Who will save the Nigerian boy-child?

TWO notable things happened during the 2026 induction ceremony of medical doctors and dentists at the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo City, Ondo State, on Wednesday, 21 October. The university orator, while recognising persons to deliver goodwill messages, called out the chairperson of the Women Medical and Dental Council, Ondo State wing. The woman in turn invited the newly inducted female doctors and dentists to the podium for a special photograph with the university management. At that point, more than 60 per cent of the inductees stepped forward, and people in the hall shouted, “Obinrin ni gbogbo won!” — Are they all women? The orator heard the comment but kept it to himself. When he next took the microphone, he told the gathering not to be surprised at the number of female inductees in the 2026 session, because the male/female ratio was still around 60/40. He added that the set the school had recently admitted had a 96 per cent female population. That is clear confirmation that women are taking over even those professions once thought the exclusive preserve of men.

The story, however, is not simply that females are advancing; the danger is that the number of boys is receding, at least in most of the southern and Middle Belt states of Nigeria. And the story is similar across professions. Check the Bar and the Bench, and you will not need to look far to see that women have largely taken over the Bench in most states, especially in the South. Many attribute this to women’s natural attention to detail, a quality the Bench demands in abundance. Nursing was long conceded to women, and no one is taking that from them. Even now, when both sexes cross professional lines freely, women maintain a firm hold on nursing. One would be lucky to find as many as five per cent of men in a nursing class.

While one is glad that the long campaigns for women’s emancipation are yielding results, the flip side—the boy-child steadily losing ground—poses a fresh challenge. This may not yet be evident in the core northern Nigerian states, where early marriage remains a heavy burden on the girl-child, but there is little doubt that women are advancing in the key professions across the South. We see it each time the best results in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), the National Examinations Council (NECO) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are released. We see it also in the rising number of female admissions into courses hitherto dominated by males.

In all honesty, we must be happy that women are rising. Yet we should also be concerned that boys are falling behind. I once felt the effects of our great-grandfathers’ refusal to educate the girl-child. My mother was not allowed to go to school, not because schools were unavailable in my native Ogbomoso, but because my maternal grandfather declared he would not send any of his daughters to school. He ensured the boys were educated. Though my mother longed for education, she could not break the parental barrier, and her own mother dared not contradict the “lion of the house”. From an early age, she would tell me: “You have to be educated like my brothers.” To make certain I was coping, she began giving me special assignments from Primary Three. I had to read verses of the Yoruba Bible to her. Somehow, she knew the Psalms and other passages even though she could not read them herself. It is therefore a genuine joy to see today’s girls break that ceiling and often outperform their male counterparts.

A different danger now stares us in the face, and we have a duty to act quickly before it becomes irreversible. The South-East has for years experienced what I call the male-child educational drought, and it is high time we halted its spread across the country. I once attended an event at the Polytechnic, Aba, Abia State, where the Rector openly lamented the absence of boys. Although the institution is state-owned, the few boys who gained admission were mostly indigenes of other states. Looking at the matriculation procession that day, it was plain that girls accounted for at least 85 per cent of the intake. The boy-child crisis in the South-East is long-standing. Many young women from the region end up marrying men of lower educational standing who match them only in financial means. Boys frequently leave school for business after primary education; only a few complete secondary school before joining their brothers in Ariaria Market, Alaba International or Onitsha Market to learn buying and selling.

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We will be mistaken if we think that the problem only exists in the South-East. Some years back, I got a rude shock when I was to stand surety for some political boys who had been wrongly detained and were to be set free after investigators found nothing incriminating on them. Four of them were picked in the dead of night from my hometown and whisked to Abuja over allegations linked to banditry. But after a thorough investigation, it was clear that the allegations against them were mere political gunshots, as they say in local parlance. The time came for them to write an undertaking, and only one of the four could read and write. I was more than shocked that we could find some twenty-something-year-olds from my locality who could not read and write.

Reports indicate that while the old constraints that held women back — early marriage, limited educational access and restrictive cultural practices — are being redressed, the boy-child in Nigeria now faces a deeper crisis of gender equality. The majority of the more than 20 million out-of-school children are boys, and 78 per cent of boys aged 7 to 14 are said to struggle with basic literacy or numeracy. The almajiri system in the North, absentee fathers who push boys into early breadwinning through street hawking, and a culture that demands boys “man up”, suppress emotion and never seek help, all compound the problem. The result is often withdrawal, anger and involvement in cultism, cybercrime (“yahoo boys”) and street-gang activity. National figures show that 14 per cent of people aged 15–64 engage in drug use — three times the global average.

Must we spell out the security implications? Neglected, under-educated and unmentored boys become dangers to society. They are easy recruits for insurgents and bandits in the North, kidnappers in the South, and armed robbers everywhere. They are readily drawn into extremist factions and cult groups. The travails of the boy-child are not merely a social issue; they constitute a national tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Every day the military releases figures of neutralised bandits and terrorists. We should remember that these are misguided sons of somebody who have become threats to the rest of us. When your neighbour is eating an infested kola nut, it is wise to raise the alarm early, for when he cannot sleep at night, neither will you. We face a national security threat, and all hands must be on deck.

There is, fortunately, some good news. Several organisations have begun to address the danger. The Yargote Foundation’s Empower the Boy Child Project focuses on boys aged 10–19, combining character formation, mentorship, educational remediation and psychosocial support. Boys Without Borders Nigeria also works to empower boys through education. A former Big Brother Naija winner has launched the Protect the Boy Child Initiative, while the Soledotun Abdulkarim-Yusuf Foundation and Boys Quarters Africa are among other groups providing structured programmes in mentorship, skills acquisition, mental-health support, educational assistance and advocacy.

Further encouragement comes from the centre: reports speak of the validation of a National Boy Child Policy and related social-protection frameworks. Recognition of special days and the adoption of documents are not enough, however. Concerted effort is required to ensure that ministries at federal and state levels, and local-government departments, actively implement boy-child initiatives so society is spared the menace we all wish to avoid.

I know that in years to come, when the full reality of the boy-child crisis has dawned, governments at every level will be eager to declare emergencies and officials will run helter-skelter as if no one had ever foreseen the danger. The time to act is now, if we are to save the future.