The anatomy of a predicted catastrophe
By Shu’aibu Usman Leman
I have spent the better part of a year documenting the slow-motion catastrophe of vulnerable children in Northern Nigeria—a crisis that has festered in the shadows of our national consciousness for far too long. In previous works in TheNiche Newspaper, including “Out-of-School Children”, “The Children the North Refuses to See”, and “The Militarisation of Childhood”, I issued a series of urgent warnings. I argued then, as I do now, that the act of ignoring millions of minors—denying them the fundamental pillars of education, physical safeguarding, and economic dignity—would eventually trigger a security collapse too volatile to contain.
The central thesis of those essays remains hauntingly relevant, that any society that systematically abandons its youth is effectively subsidizing its own eventual destruction and signing its own death warrant. For years, these warnings were treated as mere academic abstractions or the alarmist rhetoric of human rights advocates. Yet, the sociopolitical weather vane has always pointed toward a singular, grim conclusion, that neglect is not a passive state; it is an active investment in future chaos. When we look at the sheer scale of the population involved—millions of children with no formal ties to the state—we are looking at a demographic time bomb that has been ticking in silence while the nation looked elsewhere.
Today, those warnings have transcended the theoretical and manifested as a visceral, terrifying reality that can no longer be ignored by the comfortable or the indifferent. A disturbing viral video currently circulating across digital platforms offers a harrowing tableau of this failure. It shows underage boys in Borno State being paraded as active combatants, clutching assault rifles and executing disciplined military formations with chilling precision. The imagery is profoundly unsettling, not merely because of the sophisticated weaponry on display, but because of the absolute theft of childhood it represents.
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These are children who, by every standard of human rights and moral decency, should be seated at desks within a classroom, nurtured by parental care and community guidance. Instead, they have been indoctrinated into the nihilistic and brutal logic of perpetual armed conflict. The video is not just a recording of a moment; it is a broadcast of a broken social contract, a visual testament to the fact that when the state abdicates its role as a protector, the predator inevitably fills the void. We see in their eyes a hardness that should not belong to the young—a transformation from pupils into projectiles of war.
For many Nigerians, this footage arrived as a profound jolt to the national psyche, sparking widespread outrage and a collective sense of disbelief. However, for those of us who have meticulously tracked the devastating trajectory of systemic poverty, mass displacement, and chronic insecurity across the North, this is less a shock than a grim, inevitable confirmation of long-standing alarms. Across the region, there exists a vast, disenfranchised population of vulnerable children living at the furthest, most desperate margins of society.
They are the almajirai wandering urban thoroughfares in a bid for basic survival, the displaced children languishing in overcrowded and underfunded camps, and the rural poor who have never once experienced the inside of a formal schoolhouse. These children are visible on every street corner and in every marketplace, yet they remain strangely, perhaps even intentionally, invisible within our high-level national discourse regarding economic development and national security strategy. We see them, but we do not perceive them; we acknowledge their presence but ignore their potential—or the threat their desperation poses. This cognitive dissonance allows the state to function as if these millions do not exist, until the moment they are presented to us behind the barrel of a gun.
In many ways, they are the “unseen” generation whom the regional leadership has consistently failed to acknowledge or provide for in any meaningful capacity. Yet, in active conflict zones, forgotten children rarely remain forgotten for long; they are eventually “found” by those with the most sinister and predatory intentions. Criminal gangs notice them. Armed insurgent groups notice them. Extremist movements notice them.
When the state and society fail to provide a safety net of protection and education, these children become the primary targets for radicalisation and tactical recruitment. For a child who has known nothing but hunger and the cold indifference of the streets, an extremist group offering three meals a day and a sense of “divine” purpose is not just a threat—it is, in their eyes, a lifeline. The tragedy is that the extremist recruiter is often the only person who looks these children in the eye and tells them they matter, even if only as fodder for a relentless insurgency. The “belonging” offered by an armed group is a powerful lure for a child who has been treated as a nuisance by the rest of society.
The exploitation of children in armed conflict stands as one of the most abhorrent hallmarks of modern warfare, and Nigeria has certainly not been spared from this deepening tragedy. In the insurgency that has ravaged the North East for well over a decade, children have been systematically weaponized as front-line fighters, couriers, intelligence spies, and, most tragically, as human bombs.
Some are violently abducted from their communities in midnight raids; others are coerced through terrifying threats against their families. Still others simply drift into the orbit of armed groups because they perceive no alternative path to physical survival in a land where the state has effectively abdicated its responsibility to provide for the poor and vulnerable. This is the industrialization of misery, where the vulnerability of a child is treated as a strategic asset by those who seek to dismantle the state. The recruitment of children is not a byproduct of the war; it is a deliberate tactic designed to ensure the longevity of the conflict.
The true tragedy of child recruitment is not merely the act of using children in war, but the fact that the socio-economic conditions enabling their recruitment are largely preventable through genuine political will and resource allocation. Chronic, multi-generational poverty, mass displacement, crumbling educational infrastructure, and fragile local governance have combined to create an enormous, self-replenishing pool of vulnerable youth.
In such desolate environments, recruitment becomes an efficient, almost mechanical process because armed groups offer the very essentials the state has failed to deliver, consistent food, a sense of belonging, perceived protection, and a powerful, albeit distorted, sense of identity and personal agency. This is precisely why the issue of child soldiers cannot, and must not, be viewed solely through a narrow military or counter-terrorism lens. It is, at its core, a catastrophic and systemic failure of development and the social contract. Until we address the vacuum of care and opportunity, no amount of military force will be sufficient to stop the supply of young recruits.
The neglect of vulnerable children does not remain a humanitarian or “charity” problem indefinitely; it is a live wire that eventually evolves into a full-scale, existential national security crisis. When vast numbers of young people grow up without education, the hope of legitimate employment, or a stake in the status quo, they become infinitely susceptible to manipulation by those who promise power and purpose through the barrel of a gun.
Ultimately, the viral video from Borno should not be dismissed as a freak occurrence or an isolated incident in a remote corner of the federation. It is a clarion call and a final warning about the terminal symptoms of a society that has failed to protect its most precious human resource. It serves as a haunting reminder that if urgent, decisive, and holistic measures are not taken immediately to bridge the widening development gap and secure the future of these children, the consequences of this neglect may one day grow large enough to dismantle the very stability and sovereignty of the Nigerian nation itself. We are no longer waiting for the storm; we are standing in the midst of the harvest of our own neglect.
