Warns Nigeria’s Child Neglect Crisis Could Ignite West Africa
By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo
The Foundation for Peace Professionals (PeacePro) has warned that Nigeria’s worsening insecurity will remain unresolved unless the Almajiri system is decisively dismantled within the next five years, cautioning that continued neglect could destabilise not only Nigeria but the wider West African subregion.
The warning was issued by PeacePro’s Executive Director, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, following an extensive fact-finding and stakeholder engagement tour across seven states in Northern Nigeria, where the organisation consulted on insecurity and the Almajiri crisis.
Hamzat said the tour exposed a disturbing pattern of normalised child abandonment, often justified on cultural and religious grounds, which has produced millions of socially excluded children and continues to fuel banditry, extremism and organised criminal violence.
“What Nigeria is dealing with is not just banditry, terrorism or criminality,” Hamzat said. “It is the long-term consequence of a society that has normalised the abandonment of its children. The Almajiri system, in its current form, is not merely a policy failure; it is a cultural expression of total societal collapse.”
He described the crisis as a composite failure cutting across all layers of society.
“It is a failure of culture, a failure of family, a failure of religion, a failure of government and a failure of society, all rolled into one,” he said.
PeacePro warned that failure to eradicate the Almajiri system within five years could result in an uncontrollable spread of insecurity beyond Nigeria’s borders.
“If this crisis is allowed to persist, Nigeria will not burn alone,” Hamzat cautioned. “The sheer scale of excluded, uneducated and desperate youths being produced annually is enough to set the entire West African subregion on fire.”
While acknowledging that the Almajiri system is often defended as a cultural or religious tradition, PeacePro argued that culture loses its moral legitimacy when it systematically produces deprivation, homelessness and social alienation.
“Culture is not sacred when it destroys lives,” Hamzat said. “Any culture that turns children into roaming beggars, denies them education, welfare, protection and a sense of belonging is no longer heritage; it is a social pathology.”
Based on observations from the seven North-West states visited, PeacePro identified the Almajiri crisis as the outcome of five layers of societal failure: family failure, where parents relinquish responsibility without safeguards; ethnic nationality failure, where collective identity is used to normalise tragedy as culture; religious failure, where children are enrolled in learning systems without welfare, skills or protection; societal failure, where child begging is normalised and spiritualised; and state failure, where child rights and basic education laws are ignored or weakly enforced.
“When families, ethnic nationality, religion, society and the state all fail at the same time, insecurity becomes inevitable, not accidental,” Hamzat said.
The organisation further warned that children raised outside family care, education, social protection and civic identity are likely to grow into adults disconnected from the state and vulnerable to recruitment by criminal gangs, extremist groups and violent political networks.
“You cannot abandon children in the name of culture and expect peace in the name of patriotism,” Hamzat said. “A society that mass-produces excluded children is manufacturing future instability.”
PeacePro stressed that its position is not an attack on Islam, Northern culture or religious education, but a call for urgent reform anchored on responsibility, dignity and accountability.
“This is not about destroying culture or faith,” Hamzat said. “It is about restoring their ethical foundations. Religion without welfare and compassion has been weaponised against the very children it should protect.”
The group called on the Federal and state governments to treat the Almajiri crisis as a national emergency and a security priority, urging the adoption of a coordinated strategy to eradicate the system within five years. It recommended large-scale rehabilitation and vocational programmes for existing Almajiri youths, alongside sustained engagement with religious and traditional leaders to drive culturally grounded reforms.
Hamzat concluded that Nigeria’s insecurity would persist unless the country confronts its root causes with courage and honesty.
“Nigeria’s insecurity is not a mystery,” he said. “It is the predictable outcome of decades of societal abandonment, normalised as culture. Until we end that abandonment, insecurity will only change form, not disappear.”
PeacePro reaffirmed its commitment to peace-building advocacy, policy engagement and community-based reforms aimed at breaking the cycle between child neglect and national insecurity.
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