YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE explores the fate of children under the eight years of President Buhari’s administration.
In the run up to the 2015 general elections, President Muhammadu Buhari, in his bid to become the 15th Commander in Chief of Nigeria’s armed forces and head of government, had during his campaigns, alongside his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), made several promises which constituted the APC Manifesto and was also part of other campaign documents and messages.
Part of the promises focused on youths and children and Buhari and his party specifically promised the establishment of a free-tuition and scholarship scheme for pupils who have shown exceptional aptitude in science subjects at O/Levels to study ICT-related courses in addition to free education and a better life through the ‘change’ mantra.
And the promise is not a one-time promise; he continued to reiterate his commitment to the cause of children every year that he spent in office. On May 26, 2016, he assured Nigerian children that his administration would sustain and strengthen ongoing actions to protect them more effectively from violence, child-labour, child-trafficking, forced marriages and other related offences in his Children’s Day message had further assured that the Federal Government will continue to do its best to prepare and equip Nigerian children in order to show the world that with its brilliant, resourceful and resilient people, Nigeria is a country of incredible potential and opportunity.
The President, who noted that children and youths have a significant role to play in ensuring the country’s democratic institutions of governance are continuously nurtured, improved and strengthened to underpin national development and prosperity had in 2018, also reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to the protection and overall welfare of children across the nation.
However, almost eight years on, there is no evidence that the Federal Government had fulfilled successfully any of its promises to children despite various campaigns and programmes as well as humongous amounts spent; there is no proof of scholarship scheme for primary school pupils anywhere in the country, security in schools is nothing to write home about especially in Northern Nigeria and the welfare of children still leaves a lot to be desired.
While it cannot be said that the Federal Government did not work towards its promises, the effectiveness of its programmes in touching lives is what few people can confidently attest to and this among many other reasons is the basis for the loss of credibility the outgoing government is shrouded in.
There is indeed a general belief that the situation of children in Nigeria is worse today than it was in 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office. Pundits especially pointed out the fact that aside the poor implementation of policies that affect children, the poor economic situation and harsh financial terrain that many parents now navigate has taken a huge toll on children under the outgoing administration.
In Buhari’s eight years,many issues that have cropped up and on virtually all issues, there seems to be few improvements and a lot of backward motion.
Malnutrition on the rise
One major issue that has raised concern is the increasing number of children affected by malnutrition under the Muhammadu Buhari administration. It is said that more Nigerian children are showing signs of malnutrition under the outgoing administration just as food prices soar and common staples go beyond the reach of the average Nigerian.
According to a report by a research and risk evaluation outfit, SBM Intelligence, the rate of malnutrition has increased among children in Nigeria since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 based on information and data gathered from different interview sessions conducted in 10 states across the country to examine how inflation has aggravated food scarcity in the country, especially among children.
The report reads in part: “Interviews were conducted in 10 states across the country (Abuja, Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Imo, Kogi, Lagos, Rivers and Sokoto) to examine if the present economic condition has affected the diet of children. That is to say, are children now seen with signs of malnutrition?
“Respondents in Sokoto confirmed that children are beginning to show signs of malnutrition in the region. One of the respondents had this to say: ‘The average Northerner does not care so much about the food he eats or whether the food is a balanced diet. They just make sure there is something in their stomach. They do not care if the food given to the children is balanced as well. The recent economic situation, especially the increase in prices of foodstuff has made the situation worse. So I will say yes, more children are now showing signs of malnourishment. They look pale when they come to school,” the report said.
SBM is not the only agency that talked about malnutrition in Nigeria; in December 2022, the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) raised the alarm that over 245,300 children who are under five years in Katsina State, North West of Nigeria, which incidentally is the home state of President Muhammadu Bujhari, who has been in the saddle since May 2015, are suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and need immediate treatment.
The UNICEF Chief of the Kano Field Office, Rahama Mohammed-Farah, disclosed this at a meeting for the Review and Dissemination of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) in Katsina, lamenting the worsening nutritional situation of children aged 6-59 months in the state, while adding that SAM cases on admission, has increased in average of about 2,000 cases of admission in a month.
She lamented that Nigeria has the second-highest number of stunted children in the world that may never be able to have an optimally productive adult life while speaking at a virtual conference by the Aisha Buhari Foundation, in collaboration with the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH).
She noted that despite efforts being made by the government to tackle the scourge of malnutrition, Nigeria still records millions of children suffering from one form of malnutrition or the other while some even die from the most severe form of malnutrition.
“Looking beyond the figures, you will see actual children who are practically unsure of their next breath. Yet we all live in the community with them, as parents, neighbours, community leaders, business owners, civil society groups and government. Although we do not physically isolate these children, we isolate them emotionally each time we have a chance to take any decision in favour of them and fail to do so,” she stated.
Child Rights Act
The Child rights Act, a law that was specifically put in place to address prevalent issues of child abuse, child labour, assault and forced marriage among other unbecoming conditions that children encounter in Nigeria, is one development where the outgoing government can be rated high, not only because it made efforts to ensure it is domesticated but also because the government advocated and sensitised states on the need for the law to be implemented effectively to protect children.
Under the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration, the Child rights Act was domesticated by 34 out of the 36 states of the federation and is being implemented to curb abuse of children.
This is a great achievement as the law made provisions that went against the traditional belief about children having rights and had great opposition due to ingrained cultural beliefs and traditional as well as religious expectations on relationship between children and their parents or guardians.
Indeed, in May, 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari made a case for the implementation of the law when he urged state governments to domesticate and effectively implement the Child Rights Act 2003 (CRA) and the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) to protect the rights of children in reaction to what he termed increasing cases of violence, child marriage, rape, kidnapping and other challenges affecting children.
He said there was need for stakeholders to support government to end harmful practices, provide safe spaces and strengthen mechanisms for the protection of children and prosecution of perpetrators.
“I assure you that the government is doing all it can to ensure that these things are curtailed to the barest minimum,” President Buhari said, reiterating his administration’s commitment toward protecting the lives of citizens, review policies that would protect children and usher in more development in the country.
As at today, the remaining two states left out are said to have given assurances that that the Act will be domesticated in their states too soon.
Abduction of students
One of the promises made was that the Buhari led government would urgently secure the territorial integrity of the nation and never leave the defense of the nation in the hands of hunters, children, and civilian JTF while stamping out the dreaded Boko Haram in the Northeast within a timeframe and end insurgency within 100 days in office, a promise that has proved to be a tall dream.
Not only was Boko Haram not defeated till now, though the sect has been significantly decimated, government is still battling other groups such as bandits and armed herdsmen among others.
Also, abduction of school children became a regular occurrence. In April 2022, UNICEF stated that since December 2020, 1,436 school children and 17 teachers have been abducted from schools, 16 school children lost their lives and 11, 536 schools were closed since December 2020 due to abductions and insecurity, reiterating the need for government to make schools safe and provide a secure learning environment for every child in the country, especially girls.
According to UNICEF, these school closures have impacted the education of approximately 1.3 million children in the 2020/21 academic year and contribute to gaps in children’s knowledge and skills and may lead to the loss of approximately 3.4 billion USD in these children’s lifetime earnings, leading to the likelihood of perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality.
Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, reiterated that “unsafe schools, occasioned by attacks on schools and abduction of students, are reprehensible, a brutal violation of the rights of the victims to education, and totally unacceptable. Their occurrences cut short the futures and dreams of the affected students.
“Attacks on learning institutions render the learning environment insecure and discourage parents and caregivers from sending their wards to schools, while the learners themselves become fearful of the legitimate pursuit of learning. The invisible harm school attacks inflict on the victims’ mental health is incalculable and irredeemable,” he added.
Speaking on mass school abductions, Hamzat Lawal, founder of Follow The Money, a social accountability initiative said, “Right now, Nigeria’s future is at stake, with children not safe even in their own schools and this is a big concern for us, the civil society organisations. The Buhari-led administration has failed. The best that the APC-led administration can offer is what we have. And I believe there is nothing more they can do.”
Today, more children out in the streets and according to The Africa Report, Save the Children, a global humanitarian organization, the mass abductions in Nigeria is “a grave violation of child rights. When will children stop being used as pawns in games played by adults?”
Out of school children
Across the world, children are entitled to free and quality basic education, yet the number of out-of-school children globally has reached an epidemic stage especially in sub-Saharan Africa with Nigeria, taking the lead.
Figures by the World Bank Nigeria, in 2020, had more than 11 million out-of-school children between the ages of 6 and 15, representing one in 12 of all out-of-school children globally and 22 per cent of all children in the age group in Nigeria.
Out-of-school children in Nigeria, according to the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), include girl-child in northern Nigeria, boy-child dropouts in the south-south and south-east regions, internally displaced children and the almajiri Qur’anic and itinerant children who are predominantly found in northern part of the country.
And while the Federal Government last year said it had committed N220 billion, a credit facility from the World Bank, to the Better Education Service Delivery for All (BEDSA) in 17 states of the federation with focus on increasing equitable access for out-of-school children, improve literacy and strengthen accountability at the basic education level, there has been no effect on the number of children who have no access to basic education despite BEDSA being in existence since 2018.
Despite these programmes and strategies deployed by the federal government to address the menace of out-of-school children, the number has continued to increase. In 2020, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, (UNESCO), raised the alarm as the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria hit 20 million from the 12.3 million recorded in 2021.
School feeding programme
When the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government launched the school feeding programme, National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), to address the growing number of out-of-school children, tackle malnutrition due to poverty among Nigerian children and their attendant consequences on education, especially poor school enrolment and retention of pupils at primary school level in 2016, it was with great hopes and expectations.
The NHGSFP has the core objectives of increasing school enrolments, participation and completion, improvement of nutritional status of beneficiaries and stimulation of the local economy through the school feeding value chain, with over 127,000 cooks currently engaged in the programme, along with 100 aggregators mopping up protein items.
And when in 2019, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was created with Sadiya Umar Farouq as minister, some programmes, including the NHGSFP were transferred to the ministry with the hope that will be implemented more effectively. However, this is not the case, stakeholders have continued to lament that the scheme has failed to achieve its set objectives, especially with the high rate of out-of-school children in the country and complaints from both pupils and contractors handling it.
Under the school feeding programme, children are to be fed daily with nutritional foods, to tackle the challenges of malnutrition and Farouq had claimed that over 10 million pupils are benefiting from the one free nutritious meal a day during the school term in over 53,000 schools and she had a mandate to reach an additional five million pupils by 2023, with over 100,000 cooks employed and more than 100,000 smallholder farmers participating in the value chain.
Indeed, the National Coordinator of NSIP, Dr Umar Bindir, said the ministry spends N12billion monthly on feeding school pupils. But it had been complaints galore across the states, the school feeding programme experienced challenges across the states, leading to halting the programme in some states while people raised issues with the money being spent and the few number of pupils that are beneficiaries.
The programme is still struggling to meet government expectations because of poorly executed plans.
Nigerian Children traumatised
In October 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari seemed to agree that there were issues when he revealed that the persistent attacks on educational facilities and abductions of students and teachers have left more than 12 million children traumatised and afraid of going to school especially the girl-child.
He, however, reiterated the commitment of his administration to the safety and protection of schools in the country, vowing to overhaul the educational system not just to improve on the quality but ensure the provision of a secured environment for learners and teachers.
He lamented that in recent times, all over the world, there has been a myriad of persistent attacks on education and Nigeria is also having its own fair share of these attacks.
“The incessant attacks on the country’s education system such as kidnapping, abduction of pupils/students, increased activities of insurgents and general insecurity in our schools have exacerbated many factors responsible for the growing number of out-of-school children.
“It is no longer news that at will, bandits, kidnappers and terrorists invade our educational facilities to abduct the learners in large numbers. Some places that have been hit by this menace include Chibok, Dapchi, Buni Yadi, Afaka, Kagora, and Jangebe in Borno, Yobe, Kaduna, Niger and Zamfara states respectively,” he said.
He added that it was disheartening to note that even when the abducted students were released, the trauma of the incident remain long in their minds hence the plan to have teachers trained on psychosocial support.
Not surprising
Many have however said it is not surprising that most of the promises couldn’t be fulfilled, adding that the situation in the country as at 2015 is not similar to what Buhari had in 1983 and democracy is different from military and Buhari cannot take some decisions by fiat.
Early in the life of the outgoing government, indeed, few days to the first year anniversary of the Buhari presidency, former president, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), had stated that with the no-clear economic policy of the government, Nigeria is no more in recession but in depression.
“We are no more in recession; we are now in depression because five consecutive quarterly growths which Q1 2016 shows a negative balance is a depression. Technically speaking, you calculate growth rate by GDP over population, goods and service produced over population. Do you know the current growth rate for the Q1? According to the National Bureau of Statistics, is 0.34. The last growth rate was 2, so we lost 2,” he said.
On way forward, he said: “We need to rebalance the federation. We need to include all Nigerians. So, I think that the president’s appraisal in handling political stability in the country has been rather weak. Going forward, he needs to address how to make Nigeria a place, where everybody participates.”
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