Pathways to Ending Nigeria’s Insecurity, Out-of-School Children Crisis

TDIn Nigeria, there are almost daily reports of schoolchildren’s abductions, banditry, gruesome murder of captives (including senior military officers serving and retired), and other forms of terror attacks. The persistence of this pathology should inspire a renewed search for solutions to the insecurity crisis.

The country faces a complex radicalisation and development challenge, with high birth and fertility rates, low birth registration rates, and a high number of out-of-school children, combining to reinforce one another in a toxic brew of escalating insecurity. These issues are deeply interconnected and have significant implications for the country’s future.

Insecurity and the statistics of victims, left in their wake, continue to grow in Nigeria with each passing day. Successive governments since the end of military rule have grappled unsuccessfully with the problem.

An underlying factor is the failure or unwillingness of governments to establish a credible framework for the proper documentation of citizens. The legal obligations of the Nigerian government in this respect are clear. Under the 1999 Constitution, Section 33(1) guarantees that ‘every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life….” Section 14(2)(b) further states: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”

The import of this constitutional provision is that everyone in the country should count and be counted. In reality, this does not count for much. The last time the country conducted a population census was in 2006, during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Twenty years on, Nigeria has struggled to count or account for its population with credibility or accuracy.

However, there is a window of opportunity to update existing demographic records through birth registration. The body responsible for this is the National Population Commission (NPC). Live birth is one of the components of vital demographics. It is essential for both national security and national planning. Stressing the importance of demographic data, President Obasanjo said in 2012 that if the results of the 2006 census had been  utilized, they would have contributed to national development.

A legal infrastructure for effective documentation of everyone in the country should be invaluable in fighting insecurity. Nigeria is about the only one among its neighbours without such a database.

Take Cameroon, for instance. Section 1(2) of the National Identity Card (NIC) Law No. 90-42, adopted on 19 December 1990, stipulates that “possession of National Identity Cards shall be compulsory throughout the country for all citizens aged eighteen or more.” The law makes birth registration mandatory and a precondition for possession of the NIC. It requires citizens to possess their NIC at all times, especially when moving from one place to another. Law enforcement agencies have the power to demand the production of the NIC, and it is an offence not to produce it when lawfully demanded.

Non-nationals in the country are similarly required to have identification documents on them at all times, especially during transit within the country. These legal requirements facilitate easy identification of both victims and suspects in most situations of serious crime, including terror attacks. By creating such an effective system of identification of perpetrators, the law sustains a strong disincentive against mass atrocity crime.

Registering and possessing a NIC may not prevent an individual from committing a crime, but registration and documentation of citizens can greatly help to account for each citizen and also provide a reliable lead for security agencies when serious crime occurs.

Highlighting the importance of birth registration, Target 9 of Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) demands legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030. One indicator of progress towards the realisation of this target is the proportion of children under age five whose births have been registered with a civil authority. UNICEF estimates that only about 43 per cent of under-fives are registered in Nigeria. This means that well over half of children under five in the country are not registered. It is easy to see, therefore, how these children can be out of school or lost to radicalisation.

One additional advantage of birth registration is that it minimises social exclusion by guaranteeing better access to basic social services. This, in turn, reduces large-scale impoverishment and improves national integration in one swoop.

The United Nations, in its report on Birth Registration and Armed Conflict in 2007, noted that the likelihood of a lack of birth registration during armed conflict would result in abuse of human rights. It went further to state: “It is imperative to recognise that a child’s right to birth registration is equally valid and applicable in times of war as in times of peace.”

In Nigeria, unfortunately, these benefits are not within reach. People move and travel freely without the compulsory possession of a means of identification. Due to porous borders, a citizen from another country may easily enter Nigeria, perpetrate atrocities and depart unnoticed. It is thus convenient for security and political authorities to claim that atrocities in Nigeria are perpetrated by foreigners, as if that excuses their failure to stop the crimes.

Registration of births helps to guarantee state recognition and legal identity. Anyone not legally registered by the appropriate authority does not exist, and the government is unable to plan for them. Imagine if the perpetrators of the crimes of terror and other atrocities around Nigeria were all documented at birth and in possession of proper identification (whether or not they are Nigerians)? It would have been easier to track or account for them.

If such persons had been enrolled in schools for the free, compulsory, and basic education as stipulated in the Universal Basic Education Commission Act 2004, some of them would have transitioned to the next level of learning, making them less likely to be unavailable as recruits for terrorism and other crimes. Those children absent from school could have been identified, tracked, and accounted for by a diligent government.

In this way, the absence of birth registration contributes to the number of out-of-school children. Former President Goodluck Jonathan deserves commendation for foreseeing a looming danger from an unaccounted and uneducated population and for building more than 100 Almajiri schools in northern Nigeria. Unfortunately, many of those schools have fallen into disuse today.

The number of out-of-school children in Nigeria is estimated at over 18 million, and over 80 per cent of the figure comes from the states and zones most intensely connected with terrorism and banditry in the North. The invisibility of a demographic that is unregistered and uneducated makes them a vulnerable pool, highly susceptible to recruitment into radicalisation.

Birth registration, education, and security should be treated as necessary components in the development of every child. No child should be invisible, and every Nigerian child deserves education and protection. To achieve this, first, the Federal Government could adopt an Integrated Identity, Education, and Security (IES) framework that recognises birth registration, school enrollment, and child protection as mutually reinforcing pillars of national security.

Second, the NPC must remove the prohibitive transaction cost that presently puts birth registration beyond the reach of most people. It can work with maternity units, worship, and faith communities to roll out effective partnerships for birth registration, especially in rural areas.

Third, the government at the federal and state levels must work together to reverse the retrenchment of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Act and ensure that children and their families do not face the fear and physical hazards of sending kids to school. By ensuring that every child is registered at birth and remains in school through at least the end of junior secondary school as required by the UBEC Act, the country can reduce the pool of vulnerable children susceptible to recruitment by terrorist and violent extremist groups.