Insurgency and out of school children: How come they keep multiplying and increasing by the day? How many are they? Who are these insurgents? Are they Nigerians? From where are they being recruited? Who indoctrinates them? Can the tendency they represent be defeated militarily? Is it possible to degrade the tendency and or tackle their underlying grievances? In other words, can the source(s) of their recruitment be blocked and their energies channeled to a different direction? These issues are germane for today and in a post insurgency period. It may sound pedestrian and pedantic to begin a post insurgency discourse when the insurgents are occupying villages, towns and even attempting to take over a state capital. It may sound unreasonable to talk of post military defeat of the insurgents when thousands of Nigerians are refugees in Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic. It may sound out of place considering the facts that thousand of Nigerians are internally displaced and are taking refuge in households in different parts of the country and camps set up by state governments and aid agencies. It may sound unreasonable to the hundreds of orphans roaming the streets having lost their loved ones in a war they hardly understand. On these issues, I plead for your understanding and I will explain. When insurgency was incubating and terrorism taking root in some other jurisdictions, we simply refused to respond, plan or confront it. We simply waved the hand and claimed that the Nigerian people love life and no Nigerian will engage in the art of suicide bombing. We claimed that terrorism is against our culture, customs and traditions and that it will be useless investigating and or putting remedial measures to address the challenge. This mistake or negligence or ignorance has defined the war against insurgency and terror in the country. This is why the fight has been mostly reactive. It is reactive in the sense that we had the opportunity to nip it in the bud at the incubation stage but failed. We had the opportunity to degrade the capability of the insurgents but failed. The leadership of the insurgents or their spiritual masters did not indoctrinate their followers overnight. Whatever form of indoctrination they got must have taken place over a period of time and some of the insurgents must have been attracted to it. What did we do and what form of intelligence did we gather relating to this doctrine that has come to haunt the entire nation? The insurgents did not set up camps overnight. The setting up of camps in different locations must have been planned and systematic. The insurgents did not get funds to procure arms and procured arms over night. These things must have taken place over a period of time. They must have identified sources of funding and avenues and routes of arms supplies. These things happened and through acts of omission or commission we refused to pay attention or even assisted them in their activities. Now, we have this problem and the challenge of insurgency. The military are recording successes and reverses. The insurgents have taken over villages, towns and local governments and killed thousands of Nigerians. They have left hundreds without husbands, left hundreds without wives. They have orphaned so many and sent thousands scampering to other countries. Villages, towns and local governments have been ruined. It is a national and international tragedy and we are still on it. However, I have lost count of the number of insurgents killed since this insurrection started. They are in their thousands if we believe the dispatches from the military. But their numbers keep increasing by the day despite the huge casualties recorded. What then is going on? I am also at a loss as to why insurgent activities are very intense in Borno and Yobe States. Will the military defeat their ideology and the issues that gave rise to them? These are pertinent issues which Nigerians must find answers to. But a look at some of the available statistics and dimensions of out of school children in some of the States with high volatility in insurgency activities will show clearly that we deliberately incubated the ingredients of insurgency and pretended that all is well. The point therefore is that even if the insurgents are defeated by the military, we must still deal with some of the underlying issues of poverty, lack of education and the rapacious activities of the ruling elite that incubated them. In a Nigeria Country Study conducted by UNICEF in 2010 they made startling revelations about our educational system and the number of out of school children in Nigeria and in the various States of the Federation. In the preface to the study they stated that “Recent estimates show that the sub-Saharan Africa region accounts for 52% of the global out-of-school children. 22% of primary school age children in sub-Saharan African were out-of-school. Nigeria’s Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) data for 2008 in fact show that some 7.3 million children of primary school age were out of school.” When the junior secondary school component is taken into account, the out of school children (OOSC) problem becomes even larger, with wide regional, geographical and gender disparities across the country. Even when enrolled, hundreds of children (especially girls) are not showing up for class. Although girls’ primary school attendance has generally been improving, this has not been the case for girls from the poorest households. So many children drop out of primary school that the expected Junior Secondary School (JSS) enrolment rate is very low. Thus, Nigeria’s major challenges are low attendance, low completion rates and gender as well as regional/geographical disparities.” The same study looked at regional and state disparities of out of school children. The study found out that the North East and the North West have a very bad record of out of school children. For Borno State the total population of Primary Age Children stood at 788,615 and out of this number 578,746 representing 73.4% are out of school. The total population of children of primary school age in Yobe stood at 449, 849 and out of this number 283,482 representing 63.5% are out of school. For Bauchi State the total population of primary age children stood at 913, 920 and the number of out of school children stood at 531,691 representing 58.2% while the total population of primary age children in Adamawa State stood at 579,536 and the number of out of school children stood at 190,764 representing 32.9%. The percentage of out of school children in Gombe and Taraba States stood at 38.6 and 31.9% respectively. Zamfara State which is in the North West Zone, the total population of primary age children stood at 633,545 and out of this number 482,739 representing 76.2% is out of school. This figure is closely followed by Kebbi State with 69.1% of out of school children and Sokoto with 65.3%. These figures are in sharp contrast with the percentage of out of school children in other states. Kogi has 8.6% out of school children, Kaduna 23.2%, Imo 4.8%, Ebonyi 18%, Rivers 12.6%, Edo 6.9%, Oyo 20.3% and Ekiti State 2.9%. The point here is that when you have close to 70% of your population of primary school age and they are at home or living in dangerous circumstances, you are invariably incubating vulnerable persons that are susceptible to unprocessed ideologies. These classes of persons are therefore ready tools and materials for insurgents to indoctrinate. Some of them live on the streets. Some of them beg from morning till night. Some of them are doing menial jobs and have little or no education. Moreover, the education some of them have cannot get them any form of job. And some of them are angry and envious of those that have gone to school. Hence, any ideology that locates the cause of their poverty and challenge at the door step of western education appeals to some of them. They are therefore easy to recruit and or recruit themselves to fight the locus of their oppression. So, while we plot strategies and tactics to defeat the insurgents militarily, we must also plot strategies and tactics of getting our children to school or back to school. This is because; poverty and lack of education are the twin incubators of social discontent. Let me also say that the Northern political establishment must accept some form of responsibility for the insurgent activities in the North East and North West of Nigeria. Some of them that have assumed the moral high ground and glibly talk of lack of action in military defeat of insurgency are only playing the ostrich. Some of them that have been at the helm of affairs for a long time refused to address the issues of poverty and access to education. They lived big and had little or no empathy for the poor and the vulnerable. They allowed an obnoxious income and educational disparity that has over the years incubated insurgency and other social vices. Those entrusted with public trust to provide for the welfare and security of the people should not see their venture as a work of optional charity. It is in the collective interest of all that our children are in school. Out of school children are a time bomb and Nigerians are tired of excuses on why things cannot get better. Let us redesign our educational system, send and keep our children in school.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:10:06 +0000
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