By Olarewaju Kola
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria
It was sunset, and darkness was gradually descending on Nigeria’s bustling northeastern city of Maiduguri. Two little girls – barely three years old – walked towards a crowd of people standing near an ATM machine.
“Please give us money for food,” they said.
The crowd stood silent.
“This is a sad development,” one man in his late 60s finally said. “These children should be under the care of their parents at this time of day.”
The little girls later introduced themselves as Aisha and Zara – though they were not sure of their exact ages.
“Our mothers are waiting for us to bring money home so we can go back to our refugee camp,” said Zara, the bolder of the two.
Street begging by school-age children has become increasingly common in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, says Patricia Dolli, a women’s rights campaigner.
“They aren’t going to school; many of them don’t have anything,” she said, blaming the Boko Haram militant group for creating “an emerging humanitarian crisis.”
Numerous children have been orphaned and many women widowed by Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency that has ravaged the country’s northeast, says Dolli.
She said many orphaned children will likely resort to crime if they do not acquire professional skills.
“Most of Boko Haram’s recruits are young people without jobs who are disenchanted by the system,” she said.
Frank Ndaieh, a UNICEF representative in Nigeria’s violence-plagued northeast, said half a million Nigerian children were now truant.
He called on the Nigerian authorities to provide education for displaced children.
The recently-launched “Presidential Initiative for the Northeast” has provided 30 mobile classrooms for students at IDP camps in Borno and Adamawa, the two states most affected by the insurgency.
But the head of the government initiative, Adesoji Adelaja, says this is inadequate in light of the enormity of the problem.
Jonnas and Luka became shoe-menders after recently losing their fathers to Boko Haram attacks in Gwoza, located some 135 kilometers southeast of Maiduguri.
“I don’t know how else to survive,” 12-year-old Jonnas told Anadolu Agency.
Another victim of Boko Haram violence, Maimunat Ibrahim, was about to deliver her fifth child last year near Madagali, a border community near Adamawa State, when five Boko Haram gunmen attacked her and her husband.
“They grabbed my husband while he was performing sunset prayers,” she told Anadolu Agency. “They shot him in the head three times right in front of me.”
“I fled our home with my four children and later came to Maiduguri to stay with a relative,” she recalled.
With over 250, 000 other displaced victims of Boko Haram taking refuge at 15 IDP camps across the state capital, food shortages have become a frequent occurrence.
Now, Maimunat says, she must beg on the streets to find food for her and her children.
Gov’t efforts
Borno State Governor Alhaji Kashim Shettima, for his part, has vowed to “deal with the situation to prevent a social crisis.”
“The insurgency has affected the lives of our people, but the government is already addressing the challenge,” he told Anadolu Agency.
“In the last year alone, we’ve sent over 200 girls to various schools both within and outside the country for training,” he said.
According to a security source, drug abuse, too, is now rife among local youth.
“Investigations have shown that Boko Haram terrorists are using hard drugs and stimulants to enhance their violent activities,” the source said.
“Dealers of illicit drugs, therefore, have found fertile ground in this area for their illegal business,” he added.
Nigerian Vice-President Yemi Osibanjo says the authorities are now looking to capacity-building, reorientation and poverty alleviation as possible cures to the many problems now plaguing the country’s northeast.
Local resident Ibrahim Gwamna, for his part, hopes the government is able to address the challenges faced by the region before the humanitarian situation “gets even further out of hand.”
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