Islamic police in Nigeria round up children living on streets to put them in camp "for their rehabilitation"

Authorities in northern Nigeria's largest city have begun evacuating more than 5,000 street children seen as a "security threat" and a growing concern as an economic crisis forces more to fend for themselves. The Hisbah, a regional police force tasked with enforcing Islamic Sharia law, have carried out midnight raids on motor parks, markets and street corners in the regional capital, Kano, since the beginning of the year, evacuating children as they sleep.

"We have so far mopped up 300 of these boys from the streets and taken them into a camp provided for their rehabilitation," Hisbah's director-general Abba Sufi told AFP. "Their continued living on the streets is a huge social and security threat because they are potential criminal recruits."

"They are a ticking time bomb that needs to be urgently defused with tact and care," said Sufi.

In November, Kano State governor Abba Kabir Yusuf set up a committee to rid the city of the street children, most of whom are boys. Many sleep in the open and have no access to education or parental care.
With the highest divorce rate in Nigeria, according to official figures, Kano is dealing with a surge in children from broken homes.

Largely left to fend for themselves, the boys roam the city, begging, selling items at traffic lights and scavenging for scrap metal to sell to get money to feed themselves.

The west African economic powerhouse faces its worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation soaring to 34.6 percent in November, leaving many struggling to eat.

Nigeria has 18.5 million out-of-school children, with Kano State accounting for 1.9 million, the highest rate in the country, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a 2022 survey.

The Kano figure accounts for 39% of the total number of children living in the state, the 2022 Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty survey said.

Officials told AFP that many of the children in Kano city came from neighboring states.

"Some of them are from Kano, while others are from other states," said Hisbah commander Aminu Daurawa. "The first step is profiling them and identifying where they came from."

Some were sent from villages to learn how to read the Koran at informal Islamic religious schools called almajiri. Residents said many students of the Koranic schools beg for food and alms between classes.

Attempts by authorities and local groups to intervene and support the age-old almajiri system have faced opposition from traditional clerics.

The Hisbah police plan to provide "psychosocial" support and counselling to the children before enrolling those who show interest in school, Sufi said, adding that others will be given seed money to start a trade of their choice.

Daurawa told AFP that out-of-state children will be repatriated after their rehabilitation.

Previous attempts to clear the city of street children have failed.

Between 2017 and 2018, the Hisbah evacuated some 26,000 children and reunited them with their parents in and outside Kano, but they returned to the streets after a lull, according to Daurawa.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities in Kano shut almajiri schools and transported the pupils to their states, but they returned when the schools reopened.

"We want to avoid a repeat of the past experience, which is why we changed approach by camping the children and rehabilitating them before sending them back into the society," Sufi said.

AFP

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‘Nigeria to house world’s poorest people by 2030′

 A professor of economic policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Stefan Dercon, has revealed that by 2030, extreme poverty would be an African phenomenon, as the greatest number of the world’s poor would reside in Nigeria.

He said this comes as countries such as China and India have successfully grown their economies and reduced their poverty level significantly.

Dercon stated this during an in-conversation hosted by the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation. Dercon, who is the author of “Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose,” argued that the answer to a nation’s development lies not in a specific set of policies but in the key ‘development bargain.’

He said this is where the elite shift from protecting their positions to gambling on a growth-based future.

The professor said in some countries, the elites have made successful bargains that have resulted in positive developmental outcomes. He said in Nigeria, no such bargain exists adding that socio-economic outcomes continue to deteriorate.

The Chairman, Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation Leadership Council, Olusegun Obasanjo, stressed that for an elite bargain for development to occur, it is important Nigerians have unity of purpose and a common objective. He said right now, everyone is focused on his or her agenda and as a result, the country is suffering.

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, said one of the strategic objectives of the foundation was to build the capacity of the public sector and persuade Nigerian stakeholders to actively participate in national transformation.

“The conversation doesn’t just end here. We are taking this further in a discussion with senior public servants over the next few days and hopefully, sometime in the future. I may be able to confirm that this dialogue catalysed a process that led to positive change in Nigeria,” he said.

Present at the interactive session were presidential aspirant of the Labour Party, Peter Obi; former presidential aspirant, Kingsley Moghalu, Pascal Dozie, Publisher of The Guardian, Lady Maiden Ibru and journalist Kadaira Ahmed, who debated how an elite consensus could be formed in Nigeria.

By Adaku Onyenucheya

The Guardian

Nigerian growth lags Africa, poverty rising, says World Bank

ABUJA, June 15 (Reuters) - Nigerian economic growth has resumed after the COVID shock but is lagging the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, with food inflation, heightened insecurity and stalled reforms slowing growth and increasing poverty, the World Bank said on Tuesday.

Presenting its six-monthly update on development in Africa's most populous country, the organisation gave a GDP growth forecast for Nigeria of 1.9% in 2021 and 2.1% in 2022, compared with 3.4% this year and 4.0% next year for sub-Saharan Africa.

