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A PhD researcher at Louisiana State University in the United States, Dr. Tajudeen Salaudeen, has said Nigeria can no longer afford to ignore the ticking time bomb of out-of-school children and street kids wandering around cities, small towns and villages.
An expert in Childhood Studies, Francophone, and Postcolonial Studies, Salaudeen has dedicated his academic career to studying how African literature and social narratives depict children, particularly those living in the margins.
In 2024, he received a scholarship that allowed him to travel across Nigeria and Benin Republic to experience, firsthand, the world of street children. What he discovered, he said, was both heartbreaking and deeply revealing.
“Street children are not born on the streets,” Salaudeen said during one of his field interviews. “They are pushed there by forces beyond their control—poverty, family breakdown, displacement, neglect and, sometimes, violence. What worries me most is how society has normalised their suffering.
“We walk past them every day, as though they are invisible, as though this is acceptable. But it isn’t.”
According to UNICEF, Nigeria currently has an estimated 18.3 million out-of-school children—the highest number anywhere in the world. Many of them drift into city streets, scavenging for food, selling petty items, or begging to survive. Over time, they become part of the city’s landscape, noticed only when they obstruct traffic or commit minor offences.
For Salaudeen, the tragedy is not only in their struggle for survival but, also, in how society perceives them.
“Too often, people see these children as delinquents or public nuisances,” he explained. “That kind of labelling dehumanises them. It robs them of their innocence and reinforces exclusion. They are not criminals—they are victims of a failed system.”
Despite their harsh realities, Salaudeen observed moments of creativity and resilience among the children he studied. They communicate through coded street slang, paint graffiti that tells their stories, and sing songs that echo their pain and hopes. For him, these expressions are powerful acts of resistance, a declaration that, even in despair, the human spirit strives to be seen.
“But we must be careful,” he warned, “not to romanticise resilience. Their ability to survive hardship does not mean we should accept the conditions that make survival so difficult.”
He was able to show that the risks the children face daily are staggering. Many fall prey to child traffickers, sexual predators or are exploited in forced labour. Some are recruited by criminal gangs. With no access to education or social protection, they are trapped in a cycle of poverty that often extends into adulthood.
“Every child born on Nigerian soil should have the right to dignity, safety, and education,” Salaudeen emphasised. “When we fail to protect them, we are not only losing individual lives, we are destroying the foundation of our collective future.”
He stated that genuine change required more than acts of charity. Handing a street child a few naira notes may offer momentary relief, but it does not address the systemic failures that keep them there. For him, the path forward lies in comprehensive reforms, accessible education, affordable housing, mental health services, and family support systems that prevent children from ending up on the streets in the first place.
But, perhaps, most crucial, he insisted, is a shift in public perception. Nigerians, he said, must begin to see street children not as problems to be ignored, but as human beings deserving of empathy and opportunity. “A society that allows its children to grow up on the streets has abandoned its own future,” he declared. “Restoring the promise of childhood is not just about compassion, it’s about justice.”
If Nigeria continues to ignore its street children, Salaudeen warned, it would risk not only losing its future leaders, but, also, its humanity”.
