On the matter of the incarcerated ‘minors’ who were later freed

Reading the copious daily contributions on the WhatsApp platform of the estate of your residence is a regular source of quaint entertainment for you as a silent observer. Like many of the residential estates on the Lekki-Epe axis, the ethnic mix among the residents is tilted away from locals, and the WhatsApp platform all too often provides an avenue for ventilation of primordial dissatisfactions. The content is relentlessly tendentious. Discussion is not to change minds but to score points. Argumentation is ultimately futile, as the standpoints of contributors are etched in stone, and their inputs predictable.

This morning, the discussion is about the ‘innocent’ ‘underage’ children who were arrested by police in Abuja during the #endbadgovernance demonstrations and who were recently arraigned in court in Abuja. The news is that the ‘minors’ looked ‘malnourished’ and that they ‘fainted’ during the court hearing.

“One of the many legal experts in the group quotes copiously from the Constitution and extant laws concerning the limited criminal responsibility of minors and how they are not to be treated as ‘adults’.”

Vituperations against the ‘mindlessness’ and ‘wickedness’ of the government flow on the WhatsApp platform in an endless cascade. One of the many legal experts in the group quotes copiously from the Constitution and extant laws concerning the limited criminal responsibility of minors and how they are not to be treated as ‘adults.’

Later in the day, on the platform, IR circulated a petition she had originated for signatures, demanding the immediate release of the ‘innocent children’ in Abuja. IR is a brilliant and very articulate young lady from the Middle Belt. She is vocal on social issues and wears her heart on her sleeve. She is involved in worthy causes, such as organising a food bank for the less privileged in your community to which she tries to get everybody to contribute.

Soon after, it is announced that the attorney general has ‘taken over’ the ‘children’s’ case, despite the grumblings from bemused policemen that the people in their custody are neither ‘innocent’ nor ‘children.’ There is a groundswell of sentiment among the public that a grievous wrong has been done.

Responding to the public outcry, the President orders that the ‘children’ be released.

Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief.

The ‘children’ become instant celebrities. Cleaned up and dressed up, they are favourite targets for photo opportunities.

Some of them, presumably those identified as coming from that state, are received in public by the governor of one of the Northern states. Each is given the princely sum of one hundred thousand naira, along with a smartphone. A state official announces that they are to be ‘returned to their parents.’

Read also: Children protesters: What option lies ahead after the release of minors?

The whole saga, from the police action to IR’s petition to the anti-government vituperations on your estate’s WhatsApp platform, and even to the presidential order and the visit to the governor, the ‘naira rain,’ and the official promise that the ‘children’ would be ‘returned to their parents’ creates in you a feeling of déjà vu.

The scenario of your recollection is Kano, Nigeria. The period is the early 1980s, during the rule of Nigeria’s one-and-only military president. For a few scary days, there has been a spate of ‘religious’ riots which have claimed the lives of several hundred Nigerians. Finally, on presidential order, the military is ordered to help police restore order. A no-nonsense general by the name of Adamokhai is the ‘General Officer Commanding.’ Swiftly he brings the riots to a stop. He arrests the culprits who have been killing, burning, and pillaging. He holds them together and makes them sit down on the central highway in the city, under guard.

It turns out the majority are ‘almajiri children’.

Within a few hours, a famous religious leader by the name of Gumi is on the airwaves and in newspapers, appealing to the President to order Adamokhai to ‘release the children who are sitting under the hot sun’ so that ‘they can go back to their mothers’.

Of course, that is the crux of the problem, then, as now. ‘Almajiri’ ‘children’ have no mothers, no fathers, except in a strictly biological and historical sense. That is why they are foot soldiers as well as cannon fodder for every social upheaval. They, and the problem of ‘out of school street children’ generally, are the prominent wart on Nigeria’s forehead, as well as the bomb that may eventually blow it into smithereens.

Perhaps some of Adamokhai’s ‘children’ of the early 1980s are now in the leadership cadre of Boko Haram, or ‘Bandits.’ In the years since then, their menace has been exported not only to Abuja but to the streets of faraway Lagos—unschooled, unskilled, untrained, almost untrainable young people with no stake in society and with nothing to lose. In Lagos they hang around on the Lekki and Iba axes, alternately cajoling and threatening motorists, or go around neighbourhoods, stealing electrical and plumbing fixtures while pretending to collect ‘Condemn Iron.’ Even IR complains about the menace of ‘Condemn Iron’ thieves and wants security men to scrupulously exclude them from the estate gates, but she sees no link with the subject of her petition.

Tackling the ‘almajiri’ issue calls for good reason and intentional social reengineering, and not for one hundred thousand naira payoffs and ‘rewards’ of smartphones. For the Governor in question, this was a point-of-entry opportunity missed. The thirty-five indigenes of his state repatriated to him could be subjected to individual occupational therapy case assessments to determine their needs and possibilities. In the absence of biological ‘parenting,’ the state could assume parental responsibility for this small number if only to make the point. In a safe environment, it could teach them life skills that would enable them to make a living in society. It could individually follow up on their progress.

Perhaps half of the number would be ‘redeemed’ – who knows?

It is a template that could be fine-tuned to attack the larger problem on a national scale.

Nigeria prefers to deal with its most critical sociological problems with emotional postures crafted in utter ignorance and primordially biased mindsets and with knee-jerk reactions, cynicism, political posturing and playing to the gallery. Hmmm.