Boko Haram and the Wanderer-Children of the Sahel: An Imperative for Rehabilitation.

Children are an Heritage of the Lord...! - Psalms 127: 3 This paper interrogates the phenomenon of the insurgency of Boko Haram with a view to understanding its implication on children. The goal is to explore models for rehabilitating 'wanderer-children' as the phenomenon, coupled with the incidence of out of school children in the Sahel portends great danger for the survival of Nigeria and even the integration thrust of the West African Sub-region. The manuscript argues that Nigerian authorities need to strengthen their 'Complex Emergency' policies otherwise the threat against the region may worsen. In the effort to fashion-out these models, the paper takes a voyage to the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries, and precisely to the colonial state where it discovered a classical model that if authorities would imbibe, the possibility for resolving the complex question of wanderer-children can be achieved. To weave its perspectives, the study depended on the qualitative research methodology. Finally, the paper recommends that governmental authorities need to combat poverty and reduce the rate of unemployment if the goal of curtailing conflict with its propensity for displacing children is to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]