Orphans today, a threat tomorrow
As many as 100,000 children, made parentless by the Boko Haram insurgency, roam the streets in north-east Nigeria. Officials plan to rebuild schools to educate and save them from extremism
MAIDUGURI // After a night on the streets, the pack of young boys move into Maiduguri’s abandoned amusement park in the early morning to play on the defunct rides. Shoeless and wearing ragged clothes, they sprint to the merry- go- round, its chipped candy-coloured paint bleached by the sun.
The playground horses are motionless, but the boys laugh like they are in Disneyland, forgetting their troubles in a moment of joy. They are among thousands of children – orphaned by Boko Haram militants – who now live in the capital of Borno state, in north-east Nigeria.
“They are internally displaced persons but they are not in camp,” says Salisu Ismail, 42, who works near the amusement park. “There is no care for them, so they come here and play. They aren’t supposed to be here, they should be in school but they don’t have any access. It’s really painful to see.” Boko Haram was founded in Maiduguri by a charismatic preacher who advocated a fundamentalist interpretation of the Quran and denounced western influence in Nigeria.
Rampant poverty, high unemployment and government corruption drew increasing numbers of followers even before the group turned to violence.
As those factors foster radicalisation, officials fear that the city will remain a fertile breeding ground for extremism if the masses of orphans are not taken care of.
Yet today they face the dilemma of how to get thousands of homeless children back to school in a poor region where education has never been prioritised but is the key to preventing another extremist uprising.
“We have an official number of more than 52,000 orphans in Borno state,” says governor Kashim Shettima.
“Unofficially, the orphans may number more than 100,000. Half of them may be in Maiduguri. Without educating these youth, they will be monsters that consume all of us. “It’s a very huge challenge.” Even as the Nigerian army reclaims the last of the territory held by Boko Haram, whose name roughly translated from Hausa means “western education is sin”, their relentless assault on education continues to restrict development.
In some of the far-flung camps on the border of Niger and Cameroon, where the battle is still raging, there are no schools at all. In Maiduguri, whose population has doubled to more than 2 million because of those seeking shelter from the conflict, thousands of children are slipping through the cracks.
“A lot of children have never been to school,” says Unicef child protection specialist Samuel Manyok. “It’s as bad as [the situation in] Somalia and South Sudan combined.”
Getting children whose lives have been shattered by Boko Haram into class is one hurdle to reintegrating them into society when many have suffered trauma. At the amusement park, 15-year-old Aisha, [not her real name], says she was the only one of her family to survive when Boko Haram invaded her village in 2015. When her parents refused to let her marry a Boko Haram fighter, the militants shot her father “on the spot” and tossed her mother into a filthy makeshift prison.
Days later and starving, her mother let her go. “He forced himself on me,” Aisha says of her husband with whom she lived in Sambisa Forest, Boko Haram’s stronghold in Borno state. “He would bring bombs and tell me to pour water on them, so they didn’t explode.”
Aisha, wearing a white hijab with two ruby studs in her nose, says she saw militants strapping explosives to girls and boys.
The rebels gave them 50,000 naira (Dh583) for their families and told them they would go to heaven. If they refused to blow themselves up, they would be shot, Aisha says.
Last December, the Nigerian military invaded Sambisa Forest and rescued Aisha. She now lives with a man from her village in a camp in Maiduguri.
But she is not going to school. Asked what she wants to do in the future, she does not seem to know. “Clothes make me happy,” she says.
Schools were officially reopened in Maiduguri and accessible areas of Borno state only late last year after they closed in 2014. Hundreds of schools across the state are waiting to be rebuilt after they were destroyed by Boko Haram militants.
To address the orphan crisis, Mr Shettima’s goal is to build “20 mega schools across the state”. His government has also floated plans to build an orphanage for 8,000 children.
Whether construction begins depends on how much the Borno government receives from the federal government, an unreliable benefactor.
It is also counting on the generosity and courage of international donors.
“The destruction of schools, the displacement and loss of school years, and the abduction of schoolchildren has reduced the level of access to education in a safe environment,” says Oge Chukwudozie, manager of humanitarian organisation Plan International Nigeria.
“Given that the crisis directly targeted schools, NGOs had to play it safe so that children will not be exposed to direct attack by Boko Haram.”
Nigeria’s government is unlikely to resolve the school shortage quickly. But without urgent intervention, the risk of renewed violence increases.
“They need a second chance at life,” Mr Manyok says.
“Otherwise they become a destabilising factor.
“It’s just a time bomb.”