Shall we call him Ishmael? Each of the 32 boys recently released among the 76 detained in the August #EndBadGovernance protests—emerge as symbolic Ishmaels, castaways in a society indifferent to their plight.
Betrayed by the northern political elite, they wander estranged from the care and ideals that should palm their fate, laying siege to Nigeria’s rural heartlands and suburban sprawl.
There is an apocalyptic drift in the scourge of these minors, mainly underage boys and teenagers. The northern intelligentsia and political class, in particular, perceive them as fractions of the region’s disposable human trash. They believe that there are more pressing political and economic problems to address. This is a mistake. A grievous one.
It is the sort of apathy that seethes, awaiting the right spark to rupture – often at the nudge of shady political elite and criminal masterminds.
These boys are products of Nigeria’s dysfunctional system. Inured to mayhem, they are forbiddingly dangerous. Their personalities, shaved of compassion are sculpted to project strife by their maleficent benefactors.
Brainwashed, they become puppet personae, stunted in growth, and unquestioning of their puppeteers’ malicious intent.
Amid their benefactors’ toxic patronage, they manifest like soulless dummies, casual workers in a Nigerian carnage factory.
As victim and villains, they are both exposed and enclosed, behind their coarse faces and masks.
Each boy is naked yet armoured, premature yet ritually experient. They are impervious to morals because they have become soulless; their defiled innocence screams for urgent help and yet remains closed to redemption.
Their naivete is deceptive – not to be toyed with. Military officers in Nigeria and neighbouring countries claim the minors they face on the battlefielf are fearless. In Cameroon, a local commando unit dispatched helicopters and artillery against waves of Boko Haram’s child insurgents, who appeared to be drugged, some armed with no more than machetes, said Col. Didier Badjeck , a former Cameroonian army spokesman.
During a recent battle between Boko Haram and Cameroonian gendarmes, in northern Cameroon, more than one hundred screaming boys ran towards a fortified position, many of them barefoot and unarmed, said Badjeck to WSJ, and most were swiftly gunned down. Soldiers found in many of their pockets packaging from the opiate, tramadol.
“It’s better to kill a boy than have 1,000 victims,” said Badjeck. “It’s causing us problems with international organizations, but they’re not on the front lines. We are.” This is both sad and scary. No adult should ever have cause to think or say such of a minor.
No government should ever have cause to detain or charge minors as adult felons. Yet, in the aftermath of the August detentions, the swift release of these boys appeared less an act of justice and more an effort to quell public outrage.
The fervent shrieks of a chastising public seemed to browbeat the federal government into a retreat, thus releasing the boys, who returned to their communities as heroic symbols. Some state governors met them with a bizarre pageantry, a peculiar celebration for youth seen just days before as outlaws. The government’s hasty capitulation—a backhanded “victory” for those who condemned the arrests—signals a dangerous precedent, affirming that lawlessness may, at times, be overlooked for the sake of appeasement.
The political elite, especially, raised their voices to align with public sentiment in a bid for relevance. But it is the boys who suffer the most from this theatre of misdirected sympathy, this tacit validation of violence and defiance masquerading as reform.
Ultimately, they reflect a peril that grows with every unaddressed grievance. For they are not a separate people or class but the product of a fractured society that disdains to acknowledge them even as it manipulates their resentment for political purposes.
In the north, the legacy of this abandonment manifests in boy-terrorists, and bandits too young to understand the true scope of their actions yet resolute in their defiance. In the southern cities, Lagos especially, young gangs with names like the One Million Boys and Awawa Boys haunt neighborhoods, their adolescent faces hardened by a violence that stems from necessity. Teenagers wielding machetes and knives, robbing and raping without remorse, are the mirror to our society’s indifference, a warning cloaked in youthful terror.
These young gang members—southern and northern alike—reveal a raw truth about Nigeria’s descent. They are the sons of a failed republic, a generation cast adrift, molded in the rough hands of neglect and raised in the shadows of power.
But to disregard these boys as mere “distractions” is to miss the ominous truth that they are the harbingers of a much greater devastation—one that will not be contained by neglect.
President Bola Tinubu’s leadership stands at a precipice, compelled to confront the specter of youth disillusionment not as an incidental problem but as a national crisis. It is the duty of the ruling class to recognize that the cries of hardship from Nigeria’s marginalized are not tantrums but a plea for survival – to be treated with dignity.
To dismiss the grievances of a suffering populace – the youths in particular – as the complaints of ungrateful citizens is not only unacceptable but tragic. No leadership can expect loyalty or appreciation from those it deems irrelevant, those it ignores with contempt. I hope President Tinubu would commit no such error.
Read Also: Okpebholo inaugurates SSG, Attorney-General, 24 hours after assuming power
Our youth—these forgotten Ishmaels—need more than our pity; they need a path to purpose. Their anguish should not be pacified with symbolic gestures or cynical grandstanding. They require a structure that fosters legitimate ambition, a system that offers alternatives to the grim realities that now bind them to violence. Education, mentorship, vocational training—these are not luxuries but necessities, the only means to disarm the fury that threatens to consume our nation.
The establishment of robust, grassroots programs that address not only academic but also emotional and ethical development can begin to mend the broken bridges. The infusion of opportunities for legitimate enterprise, for creative and productive outlets, could allow these youths to redirect their energies towards a brighter future.
Rather than institutionalizing punishment, we could foster community programmes that can rehabilitate former gang members, bandits, and soldiers, providing them with meaningful engagement through work, skill-building, and mentorship.
It’s aout time we held the political elite accountable for their part in the mayhem. They must be held accountable for the violent use of young people as agents of political manipulation. Policies that insulate minors from being co-opted for political gain should be enforced strictly, with transparency in electoral and political processes.
Our society must reckon with its own contradictions. We cannot decry the corruption of our youth while perpetuating the very conditions that breed it. We cannot chastise them for the choices they make while denying them any real options. We must look beyond the symptoms and address the root causes — the grinding poverty, the lack of access to quality education, the systemic corruption that has made a mockery of justice and governance.
For each child we condemn, another will rise, hardened by the same struggles, driven by the same sense of abandonment. It is a cycle that feeds upon itself, a vortex that will one day consume us all if left unchecked.
The path forward must be laid with compassion and reform, not with the fiery words of performative rage. Without it, the condemnation of these boys remains as empty as the promises they once believed in, leaving them stranded in the wastelands they were forced to call home.