Lead economist for Nigeria Marco Hernandez said inflation, especially in food prices, was exacerbating poverty and food insecurity. Food accounted for almost 70% of Nigeria's total increase in inflation over the past year.

He said the COVID-induced crisis was expected to push over 11 million Nigerians into poverty by 2022, taking the total number of people classified as poor in the country to over 100 million. The total population is estimated at 200 million.

The World Bank expects the Nigerian inflation rate in 2021 to be 16.5%. The forecast for sub-Saharan Africa, excluding Nigeria, is 5.9%.

Hernandez said increased insecurity across the nation -- ranging from mass abductions at schools, kidnappings for ransom, armed conflict between herdsmen and farmers, armed robberies and various insurgencies -- was a drag on growth and job creation.

He said it was critical for the government to maintain reform momentum, but that some important reforms had stalled.

He cited petrol subsidies, which have recently returned after the government had established a market-based pricing mechanism, and electricity tariff reform, an area where planned adjustments to bring prices in line with costs have been paused.

Hernandez said Nigeria had the largest number of people without access to electricity in the world, and that electricity subsidies benefited mainly richer households. Only 22% of the poorest households have access to electricity, while 82% of the richest are able to access power.

Reuters

The despair of Nigeria's poor

Emita Dida, a widowed mother of six, has been living in "Monkey Village" for more than a decade.

She is one of thousands of Nigerians to be calling this informal settlement in Lagos' Ikeja neighbourhood home, sheltering in small shacks jammed together and constructed of rusted zinc.

"Life is difficult," says Dida, who runs a street-food stall.

After the death of her husband, Dida has been been finding hard to sustain her children on a meagre income. Unable to pay for their school fees, she relies on support from aid organisations to cover the cost of education.

"The little money I make is never enough," she says. "I have to feed my family from the food I sell, I can't afford to buy them other food."


Dida is among the millions of Nigerians struggling to make a living in the country's commercial capital - and beyond.

According to a report in June by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think-tank, Nigeria has overtaken India as the world's poverty capital.

The study estimated that 87 million people in a country of nearly 200 million were living in extreme poverty, compared with 73 million people in India.

The report also projected an increase in extreme poverty in Nigeria - Africa's leading oil producer and most populous nation - until at least 2022.

Government officials have said the report does not reflect the true state of the country. Analysts, however, blame weak governance for the increasing poverty rate and say the heavy dependence on oil and gas is leaving the economy exposed to external risks while complicating development efforts.

"The Nigerian economy is an economy that depends on oil and earns what is called 'economic rent' - the income that comes from things that are not from our direct productive effort," says Professor Olufemi Saibu, an economist at the University of Lagos, urging the government to step up efforts to alleviate poverty.

Shrinking middle class

A crash in oil prices in 2014 hit Nigeria hard, sparking a financial and currency crisis and plunging the country's economy into recession two years later - the first in a quarter of a century.

Nigeria is now slowly exiting the downturn but growth remains sluggish, at about two percent, and inflation stubbornly high, an estimated 16.2 percent in 2017.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, has soared in recent years, while the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

"There is a high level of unemployment and less engagement of the people [in the job market]," says Saibu.

"And when people are not engaged, they earn so little which in turn makes them fall below the poverty line," he adds.

According to a 2018 African Development Bank report, "nearly 80 percent of Nigeria's 190 million people live on less than $2 a day".

February elections

With Nigeria now stepping up preparations to hold a crucial presidential election, scheduled to be held in February 2019, the issue of the economy is expected to dominate public debate in the months leading up to the vote.

The race will see a record 79 candidates vying for the country's top seat, with incumbent Muhammadu Buhari, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ex-World Bank Vice President Oby Ezekwesili seen as the main contenders.

"The most germane issue is the capacity of any candidate to ameliorate the economic situation," says Uche Ezechukwu, a Nigerian political analyst.

Another major concern for voters is corruption, an issue that has long plagued Nigeria due to public officials feasting on funds generated from crude oil exports.

Last year, Nigeria ranked 148th out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corruption index.

The country produces more than two million oil barrels per day and holds one of the world's largest gas reserves, but can barely produce electricity to power many of its households and factories.

The shortage is also pushing the price of goods up, as they are mostly produced by manufacturing firms running on costly diesel-powered generators.

"My salary is never enough for me," says Esan Monday, a 25 year-old who has lived in the "Monkey village" slum for 22 years.

He has no formal education and currently works in a bakery.

"I work so hard and am paid very little money, which I try to save up a bit to be able to buy some personal belongings," Monday told Al Jazeera.

After decades of high-level corruption and a lack of basic services, Monday says he expects little to change following the upcoming elections.

"The politicians have failed us," he says.

"I feel like all those elected into office only care about themselves. They only want our votes and don't provide us with the basic needs we demand for."

Al Jazeera