Alms for arms

In the rush to declare Isis dead now that its caliphate has been routed from Iraq and Syria, it’s easy to forget that its Nigerian fellow traveller, Boko Haram, is still going strong. April’s five-year anniversary of the Chibok schoolgirls’ kidnapping, for example, passed with barely a celebrity tweet to mark it, despite the fact that 112 of the girls are still missing. Nor is much fuss likely to be made next month, when an insurgency that has killed nearly 30,000 will enter its second decade as violent as ever.

Out of sight and out of mind, Boko Haram’s power is growing. And to find out why, all you have to do is follow the children who beg on the streets of Nigeria’s northern cities.

Any visitor to Maiduguri, for instance, will soon find themselves surrounded by pitifully young kids tugging at their sleeve, begging for money. Cross a dusty palm with a 50 naira note (about 10p), and they’ll usually go away. The liberal guilt trip, though, should stay with you. Because in paying up, you’ve also just indirectly subsidised Boko Haram.

The street kids haven’t been sent out by some desperate parent whose poverty outweighs their scruples, or even some local Fagin gangmaster. Instead, the trail leads to the local madrassas, or Islamic boarding schools, of which there are scores in Maiduguri, and thousands across north Nigeria. Officially, these madrassas provide religious schooling for children whose parents either can’t afford western education or don’t want it. In practice, they function as Dickensian-style poorhouses, with conditions that even Mr Bumble, the poorhouse beadle in Oliver Twist, would baulk at.

Children as young as five can be left in a madrassa, but there’s often not even enough money for food. Begging, therefore, is as big a part of the timetable as rote-learning of the Quran, and children spend several hours on the streets each day.