By Emmanuel Onwubiko
There is a harmattan wind of poverty that has blown across Nigeria since May last year when the Nigerian government blew the whistle for the incessant hikes in the pump price of petroleum.
The government also allowed the free fall in the value of naira to foreign denominated currencies of the western world which reduces the naira to a worthless currency.
The devaluation of the naira has immediately led to the uncontrollable Costs of living crisis. The costs of living crisis is largely characterised by the instability in the cost of essential food items.
What all of these consequences of the economic policies of president Bola Tinubu’s government have done, is that the nation’s children have been left hungrier and beggarly even as many of these children have fallen into destitution and malnutrition.
The immediate consequences of these twin social evils of malnutrition and destitution are that child poverty ballooned out of control and thereafter unleashing a devastating high numbers of children whose parents couldn’t afford their organised schooling.
As a human rights practitioner, my belief is that a nation should be assessed successful or poor from the economic, academic and housing status of a majority of their children. However, it is truly shocking to know that the variables and economic statistics are not looking good for the majority of the Nigerian children especially in the year 2024.
On November 5th, 2024, it was estimated that an additional one million children in Nigeria will be suffering from acute malnutrition by April next year without urgent action as extreme flooding, escalating violence and rampant food shortages fuel a deepening hunger crisis, Save the Children said.
Analysis of new hunger data from Cadre Harmonisé—the leading regional authority on the severity of hunger crises in the Sahel and West Africa—showed that 5.4 million children are now at risk of facing acute malnutrition by next April, a 25% increase compared to the 4.4 this past April.
Among them, about 1.8 million could be experiencing Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) – the deadliest form of malnutrition that compromises children’s immune systems and turns otherwise treatable illnesses, such as diarrhea, potentially lethal. This represents an alarming 80% increase in SAM cases.
During this year’s lean season – the season between harvests – about 31.8 million people were estimated to be facing crisis or worse acute food insecurity. Next year it’s predicted that 33 million people in Nigeria will not know where their next meal will come from, including over 16 million children.
Hunger has risen sharply in Nigeria in recent years, up from about 7% of the population analysed by the UN in 2020 to 15% currently.
The situation is particularly dire in the northwest and northeast of the country, where ongoing conflict and insecurity are driving displacement and disrupting livelihoods.
With a population of about 230 million, Nigeria is highly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. Expanding desertification is consuming farmland and limiting communities’ ability to grow food.
This year the country has faced its worst floods in 30 years, killing over 300 people and forcing 1.2 million people from their homes. The above citations are from the United Nations.
There are yet another unfortunate statistics that show that more children cannot go to school due to expanding frontiers of poverty and hunger in Nigeria of the year 2024.
These sad statistics emerged on September 9th, 2024, when it was said that Nigeria’s education system faces an alarming crisis, with 10.2 million children of primary school age, and another 8.1 million of junior secondary school age out of school, and 74 percent of children aged 7–14 lacking basic reading and math skills.
This crisis is compounded by increasing attacks on schools, with 19 documented incidents in 2022 and 2023, leading to the closure of 113 schools in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states due to insecurity. These stark realities highlight the urgent need for combined action to protect education nationwide.
The report stated that on this day as aforementioned, leaders, educators, and advocates gathered in Abuja to discuss the implications of this on the education sector and its impact on learners while observing the International Day to Protect Education from Attack.
The event, organized by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) in collaboration with UNICEF, focused on raising awareness about the Minimum Standards for Safe Schools (MSSS) and discussing concrete steps to enhance school safety nationwide.
Dr. Yusuf Tanko Sununu, the now reassigned Honorable Minister of State for Education, emphasizes the need to utilize the National Policy on Safety, Security, and Violence-Free Schools (NPSSVFS) and the National Minimum Standards for Safe Schools for the operationalization of safe school policies, noting that these guidelines are essential for ensuring consistent safety standards across educational institutions, thereby reducing casualties during imminent attacks”.
The truth is that the more children that are out of school, the more these poor kids will flood onto the streets to beg for survival.
But government is very cruel and insensitive to the hunger, starvation and poverty situations of contemporary Nigerian children, going by the recently known development that the Minister of the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mr. Nyesom Wike disclosed that, the FCT Administration would float a new Security Scheme to flush beggars out of Abuja city.
Wike said the move was to rid the city of beggars, who have taken over major streets of the nation’s capital city.
“Stay in your state and beg. FCT cannot be the centre of beggars. It is the only city we have to showcase to the world. We will not allow it.”
The Minister, who noted that some people choose to beg, added that the FCT Administration would not allow that in the city.
“If you want to beg, go to the villages, but leave the city centre. The city must be clean, and we are ready for criminals,” he added.
Wike explained that this was part of measures to improve security in the FCT, adding that security agencies were doing their best to keep FCT residents safe.
Wike had on October 22 declared war against beggars, whom he said were defacing Abuja city and posing security risk.
The Minister had warned all beggars to leave the city or be flushed out.
Honestly, if you ask me, I would say this is not the best approach. The truth is that 75 percent of these Abuja street beggars are children and these are children who are truly very poor and their parents can’t afford to get them enrolled in schools as statistics have shown above. The truth is that Abuja is near most of these Northern states whereby there are more children in destitution and this accounts for their large presence in Abuja. But using the security forces to sweep them off the streets of Abuja does not create the solution to the expanding frontiers of poverty and deprivation suffered by a large percentage of children in Nigeria of all states and regions. The newly appointed minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has so much of work to do in all of the 36 states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory.
I’m certainly optimistic that the new minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Mr. Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda, knows very well that factually, children are most vulnerable to experiencing poverty because unlike adults, children cannot engage in income generating activities and they mostly depend on their parents/guardians for the basic necessities of life, as disclosed by the UNICEF.
In Nigeria, approximately 54% of the children are multidimensionally poor by facing at least three deprivations across seven dimensions of child rights, including nutrition, healthcare, education, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and information.
These numbers might just seem like figures to you. Still, to these children, it means malnourishment, susceptibility to diseases, being out-of-school, homelessness, being forced into child labour, sex trafficking and early child marriage, amongst many other vices.
What does poverty mean to Children?
Most times, when the word ‘poverty’ is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is lack of money, but for children, poverty isn’t just about having less/no money. It’s about facing challenges from the very beginning, it’s about missing out on the things they need to grow strong and healthy, it’s about being confused because they don’t have the answers, it’s about not dreaming big because opportunities seem so far off. It’s like starting a race from behind, but they haven’t even taken the first step yet, says UNICEF.
UNICEF then asked, did you know that worldwide, the poorest children are twice as likely to die in childhood than their wealthier peers? This means that these children living in poverty have reduced life expectancy, and most of them don’t even make it to adulthood.
It is said that children are the future, but if 1 in 7 children live in poverty, what future then is being spoken of?
(Toluwani Ajibare, Young Influencer, UNICEF Nigeria)
Another frightening statistic says that “Nominal earnings haven’t kept up with inflation, pushing another 10 miillion Nigerians into poverty in 2023, Based on World Bank projections, about 40.7 percent of Nigerians are estimated to live below the international poverty line by the end of 2024
( https://datacatalogfiles.worldbank.org).
This is a charge on government to take only economic steps that won’t endanger the Children. A nation whose children are too poor is not a respectable nation in the international community. The government must feed, educate, protect the Children first and foremost before launching into the campaign for Nigeria to become a member of the security council of the United Nations. A nation that can’t guarantee the security of her children, can’t certainly qualify for membership of the UN Security Council.
*Emmanuel Onwubiko is head of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA *
