01/09/2025
The story of insecurity in Nigeria cannot be told without looking at how some deliberate policies and cultural decisions in the far North shaped what is now the breeding ground of terrorism. For a long time, certain ethnic groups in Northern Nigeria built an agenda that was not hidden. It was an agenda that sought to deny Hausa children the tools of modern survival. It was an agenda that insisted that Western education was forbidden and that only a narrow religious form of schooling was acceptable. It was an agenda that turned thousands of innocent children into beggars on the street, with no skill, no trade, and no opportunity for a better life. These children, who should have been the pride of their communities, became instead an army of street urchins. With time, these same children became the pool from which extremist groups would later recruit without stress.