By Abu Shekara
It’s late evening, just before magrib prayer. At a time like this all over Hausa land, kids out and about on open spaces would be told to get back in. The twilight, it’s believed, isn’t a safe period for children to be outside the walls of their homes.
For children, it’s supper and an early bed. Even if they won’t get up early in the morning for the western school, the farm or some other errand awaits.
For many kids these days, that routine is an unaffordable luxury. There are no adults to dote over their lives day after day, as bandits ravage their communities, turning hundreds of children into orphans and their mothers widows overnight.
They’re forced to flee their villages for the big towns, where their role has instantly changed. These children don’t find supper waiting for them anymore. They actually come home with it for what’s left of their families and that’s often well after late evening.
In Northern Nigeria, the sight of child beggars on the streets is bad enough. But now, thanks (but no thanks) to banditry, the worse spectre of girl child beggars is here.
They move in sets, obviously of remnants of what used to be families or households. And as some distinct group passes by, it’s composition strikes a code: it instantly reminds us of our own kids, jolting us to realise that they might as well, could’ve been our own.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, stands between us and a similar fate, except Divine will. It’s a feeling of helplessness. But putting ourselves in their place is the first step towards what we can do to help.
In a similar situation, what would be our families’ most urgent needs?
When we find the answer to that question, there are people hosting displaced people in our neighbourhoods. Let’s visit them.
• Shekara, a senior journalist wrote from Sokoto.