There is no eloquence left for this shame. Only rage. Cold, righteous rage. Nigeria, the self-proclaimed “Giant of Africa,” has become a tomb of innocence. A nation where childhood is buried beneath the rubble of government apathy, where futures are starved in daylight, and where the state – bloated with rhetoric and corruption – turns a blind eye while its children waste away in silence. UNICEF’s latest report is not a policy document. It is an obituary. An indictment. A wailing dirge for the 40% of children stunted beyond recovery. For the 18 million boys and girls thrown into the pit of illiteracy and neglect. For the newborns who die before they are named.
How does a government fail eight million babies a year? The Nigerian government has perfected the dark art of abandonment. It is not mere incompetence. It is cruelty draped in bureaucracy. It is criminal neglect codified into silence. In the face of record-breaking malnutrition, 1.3 million unvaccinated children, and entire regions stripped of safe water, the state continues to parade its political carnivals -obsessed with power while its youngest citizens rot.
What kind of leadership lets children die of diarrhea while debating the next round of luxury SUVs for lawmakers? What kind of president speaks of a digital future when 10 million primary school children can’t read a sentence? What kind of federal government watches, idle and numb, as nearly one million children suffer from acute malnutrition, with no food, no medicine, no chance?
This is a betrayal. This is state-sanctioned violence. And still, there are children being married off before they turn thirteen, girls bleeding out in childbirth, boys conscripted by warlords because school was never an option. These are not isolated tragedies – they are the architecture of abandonment. Nigeria is failing its children not by accident, but by design.
UNICEF, against all odds, treats the symptoms: therapeutic food, birth certificates, clean water. But these are triage measures in a hemorrhaging country. This cannot continue. To the Nigerian media: enough of the empty thrones and dancing politicians. Tell the stories of dying infants. Show the bloated bellies. Amplify the cries from IDP camps and broken schools. If the state will not be shamed, let it at least be seen.
To the government: this is your final warning. The legacy you are building is carved in the bones of children you refuse to protect. Your name will be remembered not for budgets or buildings, but for graves. Graves you dug with your silence. Our children are not statistics. They are human. Sacred. Full of brilliance and breath. And they are perishing. History will not forget. Neither will we.