At dawn in a dusty settlement outside Zurmi, Zamfara State, 13-year-old Mubarak quietly ties his younger brother’s worn slippers. His movements are careful, his ears alert to distant motorcycle sounds.
Since bandits attacked his village one August night and abducted his two older brothers, fear has lived with him daily. Neither boy has returned.
“My mother still sets plates for them,” Mubarak says softly. “She believes they will come back.”
Across Northern Nigeria, stories like Mubarak’s are becoming common. From Zamfara to Katsina, Borno to Kaduna, Kano to Niger, the male child is facing a deep and largely ignored crisis. While the nation rightly campaigns for the protection of the girl-child, a quieter tragedy is unfolding: boys are being killed, abducted, recruited, addicted, displaced, and emotionally abandoned at alarming rates.
In many North-West communities, teenage boys are now prime targets during attacks. Women are often abducted for ransom, but boys are seized for war. Entire age groups have vanished from villages in Zurmi, Shinkafi, Faskari and Batsari. Some are dead. Others are trapped in forests with armed groups. Many have fled to cities, drifting into child labour, crime or drugs.
In Katsina’s Kankara area, 15-year-old Surajo lost his father during a bandit attack. Overnight, he became the “man of the house” without the strength, safety or support to survive that role.
“I am the first son now,” he says. “But I am small.”
In Borno State, the crisis wears the face of insurgency. Boys abducted by Boko Haram were forced to carry weapons before learning how to read. Many were drugged, beaten and indoctrinated. When rescued, they returned to communities that viewed them with fear rather than compassion.
As one social worker put it, “We saved their bodies, but we are still trying to save their souls.”
Kaduna presents another layer of danger. In areas like Birnin Gwari and Rigasa, boys are caught between bandits in rural communities and drugs in urban centres. Many end up in gangs, political thuggery, or street violence. Police confirm that juvenile cells are overcrowded with boys as young as ten, arrested for drugs, theft and violence.
In Kano, drug abuse among male children has reached frightening levels. In slum areas, boys inhale toxic substances or drink codeine-laced mixtures just to numb hunger and fear. Drug counsellors warn that many teenage boys are already addicted, damaged physically and mentally before adulthood.
The Almajiri system, once rooted in religious learning, has collapsed into a humanitarian disaster. Thousands of boys roam the streets hungry, unsupervised and invisible. With no protection or structure, many fall into crime, trafficking, extremist recruitment or hard labour.
School dropout rates among boys continue to rise, driven by insecurity and poverty. Once out of school, many never return. Instead, they drift into survival work that exposes them to violence, drugs and exploitation. Poverty tightens its grip early, leaving boys with few safe choices.
Politics further exploits this vulnerability. Underage boys are recruited as thugs during elections, armed with drugs and weapons, then abandoned once votes are counted. Many are left with criminal records, injuries or addictions that follow them for life.
Communities are already feeling the impact. Elders speak of collapsing family structures, rising divorce rates, unsafe livelihoods and growing numbers of broken homes. Sociologists warn that millions of traumatised, poorly educated boys are growing into adulthood without the skills or stability needed to sustain society.
As one grieving mother in Kaduna said after her 15-year-old son disappeared, “When a girl goes missing, people search. When a boy goes missing, they say he is stubborn. But he is a child.”
The disappearance of the northern male child is not just a social tragedy. It is a threat to the future workforce, family systems and long-term stability of Northern Nigeria.
Without urgent action, an entire generation of boys may be lost before they ever become men.
