Children killed / dying
0children a year.
850,000 children a year.
Nigeria's health minister says about 850,000 Nigerian children die each year from preventable causes. This is the background to every Children's Day speech.
Children’s Day · 27 May 2026 · Nigeria
They were children before they became evidence.
It’s Children’s Day. Around the world, children are with food, with friends, with families. In Nigeria, under the Tinubu administration, a Nigerian child is more likely hungry, or sitting on the floor of a dilapidated classroom, or at home with parents who can afford neither food nor school — while other Nigerian children are kidnapped for ransom.
63 verified items across six chapters. Each card cites its source.
What 2026 looks like, in numbers
Children killed / dying
Nigeria now sits at the center of child death.
UN mortality data puts Nigeria among the world's largest absolute child-death burdens. Use the official UN IGME figure, not a pneumonia-only source, when this becomes a public card.
Tinubu government decisions affecting children
A budget tells children where they stand.
Tinubu's 2026 budget leaves education at about 6.1% and health at about 4.3%, below international commitments. A budget is a government telling children where they stand.
Children abandoned / hungry
One in six children faced hunger.
Save the Children warned that 15.6 million Nigerian children faced hunger ahead of the 2024 lean season. That is not a weather event; it is the condition children were living inside.
Healthcare collapse
Stunting got worse.
NDHS data show child stunting worsened from 2018 to 2023-24, and under-five mortality remained high. Children's bodies are the long record.
Mortality
01Children Who Died Waiting For A Country
26 cards · sourced
3src Children killed / dying
0children a year.850,000 children a year.
Nigeria's health minister says about 850,000 Nigerian children die each year from preventable causes. This is the background to every Children's Day speech.
1src Children killed / dying
Nigeria now sits at the center of child death.UN mortality data puts Nigeria among the world's largest absolute child-death burdens. Use the official UN IGME figure, not a pneumonia-only source, when this becomes a public card.
6src Testimony · 2025
She said she watched five children die.
A survivor told U.S. lawmakers she watched five of her children killed in Yelwata. Keep her testimony attributed; the point is not spectacle, it is the record.
— Yelwata massacre, Benue State (night of 13–14 June 2025): 259 dead. Attackers locked people in shelters, butchered them with cutlasses and guns, then poured petrol on the buildings and set them ablaze.
3src Testimony · 2025
Taiwo was sitting beside his twin brother.
Taiwo Alade was 14. He was sitting in his father's car beside his twin brother when a police bullet killed him in Ibadan.
— Taiwo Alade, 14, schoolboy, killed by a police officer's stray bullet in Ibadan (20 May 2025). He was sitting in his father's car with his twin brother.
2src 27 MARCH
Bokkos
Whole families were killed in Bokkos.
"Many children and entire families brutally killed." Nearly 2,000 displaced. Amnesty supports the toll and references children/families. Do not invent a child-specific toll.
1src JUNE 2025
The market became a blast site.
First in region in 2025 after a series of 2024 bombings; resurgence of JAS faction.
1src 17 NOVEMBER 2025
Twenty-five schoolgirls were taken.
Maga, Kebbi (17 November 2025): 25 schoolgirls kidnapped from Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School; vice principal killed.
1src 18 JANUARY 2025
Dikko
Another fuel queue became a mass grave.
Tanker carried ~60,000 litres of petrol at Dikko junction.
1src Children sick — hospital and disease
Lassa fever kept killing.88% concentrated in Ondo/Bauchi/Edo/Taraba.
1src Children sick — hospital and disease
Measles nearly doubled.Outbreaks in 19 northern states including Kano and Sokoto.
1src Children sick — hospital and disease
2.1millionchildren had received no routine vaccines.2.1 million children had received no routine vaccines.
MSF treated 17,000+ measles cases in Nigeria in 2024 alone.
2src 18 DECEMBER 2024
Bashorun's Islamic High School
They came for food and ₦5,000.
At Ibadan, children came for free food and ₦5,000. Thirty-five children did not leave alive.
2src OCTOBER 2024
Fuel poverty turned children into casualties.
They had rushed to scoop spilled fuel — a practice driven by economic desperation after Tinubu's subsidy removal made petrol prices jump from ~₦175 to ₦1,000+ per litre.
