of out-of-school-children (OOSC) in the world, which was put at 20.5 million in 2017. Fifty percent of the 18.5 million OOSC in Nigeria are girls and 50 percent of these populations are in northern Nigeria – a region which has been plagued by the Boko Haram insurgency since 2009. In addition to the huge number of OOSC, Nigeria’s educational system is deficient in more ways than one.
Indeed, the poor educational system in Nigeria has been a literary staple. In 2017, Nigeria’s quality of education ranked 125th out of 137 countries on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index. Nigerian public schools are characterised by dilapidated structures, inadequate educational materials, overcrowding, poor funding, and poorly trained teachers.
Then, there is the issue of insurgency. It is hardly novel that children are targets in the Boko Haram insurgency. The insurgents have kidnapped hundreds of girls from their school dormitories, as well as communities. Sadly, girls abducted by the insurgents are subject to rape, which results in childhood pregnancies. Many of the young girls who get pregnant by their abductors are ostracised by community members on their release for carrying “children of Boko Haram.” The plight of children in Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs) camps is equally deplorable. With little or no government-led interventions, children (especially those who are orphaned by the insurgency) are vulnerable to sexual harassment and child labour.
Nigerian authorities have been battling the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, for more than a decade in a conflict that has cost the lives of an estimated more than 40,000 people.
Though Nigeria has invested hugely in human and material resources in the fight against terrorism, the battle is far from being over. The collaborative efforts of ISWAP and Boko Haram have seen deadly attacks across the North-East, North-West and North Central regions. Conversely, the counterterrorism strategies of the military are faltering. Ironically, it is the insurgents’ deploying technology while the state has been tardy in this regard. While the terrorists obviously rely on accurate intelligence, Nigerian forces suffer from poor intelligence and keep falling into ambushes and endure attacks on their outposts.
Violence perpetrated by Boko Haram and ISWAP against civilian and military targets has also resulted in mass atrocities in northern Nigeria. In February 2022, ISWAP perpetrated a series of attacks in Borno State, killing at least 25 civilians. More than 35,000 people have been killed in northern Nigeria since 2009 when Boko Haram launched its insurgency aimed at overthrowing Nigeria’s secular government and establishing an Islamic state. There are at least 2.2 million internally displaced persons in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states while health services and education have been severely disrupted. These groups have also perpetrated attacks in neighbouring countries, killing and displacing civilians in Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Islamic terrorism was birthed in the country by the violent Islamist group, Boko Haram. Since then, it has sprouted several offshoots, welcomed into its ranks different global terrorist franchises – ISIS and al-Qaeda – and become magnets for jihadists from across the world.
Moreover, other terrorists with other goals have emerged. One group of vicious Fulani marauders is spreading destruction all over the country. Others are the blood-thirsty bandits/kidnappers ravaging the northern states. These have forged an unholy alliance with the Salafist Boko Haram, Ansaru and ISWAP, the local ISIS affiliate. In the South-East, a shadowy group the media labels “unknown gunmen” for want of a specific name is also waging a campaign of terror, riding on the back of a separatist agitation in the region.
The country is now gripped by violent conflicts on several fronts. Estimates of the number of persons killed in terrorism since 2009 vary from 35,000 cited by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, to 100,000 as of 2019 given by Kashim Shettima, a former governor of Borno State, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency.
In a June 2021 report, the UN Development Programme said insurgency-related conflicts had claimed the lives of 350,000 persons in the North-East by 2020. It said while 35,000 were killed directly, 314,000 died from “indirect causes.” Over 2.5 million persons have been displaced with about 200,000 taking refuge in neighbouring countries. Children and women contribute a large chunk of the indirect casualties.
The Global Terrorism Index GTI) 2022 identified sub-Saharan Africa as an emerging epicentre of terrorism, accounting for 48 percent of global terrorism deaths. Depressingly, GTI noted in 2020 that Nigeria retained the odious title of the third most terrorism-impacted country in the world.
In the past 18 months, terrorists have attacked 16 military bases and killed about 750 security personnel. In 2017, the GTI disclosed that nearly three-quarters of deaths caused by terrorism were in only five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria.
Bandits are the newest addition to Nigeria’s growing list of violent non-state actors and have become a convenient trope for framing the ongoing devastation in Nigeria’s North-West and Middle Belt regions. Largely unconnected to the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, the origin of banditry in Nigeria can be traced to the farmer-herder conflict that accelerated around 2011.
Since 2011, the farmer-herder conflict has metastasised to include cattle rustling, arms smuggling, protection rackets, kidnapping for ransom, gender-based violence, among others. In the North-West alone, the activities of bandits directly affect roughly 21 million people living in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Katsina.
- Donald, inwalomhe.donald@yahoo.com