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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The Federal Government has moved to strengthen mental health and psychosocial support for children in conflict-affected communities following research showing that 41.5 per cent of children exposed to the Boko Haram insurgency in Chibok met the clinical threshold for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Bernard Doro, said the scale of psychological distress among children exposed to conflict demanded a coordinated national response that went beyond providing food, shelter and other immediate physical needs.
“A child who has been fed but not healed in mind has not truly been rescued,” the minister said.
Doro spoke at the National Policy Dialogue on the Psychosocial Impact of Conflicts on Children in Nigeria, held at the University of Maiduguri, Borno State.
In a statement yesterday by his Senior Technical Adviser on Information Systems and Data Analysis, Dr. Abimbola Fasanu, the minister said psychosocial wellbeing must be treated as a central component of humanitarian intervention rather than an afterthought.
“Our Ministry treats psychosocial wellbeing as central to humanitarian response, not a side issue, connected, through our Humanitarian-Development-Peace approach, to protection, education, nutrition and household stability,” he said.
Speaking on the state of children’s mental health in conflict-affected regions, Doro cited research findings indicating the extent of psychological trauma among children exposed to violence and displacement.
According to him, a field study among children in Chibok found that 41.5 per cent of those exposed to the Boko Haram insurgency met the clinical threshold for PTSD.
He said another national study of displaced Nigerian children reported PTSD prevalence of 79.7 per cent, depression at 84.8 per cent and functional impairment at 90.7 per cent.
A continent-wide analysis, he added, put PTSD among conflict-exposed African children at approximately 36 per cent.
“This is a documented, measurable pattern, not an isolated tragedy,” Doro said.
He said behind the statistics were children struggling with anxiety, anger, fear and persistent hyper-vigilance, particularly in Borno and other communities that have endured prolonged conflict.
The minister said the situation had reinforced the need for the Federal Government’s One Humanitarian, One Poverty Response System (OHOPRS), designed to improve coordination among humanitarian response, social protection and poverty reduction programmes.
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“This is why we are building One Humanitarian, One Poverty Response System, so a distressed child identified in a Maiduguri school is not lost in a system that does not talk to itself,” he said.
Doro announced four areas in which the government would strengthen its response.
He said the ministry would collaborate with the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Health and the health sector to strengthen community referral pathways so that children showing signs of psychological distress in schools, camps and communities could be connected to appropriate care.
The government would also use OHOPRS and the National Social Registry to improve identification of trauma exposure alongside economic vulnerability.
Doro said frontline humanitarian workers and teachers would be trained to recognise signs of psychological distress among children and respond appropriately.
“A child spends more hours with a teacher than a therapist,” he said.
The minister said the government would also work with relevant institutions to build a coordinated national response and translate recommendations from the policy dialogue into concrete measures for children in conflict-affected communities.
He warned that failure to address childhood trauma could have consequences stretching far beyond the immediate humanitarian crisis, affecting education, healthcare, social stability and national security.
“Untreated trauma in a generation of children is a cost that returns to our schools, our clinics and our security for decades.
“Every naira spent healing a child’s mind today is one we will not spend containing that wound twenty years from now.”
Doro urged policymakers and humanitarian organisations not to lose sight of the children represented by the statistics.
“Behind forty-one per cent, seventy-nine per cent, ninety per cent, is a specific child with a name, waiting to see if we mean what we say.
“Let this dialogue mark the point where we stopped naming this burden and started, deliberately, to lift it,” he said.
Doro thanked the Special Adviser to the President on Health, Salma Ibrahim Anas, for convening the dialogue and acknowledged the Office of the National Security Adviser, North East Development Commission, Borno State Government and University of Maiduguri for their roles in the initiative.