3src 10 SEPTEMBER 2024
The flood closed schools for millions.
The Borno flood displaced hundreds of thousands and left millions of children without school access. This is a disaster story and an education story.
3src 12 JULY 2024
They were taking exams when the building fell.
154 initially trapped; 132 rescued injured.
2src JUNE 2024
A baby was strapped to the bomber's back.
A woman with a baby strapped to her back detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony.
1src 31 JULY 2024
A market bombing was part of the pattern.
Kauri marketplace, Konduga / Borno (31 July 2024): suicide bomb killed 19 people.
2src Children abused — daily reality
Violence was common before adulthood.90% of under-5s experience psychological aggression / physical punishment; 80% of 5–14 year olds endure physical punishment.
3src Healthcare collapse
Stunting got worse.NDHS data show child stunting worsened from 2018 to 2023-24, and under-five mortality remained high. Children's bodies are the long record.
1src The government chose
Newborns were detained over bills.
23-year-old mother in Abia held with baby for 4 months over ₦543,000 bill.
2src Tinubu government inauguration
The crisis began with the first speech.Promised better future; on day one announced fuel subsidy removal which triggered the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
2src Nearly one in three children were in child labour.Nigeria Child Labour Survey 2022 (NBS + ILO): 32% of Nigerian children engaged in child labour.
3src Lead poisoned children for years.The largest lead-poisoning outbreak in recorded history, caused by artisanal gold ore processing in homes.
3src Nigeria led the world in HIV-positive infants.9,000+ new pediatric HIV infections per year.
3src Child marriage leaves medical scars.— of 80 documented cases, 48 caused by labour, 12 by traditional "gishiri cutting." Connected directly to child marriage.
2src The global child-death slowdown leads back to Nigeria.Nigeria leads the region in absolute numbers.
Out of school
Chapter 02Children Outside The Classroom
9 cards · sourced
2src The government chose
A budget tells children where they stand.
Tinubu's 2026 budget leaves education at about 6.1% and health at about 4.3%, below international commitments. A budget is a government telling children where they stand.
2src The government chose
₦98 billion for schools sat unused.
Basic-education money was available, yet ₦98bn sat unused because states had not met counterpart-funding requirements. A country with millions out of school left school money on the table.
1src The government chose
Loans got funded. Out-of-school children did not.
despite 10M+ out-of-school children.
1src Almajiri / out-of-school
Kano's children were out of school in plain sight.Kano alone has 1.9 million out-of-school children — 39% of all children in the state.
1src Almajiri / out-of-school
10.2millionprimary-age children out of school.10.2 million primary-age children out of school.
Kano (~900,000), Katsina (300,000+), and Jigawa (330,000+) account for 16%.
2src Almajiri / out-of-school
18.3millionchildren and adolescents outside school.18.3 million children and adolescents outside school.
(10.2M primary, 8.1M secondary). Save the Children: 28 million Nigerian children and adolescents lack any formal or digital learning opportunity.
2src The government chose
Budgets did not match the promise.
2024 federal budget: 7.9% education, 5% health. Education + health + social protection combined: 15.7% of budget — a drop from 2021, below UNESCO and Nigeria's own targets.
3src The government chose
The government says 1.2 million Almajiri children were integrated.
Target is 10M by 2027. Only a few of Goodluck Jonathan's 100+ Almajiri schools still operating; rest abandoned.
1src The government chose
School funding required state cooperation.
Most states have refused — leaving ₦98bn dormant by 2026.
Budget / policy
CH · 03What The Government Chose
8 cards · sourced
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT · 2026 · TINUBU GOVERNMENT DECISIONS AFFECTING CHILDREN
DECIDED
Vaccines were budgeted. The money did not arrive.
2025 immunization budget: ₦230bn allocated, only ₦68bn released. ₦163bn gap. NPHCDA capital budget cut 33.8% in 2025.
1src Tinubu government decisions affecting children
Children were recruited into war.: 595 girls, 525 boys, mainly in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT · 2025 · TINUBU'S POLICY CHOICES
DECIDED
Children's Day chose bullying as the theme.
