The Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication and Social Media to the FCT Minister, Lere Olayinka, has reignited a conversation on social media regarding the causes of insecurity in Northern Nigeria.
In a post shared on X on Tuesday, Olayinka questioned the logic of low-income earners marrying multiple wives and fathering dozens of children they cannot afford to feed or educate, identifying unregulated polygamy and child abandonment as primary drivers of insecurity.
He wrote, “This is one problem the North must begin to solve now. There is no reason a man who cannot properly take care of one wife and two children should marry three wives and produce fifteen or seventeen children.
“Many of today’s terrorists and bandits were once innocent children roaming the streets, hungry, uneducated, and forgotten.”
Olayinka noted that the sight of children carrying plastic begging bowls on the major roads of Abuja is a warning sign of future catastrophe.
“Each time I see them on major roads in Abuja carrying a plastic bowl, my questions are always How did they get here? Who are their parents? What will these unaccounted children become in future?” He asked.
He also argued that while many are quick to blame the government for the country’s woes, the state cannot solve the crisis of a “gate-man earning N60k with 17 children.”
Olayinka wrote, “I am sure some people will still come here to blame the government. But what can the government do in the case of a gate-man earning say N60k per month, but has four wives and 17 children?”
“Abandoned children, like these ones, will certainly grow up angry, desperate and dangerous,” he warned.
PUNCH reported in 2021 that a former Catholic Archbishop of Abuja Diocese, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, had similarly blamed the worsening tempo of insecurity, especially in Northern Nigeria, on the Almajiri system, saying it had failed the region.
Onaiyekan reportedly expressed concern that young boys who had been abandoned by their parents have ended up as bandits and Boko Haram terrorists.
