Grace To Grass: Under Gov. Abdulrazaq, Kwara, Once A UNICEF Model Now Depends On Bailouts

By Omowumi Omotosho

In 2010, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) declared Kwara State a model for child-friendly governance. Then-Governor Bukola Saraki, buoyed by a focused administration, hosted global child rights advocates and presided over a state that had fully passed the Child Rights Act, championed progressive child protection laws, and offered a social architecture strong enough that UNICEF described Kwara as “fit for a child.”

Fast forward to 2025, and the story is a tragic reversal. UNICEF has returned, not to commend but to rescue. With 300,000 malnourished children now identified across the state, UNICEF is deploying cartons of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a product typically reserved for war zones, famine-stricken regions, and internally displaced persons camps. The Kwara of today has not only fallen from grace; it now stands among Nigeria’s most vulnerable states, a humanitarian hotspot in dire need of international assistance.

A Grim Diagnosis

At the handling over the Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), the UNICEF’s Country Representative, Christian Munduate stated that the challenge of over 40 per cent of children being stunted and nearly 300,000 children affected by wasting requires urgent action.

With the support of just $100,000 from the Kwara government, matched by UNICEF funding, 3,964 cartons of RUTF are being deployed to stem the tide of child hunger.

What was once a state that prided itself on sustainable child development policies now finds itself fighting to meet basic survival thresholds. Malnutrition in Kwara is no longer an emerging issue, it is an emergency. Severe acute malnutrition treatment is now limited to just a few health facilities, and UNICEF’s intervention is not just timely; it is vital.

A Legacy of Neglect

Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq came into office in 2019, heralded by the “Otoge” movement that promised to unseat entrenched political elites and introduce a new era of accountability. But six years on, many Kwarans are left wondering: What happened to the promise?

Under Abdulrazaq’s leadership, Kwara has gone from being a beacon of demographic governance to a cautionary tale. The UNICEF programs that had been unnecessary from 2003 to 2011, because Kwara was doing the work on its own are now back in full force. It is no coincidence that many of the 300,000 malnourished children identified in 2025 roughly mirror the number of votes ( 273,424) credited to Abdulrazaq’s APC in recent elections. The figures feel like a dark irony. Where once the late-night lights in Government House burned over legislation to protect children, today they flicker amid news of international donations to keep Kwara’s children alive.

The Lost Years

Back in 2010, at the conference of global child rights advocates, hosted by then-Governor Bukola Saraki, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, a professor of law at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies highlighted the status of legislation and implementation of child rights-related laws in the country. He identified the four key principles of the child rights acts such as survival, protection, participation and development.

Owasanoye stressed the critical roles of the CSOs in the implementation of the child rights law. He however said that the realisation of the millennium development goals is only meaningful with effective realisation of the child right law provisions. However, the two-day national conference came up with a communiqué.

The communiqué which was jointly signed by the then-First lady of Kwara state Mrs. Gbemisola Saraki and Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju, communiqué drafting committee, also observed that lack of political will, poverty, ignorance, wasteful application of economic resources and absence of committed elites are identifiable challenges to development.

According to the conference, low public education on potentials of the Child Rights Law is responsible for the negative responses towards the law in states yet to pass the law. Insufficient knowledge of its provision continues to deny children the benefits inherent in the law where it is passed. The conference recognised progress made by state governments, individually and collectively across the country, and recommended the rehabilitation and re-organisation of relevant institutions such as remand homes for the support, care and protection of children in conflict with the law by states with the Child Rights Law.

The conference also recommend capacity building for stakeholders on the domestication and implementation processes of the Child Rights Law and also the establishment of family courts or designate family courts from existing courts by state governments. It also called for the allocation and appropriation of realistic resource for children related programmes of state governments.

At the end of the conference, Mrs. Saraki commended her partners for their contributions and participants for their time, commitment and contributions. She declared the forum as an opportunity for her rededication to the promotion and protection of children’s rights through her office as wife of the Kwara State Governor and her position as Chair, FIDA International Child Rights Standing Committee.

With this conference, if all the issues discussed are executed at the local, state and federal levels, the future of the Nigerian child will be secured and protected against any form of vices that might want hinder their contributions to the socio-economic development of the Nigerian state.

Yet today, Kwara is not just failing to meet those aspirations—it is actively reversing them. Children are not developing; they are wasting. Protection is minimal, and participation is virtually non-existent. Survival has become a privilege, not a right.

A Rescue Mission—Again

UNICEF has not stopped at food aid. In 2024, the global body relaunched educational support in Kwara through the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP), a digital platform meant to keep children learning even in areas with no schools or teachers. This marks the first such intervention in Kwara in over 13 years, a damning indication of the state’s regression.

By 2025, UNICEF was also involved in rescuing and rehabilitating children in the Kwara Borstal Home. The agency is now integrating a digital Child Protection Management System (CPIMS) to help Kwara social workers track child abuse cases and deliver services effectively, an operational necessity that suggests Kwara has failed to protect its most vulnerable.

In a report published by Nigeriahealthwatch on April 16, 2025, after A total of 218 children and adults were released from the Borstal Training Institution of the Nigeria Correctional Service, located in Ganmo, Ilorin, Kwara State.

Their freedom was facilitated after a visit to the facility by the Federal Ministry of Justice, Presidential Committee on Correctional Reform and Decongestion, and Nigeria Correctional Service, supported by UNICEF and the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC).

The children and adults were released because they were at the facility without a remand order by a court of law, while some of them were beyond the age of 18 as stipulated by the law establishing the institution among other factors.

According to the UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Dr Wilfred Mamah, child justice provides that when children commit offences, they should be treated differently and not like adults, but change the behaviour and reintegrate them back to the community.

Mamah explained that the Borstal institution, created under the Children and Young Person Law, was designed to look at the best interest of young person’s when they commit offences.

He, however, said that the situation at the Ilorin Borstal institution was full of anomalies, where children and adults were placed in the same institution, contrary to the provisions of the law.

According to him, the children are exposed to what he described as “structural violence”, where the system is actually not taking care of them as it is supposed to.

“Some of them were brought in by their parents and abandoned without passing through the court, so there was nothing like a remand order.

“They were left there, locked up, coming out only to eat. There is also the issue of drug abuse, leaving many of them in psychological trauma.”

A Legacy in Tatters

The contrast could not be starker. Saraki’s Kwara was a state UNICEF admired and considered exemplary. Abdulrazaq’s Kwara is a state that cannot feed its children, where UNICEF has become a lifeline for survival, not a partner in development. In just six years, the social safety net has frayed beyond recognition.

This is more than a governance failure; it is a generational tragedy. And for every Kwaran who believed in the promise of “Otoge,” the present reality must feel like a betrayal.

UNICEF should never have had to return to Kwara, not like this. Not as saviors in a state once celebrated for saving its own. As Kwara’s malnourished children queue for packets of RUTF, one can only ask: What will it take to rebuild what was lost?