Not the 850,000 dying, not the 15.6 million hungry, not the 91 Chibok girls missing.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT · 2025 · TINUBU'S POLICY CHOICES
DECIDED
The jets were funded. Children's systems were not.
₦9.36bn budgeted for Tinubu/Shettima travel + refreshments in 2025.
3src Children's policy
Two in three children were multidimensionally poor.UNICEF and the federal government reported that two in three Nigerian children live in multidimensional poverty. This should anchor the whole page.
1src Children's policy
The promise met the record.Six months later: 35 children dead at Ibadan.
1src Children's policy
Lassa fever spread across states.Lassa fever 2024: 10,450 cases, 184 deaths in 28 states + FCT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT · 2024 · TINUBU POLICY ENVIRONMENT
DECIDED
Lassa fever is also a pregnancy and child risk.
---
Abductions
Chapter 04Children Who Did Not Come Home
9 cards · sourced
1src The government chose
Newborns were priced for sale.
Newborns being sold for ₦500,000–₦1,800,000.
1src The government chose
A clinic in darkness is not a clinic.
Photos: Kano's collapsing primary healthcare system — mothers deliver in darkness as clinics crumble. Useful healthcare-infrastructure context. Do not present it as a national statistical finding.
In memoriam · still unaccounted
After Chibok, the abductions did not stop.
— OHCHR overview of the post-2024 wave. ---
In memoriam · still unaccounted
91 girls are still not home.
More than ten years after Chibok, UN reporting says 91 girls remain missing or in captivity. The absence is still part of the Children's Day record.
1src The government chose
Fourteen children were sold, then returned.
Reunited with parents.
1src Children trafficked / abused
A secret centre, chains, and children.Victims found chained and beaten for days "to break their spirit." Some children taken to centres without parents' knowledge; forced to convert religion.
3src Children trafficked / abused
The street became a school system.Estimated 300,000–600,000 almajiri boys in Kano.
In memoriam · still unaccounted
Chibok's missing list changed, but did not close.
Updated to 91 by UN September 2025.
In memoriam · still unaccounted
Chibok is not history while girls are missing.
Chibok is not history while girls are still missing. The historical entry belongs near the 2025 UN update, not as nostalgia.
Hunger
05
Children Hungry In A Rich Country
8 cards · sourced
2src Children hungry / malnourished
In some communities, severe malnutrition neared half of children.Red Cross primary data (July 2025): 47–48% of children in Zango/Kankara (Katsina) and Wamako (Sokoto) have Severe Acute Malnutrition. 48.5% of children in Maradun (Zamfara) have moderate acute malnutrition.
2src Children hungry / malnourished
Children died after reaching care too late."Due to a lack of timely access to care."
1src Children hungry / malnourished
One million more children were expected to become acutely malnourished.Save the Children (2025): 1 million more children expected to suffer acute malnutrition in 2025.
5src Children jailed
Children were charged with treason.Children arrested after hunger protests were brought into court on treason charges; some collapsed before plea. The card should say what the state did, plainly.
1src Children abandoned / hungry
Children were being abandoned.— one of the highest months on record. Even married couples now abandoning children "driven by joblessness, hunger, and hopelessness."
1src Children abandoned / hungry
Children were searching for leftovers.(Vanguard reporting, Nov 2024).
2src Children abandoned / hungry
One in six children faced hunger.Save the Children warned that 15.6 million Nigerian children faced hunger ahead of the 2024 lean season. That is not a weather event; it is the condition children were living inside.
3src The government chose
School feeding was suspended.
Tinubu suspended the school-feeding programme during the NSIPA corruption probe. A necessary investigation still left children without a meal programme.
Collapse
Emergency · 06Children In A State Of Emergency
3 cards · sourced
1src Children abused — daily reality
Children were used by traffickers and armed groups.as cooks, spies, "morality police," human shields and suicide bombers in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger.
1src Conflict and displacement
More than two million people were displaced.Borno hosts 1.7M. 1.8M children at risk of SAM across 6 NE/NW states.
3src Conflict and displacement
Christmas left children orphaned.across 160+ villages; mostly women, children and the elderly.
What to do
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