Behind the pageantry of public scorn, the curtains of outrage and virtue-signalling, every bleeding heart activist is a grifter perhaps. Strike that! Most people condemning the federal government’s initial attempt to prosecute 32 minors—among the 76 individuals detained for participating in the August #EndBadGovernance protests are emotional scam artists.
This is not to undermine, however, the truly conscientious child rights activists driven by humane intent to condemn the maltreatment of the boys.
The government’s initial move to prosecute the 32 minors predictably, incited not just anger but a palpable moral theatre. Intellectuals, political elites, and activists lambasted the government for alleged cruelty toward these young detainees, who had been locked away for three harsh months across Abuja, Kaduna, Gombe, Jos, Katsina, and Kano.
Politicians, rights advocates and civil society groups likened the government’s action to a betrayal of human dignity. Indeed, these boys appeared pitiful: unkempt, hollow-cheeked, desperate for scraps of water and biscuits in viral footage that flooded social media. Yet the orchestrated outpour of rage, condemning their “cruel and unusual” detention, reveals a selective blindness within Nigeria’s moral compass. Where was this storm of indignation when minors elsewhere in this country became fodder for far graver brutalities?
Inside the courtroom, the sight was sombre, with these boys barely able to stand, their bodies bent and wracked in pain. Four boys collapsed as proceedings began, and they were borne out like broken statues of misjudged rebellion. As they writhed and groaned on the courtroom floor, high-ranking figures—from lawyers to the National President of the NBA, Afam Osigwe—decried their treatment as a ghastly violation of human rights. “This does not make us look good at all,” Osigwe proclaimed, mourning the international stain on Nigeria’s repute and questioning the humanity within the nation’s correctional facilities.
Yes, such condemnation may indeed be warranted. The treatment of these young detainees may be indefensible, yet the deafening din from today’s impassioned critics drowns out the crimes inflicted by these same boys upon their communities, in the name of revolution.
The August protest, beginning as a peaceful demand for an end to economic hardship and governmental waste, spiralled rapidly into plunder and ruin. Riots flared in Kaduna, and within days, a firestorm of chaos swept the North, from Kano to Katsina, to Jos, to Gombe, to Niger. Public spaces were shattered, private properties sacked, and chain stores emptied in the gluttonous frenzy of looters.
Along the highways and the narrow streets of packed suburbs, scenes of carnage left an indelible scar on countless lives and livelihoods. The looters advanced, a swarm of adolescent boys with outstretched hands and pockets laden with ill-gotten goods—clothes, electronics, cartons of yoghurt—all hastily stuffed into sacks and trash bags. In Kano alone, more than 600 arrests were made; the majority of these pillagers were underage, ensnared in a theatre of destruction fueled by a cause that had long lost its innocence.
What started as a march for justice and economic security was swiftly commandeered by the very agents of chaos it opposed, using minors as willing instruments in an insidious campaign of ruin. In Katsina, young boys brazenly marched past the residence of former President Muhammadu Buhari, raising foreign flags and chanting for a military takeover. The bitter irony could not be clearer: these minor participants had not only become instruments of a perverted revolution but were now living testimonies to the erosion of authority and societal decay.
And now, the same clique of Nigeria’s moral defenders—the intelligentsia, the elites, the “bleeding heart” activists—proclaim themselves champions of child welfare and justice. Yet they have carefully sidestepped the young children in the North, who are conscripted into terrorist factions, brainwashed into becoming martyrs of anarchy.
They remain silent about the minors in Buni Yadi, a haunting memory when adolescent terrorists breached the Federal Government College, murdering 59 innocent students in their sleep. These blood-curdling atrocities elicited not the faintest hint of outrage, nor did any organized protests or op-eds emerge from our self-styled champions of child rights. Silence swallowed the terror in Yobe; oblivion, the outrage.
When child soldiers in the Northeast are armed and sent forth into combat, or when young girls are used as suicide bombers, we are met with nothing but a vacuum of empathy. The voice of outrage is nowhere to be heard. Indeed, the same activists demanding dignity for the minors detained in Abuja have often called for the death or lifelong incarceration of the very young survivors of Boko Haram’s horrific manipulations.
Where is the consistency in this selective advocacy? Why does our moral outrage ebb and flow only when it suits a particular narrative while ignoring the systemic neglect that perpetuates the cycle of violence and exploitation?
This is not to say that the indignation over the government’s treatment of these detained minors lacks validity. On the contrary, to ignore their suffering would be to harden our hearts. But it is time to balance the narrative, to accept the wider view that these boys are products of our national failures—failings in family, in education, in social systems, and, perhaps most grievously, in leadership. If we are truly concerned for their welfare, then let us also address the broader socio-economic conditions that leave them so vulnerable to exploitation and weaponization.
Nigeria’s heart must awaken, and so must its vision of justice—a righteousness that does not merely wax indignant over injustices borne of convenience but seeks to rectify the root causes that sow the seeds of rebellion. Without an honest reckoning, Nigeria’s young will remain on the front lines, not of meaningful change but of manipulated destruction.
If we truly wish to prevent further tragedies, then our advocacy must shun selective theatrics for a genuine, practical commitment to the welfare of the northern boy child and the impoverished youth across Nigeria. Programmes to combat illiteracy, end generational poverty, and dismantle the appeal of extremist ideologies must take precedence.
Community and religious leaders must unite to restore value and vision to a generation now floundering in the dark. Only then can we hope to salvage the dreams of these minors, redirecting their youthful vigour from the flames of revolt to the light of purpose.
In the end, the choice is ours to make: will our empathy extend only as far as a public spectacle, or will it dare to pierce the heart of Nigeria’s social crises?
To truly care is not merely to cry foul for the abused but to devote our energies to understanding and repairing a cycle of harm and abandonment. It is far harder to build structures that prevent these injustices from arising, to forge policies that guard each boy’s potential, to demand a society where our youth are more than tools in a theatre of chaos. If we must protest, let it be a protest against the apathy that makes these tragedies possible—a call not for outrage, but for true, unwavering reform.
The northern boy child deserves more than the brief spotlight of trial or detention; he deserves a place in a nation that values his mind over his might, his growth over his exploitation. The region cries out for reformation that reaches beyond rhetoric and takes shape in tangible protections: schools that shelter, leaders who safeguard, and a society that sees each child as a future to be nurtured, not a force to be wielded.
