One of the most harrowing stories in The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project concerns the impact of child abduction in the northern wards of Nigeria. In areas covered by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, who are waging war on education as well as the Nigerian government, a reign of terror has been in place for about the last quarter century. The dramatic taking of more than 300 largely Christian girls from a school in Chibok in the north of Nigeria 12 years ago brought Boko Haram to the world’s attention, and its evil work continues.
The sheer scale of this crisis is difficult to comprehend. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, there have been at least 16 mass abductions of students from schools and hostels carried out by criminal and militant Islamist groups across northern Nigeria over the past decade. The United Nations reports a surge in the practice in recent years. The terrorists’ goal is twofold: the first is to take children from their families as punishment for refusal to obey their orders, and then use them as sex slaves and try to indoctrinate if not simply force them to become part of the Boko Haram movement.
The second goal is more strategic: the constant kidnappings as children, particularly girls, travel to school, deter many parents from exposing them to such risks. They are thus deprived of the kind of normal education that should be a right and is taken for granted in the West. Teachers, the police, even vaccinators are all regarded as legitimate targets for murder. The wider impact of these atrocities on Nigerian society and its economy is severe, as it is in neighbouring nations and other areas beset by these Wahabbist-inspired criminals. Nigeria is rich in natural resources but also endemic corruption and religious divisions provoked and exacerbated by Boko Haram and groups allied to Isis (from which Boko Haram has now split).
Poverty and vast disparities in wealth and income add to the nation’s problems, and the astonishing number of uneducated children prone to joining Boko Haram is making it more difficult to resolve them – a self-perpetuating crisis. Some 18 million children are estimated to be out of school in Nigeria – the highest number of children not in formal education anywhere in the world. Indeed, one in five of all the children who are out of school across the world are accounted for by Nigeria and Boko Haram’s reign of terror, centred on the northeastern province of Borno and spilling out into neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
Western powers, notably France and the United States, have tried to support West African governments to fight back – including recent bombing raids ordered by President Trump on Boko Haram bases in Nigeria. What is clearly not helping, however, is the sudden cessation of operations by longstanding international aid organisations, of which the callous and self-defeating closure of the US Agency for International Development was the most egregious error. Aid workers in this terrorised region need funding to rehabilitate the victims, many suffering for the rest of their lives from the experience of brutal rapes, post-traumatic stress disorder, HIV, and loss of their own education. Without literacy, numeracy or skills, they cannot start again.
Governments also need assistance in rebuilding schools burned down by Boko Haram and other gangs, protecting teachers and churches. Climate change is causing long-term desertification of the Sahel, adding to the stresses caused by criminal gangs and Islamist militants. The result is a wave of people fleeing north towards Europe, refugees from terror and extreme poverty. If we want to “stop the boats”, we should start giving more aid to those in desperate need of support.
