Child Soldiers and Continuing Boko Haram Terrorism in Nigeria
Samuel Enyi Otsapa
Samuelotsapa@gmail.com
08038127832(SMS only)
According to the Global Terrorist Index, the Boko Haram sect was at one time the deadliest terror group in the world. The group started sometime in 2002 but became violent in July 2009 and in the eleven years it has existed, the sect has consistently disturbed the peace of the country, particularly in the northeast geopolitical region and specifically in Borno State. From several empirical reports, Boko Haram has so far killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 2.3 million and destroyed property worth billions of naira. Although the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan confronted the group including using a private jet full of money to buy arms from the black market in South Africa, that government failed to achieve any remarkable success. Enter General Muhammadu Buhari who won the 2015 presidential election and promised to end the group’s attacks within six months. It is August 2020 yet the terrorists are still here with us causing bloodshed, havoc and miseries.
Unlike in the past when Boko Haram targeted civilians, worship centers (both churches and mosques), hotels, bars, government offices and buildings, the sect’s recent targets have been Nigerian soldiers, military camps and barracks in the northeast. In January 2020, 19 soldiers were killed by Boko Haram in an ambush along the volatile Maiduguri – Damboa road in Borno State. In its many attacks, several reports including from the military authorities have disclosed that Boko Haram is consistent with using child soldiers thus alluding to the suspicion the sect’s suicide bombers are children who were abducted and kidnapped from their villages and schools by the sect. This perspective makes sense when we remember that in 2014, 276 schoolgirls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State while in February 2018, 110 schoolgirls aged 11-19 years were kidnapped from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College (GGSTC) in Dapchi, Yunusari Local Government Area of Yobe State. Although some of these girls have regained their freedom through negotiations between the federal government and the terrorists, many of them are still in captivity. From observation, Boko Haram suicide bombers are usually children, especially girls. It is because of this that it becomes important to discuss the growing phenomenon of child soldiers fighting for Boko Haram and the impact it has on continuing terrorism in Nigeria.
While there is no generally acceptable definition of who a child is, international law defines a child as a person who is under the age of 18 years and this would be our operational definition in this article. On who a child soldier is, the UNICEF in 1997, defined a child soldier as: “any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force in any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers, and those accompanying such groups, other than purely as family members. Girls recruited for sexual purposes and forced marriages are also included in this definition. It does not therefore only refer to a child who is carrying or has carried arms.” From this definition, we understand that a child soldier is not necessarily that boy or girl under the age of 18 years who carries arms and goes into military battle/combat. Children who are engaged as camp porters, messengers, intelligence gatherers (spies), distracters on the front-line, sex ‘slaves’, etc. are also child soldiers. We then understands that while the term ‘child soldier’ readily draws up the image of a boy carrying a rifle, there are also child soldiers who are girls, with some countries having up to 40 per cent girls as young as 7 or 8 years old in their armies. Countries such as East Timor, Pakistan, Uganda, the Philippines, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sri Lanka are known to have a sizable number of girl child soldiers in their ranks.
Although discussions about child soldiering is a recent concern, the use of children in warfare is not recent and current estimates show that there are more than 300,000 child soldiers engaged in soldiering activities around the world. The American Civil War was described as “a boys’ war” because an estimated 250,000 – 420,000 teenage boys served in the Union and Confederate armies. During the 1998 to 2004 conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a war that has been described as the deadliest war since the end of the Second World War and the worst in Africa, there were up to 12,500 girls in armed groups. In a recent report released by Safe the Children Programme in West Africa, 32 per cent of all girls in an armed group were raped, 38 per cent were infected with sexually transmitted infections and 66 per cent were impregnated – painting the sad and unfortunate circumstances these young girls suffer. At this juncture, it is important to note that most child soldiers are forcefully recruited and this practice is most common with both state and non-state (terrorist, guerilla, militant) armies.
Unarguably, the recruitment and use of child soldiers by Boko Haram have grave consequences on Nigeria’s fight against the sect’s continuing terrorism and insurgency in the country. A UNICEF report titled Beyond Chibok released on 12thApril 2017 disclosed that an estimated 2000 child soldiers have been recruited and used in combat by Boko Haram since 2016. The report also disclosed that in the first three months of 2017, 27 children were used by Boko Haram to carry out suicide attacks while in the first quarter of 2016, 9 children were used for bombings by the terrorist group. UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa; Marie-Pierre Poirier explained it thus: “In the first three months of this year, the number of children used in bomb attacks is nearly the same as the whole of last year – this is the worst possible use of children in conflict”. That same report by the UNICEF also revealed that since 2014, the Boko Haram sect have used children to carry out 117 bomb attacks in public places across Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon: four in 2014, 56 in 2015, 30 in 2016 and 27 in the first quarter of 2017. According to that report, majority of the child suicide bombers are girls – giving credence to the school of thought that many of the abducted April 2014 Chibok school girls, the February 2018 Dapchi school girls and other girls and boys abducted and kidnapped from their schools and villages are those been used as suicide bombers by Boko Haram – after they have been indoctrinated and/or hypnotized.
Nigerian soldiers prosecuting the war in the northeast are regularly killed by these child soldiers because soldiers do not receive training on how to confront children in the battlefield. Counter terrorism training rarely make provisions for how soldiers are expected to tackle child soldiers who terrorists often use as bombers or body shields. Some years ago in Sierra Leone, a group of child soldiers known as West Side Boys took hostage a squad of Royal Irish Regiment soldiers who were in the country on peace keeping mission after the regiment commander refused to fire on the children even though all of them were armed with AK 47s. In contemporary guerrilla and asymmetrical warfare, non-state armed group like the Boko Haram prefer using children in their front-lines because children are seen as innocent beings and so they draw less suspicion. This is why many of the successful and unsuccessful suicide attacks around the world were carried out by children.
In July 2019, two girls and a boy carried out a suicide attack on a video hall in a village in Konduga local government area of Borno State. In this particular attack, 30 people were killed and 40 were injured. In January 2020, a 12 year old girl walked up to where a group of boys were standing after ending their school lessons and detonated a bomb that killed three of the boys and injured four others. This happened in the Muna Dalti area of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. In 2018, and according to the UNICEF, 48 children were used as human bombs in Nigeria, and of this figure, 38 were girls. Thus, we see that female children are mostly used for suicide bombing more than their male counterparts and this may be because boys are used to fight in actual battles. The logic of using child soldiers by Boko Haram is because children are generally more obedient and are easier to control, deceive and indoctrinate. Specifically, Boko Haram turned to using children in its attacks because adults began refusing to join its ranks and those who were already members had fled when they had the opportunity.
To match the antics of Boko Haram, it is important that the Nigerian military re-strategize its operations into a proactive approach that counters attacks by Boko Haram for the purpose of abducting children. This is important if Nigeria must win the war against the sect – because with more child soldiers, the task of engaging the terrorists with a blitzkrieg while avoiding child casualties would remain a herculean task. To achieve this, the Nigerian military should provide adequate protection for schools in the region because schools are the first port of call when Boko Haram wants to abduct/kidnap children. The rising levels of poverty and unemployment in Nigeria, particularly in the northwest and northeast regions of the country, is one of the causes of the Boko Haram terrorism in the country. When youths and parents are poor and unemployed, society’s children – who are dependents – cannot be taken care of thus frustration, despondency and anger that leads to aggression against the state who they perceive as responsible for their plights and woes. Several reports, local and international, have highlighted the impact of the lack of food, clothes and shelter; which are basic necessities and the right of every child, as influencing adults and children into joining the Boko Haram sect as the sect provides them with food, shelter and clothes. When people have gainful jobs, poverty is reduced and then they can take care of their children who would see no need to aspire to join any armed group promising them these things. This is the reason why Nigeria must ban the almajiri education system in the north. The ranks of Boko Haram will continue to swell with child soldiers until the Nigerian government through the National Orientation Agency (NOA), The Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, NGOs and well-meaning Nigerians take it upon themselves to identify children vulnerable to being recruited into the sect and catch them young before Boko Haram does. To achieve this, there must be massive re-orientation campaigns to educate children about the personal and national dangers from becoming terrorists.
