The Vanishing Sons Of Northern Nigeria
By AMINA USMAN ABDULRAHMAN
Morning in a War Zone Childhood
AT dawn in the outskirts of Zurmi, Zamfara State, 13-year-old Mubarak performs duties far heavier than his age. He ties his younger brother’s worn slippers, scanning the horizon for danger. The low hum of a motorcycle still freezes him in place—a sound etched into memory since bandits raided his village and took his older brothers into the forest. They never returned.
His mother still sets plates for them.
In much of northern Nigeria, this ritual of hope is quietly repeated in homes where sons have vanished—not into adulthood, but into violence, displacement, addiction, or death.
A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
Public discourse in Nigeria has rightly focused on protecting the girl-child. Yet beneath that progress lies a parallel collapse: the systematic erosion of the boy-child, especially in conflict-affected northern states.
From Zamfara to Katsina, from Borno to Kaduna and Kano, boys are disproportionately targeted by armed groups, abandoned by failing social systems, and ignored by policy frameworks that assume male resilience is automatic.
They are not resilient. They are vulnerable—and they are disappearing.
Banditry and the Militarisation of Boyhood
In North-West states like Zamfara, Katsina, and Kaduna, banditry has transformed adolescence into a recruitment window. Armed groups do not merely abduct boys for ransom; they absorb them as fighters, porters, informants, and human shields.
Entire age groups have thinned out in rural villages. Elders speak of empty compounds and abandoned classrooms. Boys who should be preparing for exams are instead carrying rifles in forests they may never leave.
Violence has redefined masculinity—strength is now measured by survival, not schooling.
Borno’s Lost Childhoods
In the North-East, insurgency has rewritten childhood entirely. Thousands of boys were inducted into Boko Haram before they learned basic literacy. For them, war replaced parenting, weapons replaced education, and indoctrination replaced identity.
Reintegration is often harsher than captivity. Rescued boys return to communities that fear them. Suspicion replaces sympathy, pushing many back toward the groups that once abducted them.
As one social worker in Maiduguri observed: “We rescued their bodies, but society has not rescued their futures.”
Drugs, Gangs, and Urban Abandonment
In Kaduna and Kano, insecurity intersects with drugs and street violence. Boys fleeing rural danger land in urban slums where tramadol, codeine, inhalants, and meth provide both escape and entry into criminal networks.
Drug counsellors report boys as young as seven experimenting with substances. Police stations overflow with juveniles arrested for crimes rooted in addiction and survival.
Urban life has not saved these boys; it has merely changed the battlefield.
The Almajiri System: From Education to Exposure
Once a respected form of Islamic learning, the Almajiri system has collapsed into a pipeline of neglect. Tens of thousands of boys roam northern cities hungry, unsupervised, and unprotected.
Without reform, they become easy prey for traffickers, extremists, and criminal gangs. Their visibility has normalised their suffering, making neglect socially acceptable.
A Demographic Emergency
School dropout rates among boys in parts of Zamfara, Katsina, and Kaduna exceed 60%. In Borno, thousands are classified as “formerly associated with armed groups.” In Kano, male teenagers dominate drug arrest statistics.
These are not isolated statistics. Together, they form a warning: a generation of men may never fully emerge.
The Cost of Silence
Broken boys grow into broken men—men unable to sustain families, contribute productively, or heal from trauma. The long-term effects include rising crime, weakened economies, social fragmentation, and perpetual insecurity.
Northern Nigeria is not just losing boys; it is losing its future workforce, fathers, and stabilising figures.
An Urgent Reckoning
Protecting the girl-child and saving the boy-child are not competing goals. They are inseparable. Without urgent, targeted intervention—education reform, trauma rehabilitation, drug control, security, and economic inclusion—the crisis will deepen.
A nation cannot afford to abandon half its children.
