A nonprofit organisation, the foundation for Peace Professional (PeacePro), has said Nigeria’s worsening insecurity will remain a ticking time bomb unless the Almajiri system is dismantled within the next five years, declaring that decades of child abandonment, disguised as culture and religion, are fuelling banditry, terrorism and organised crime.

PeacePro issued the warning on Tuesday after a fact-finding tour of seven northern states, describing the Almajiri system as a factory of insecurity whose consequences now threaten to spill beyond Nigeria and destabilise the entire West African subregion.

Executive Director of the group, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, said what the country faces is far more dangerous than isolated criminality.

PeacePro called on federal and state governments to declare the Almajiri crisis a national emergency and security priority, urging coordinated action to dismantle the system within five years through rehabilitation, vocational training and firm engagement with religious and traditional leaders.

“This is not just banditry or terrorism. It is the long-term consequence of a society that has normalised the abandonment of its children,” he said. “The Almajiri system, as practised today, is not a policy error. It is evidence of total societal collapse.”

Hamzat accused families, religious institutions, ethnic leadership, society and the state of collective failure, insisting that all five have simultaneously abdicated responsibility.

“It is a failure of culture, family, religion, government and society rolled into one,” he said.

PeacePro warned that Nigeria is mass-producing millions of excluded, uneducated and desperate children yearly, describing the situation as a looming regional catastrophe.

“If this continues, Nigeria will not burn alone. The volume of abandoned youths being generated annually is enough to set the entire West African subregion on fire,” Hamzat cautioned.

The group rejected claims that the Almajiri system is untouchable because it is cultural or religious, saying any tradition that thrives on child deprivation has lost moral legitimacy.

“Culture is not sacred when it destroys lives,” Hamzat said. “Any system that turns children into roaming beggars, denies them education, welfare and protection is no longer heritage; it is a social pathology.”

Based on its findings, PeacePro said the crisis stems from five interconnected failures: parents dumping responsibility without safeguards; ethnic and communal structures defending tragedy as tradition; religious learning systems accepting children without welfare or protection; a society that has normalised begging; and a state that routinely ignores child rights and basic education laws.

“When all these fail at once, insecurity becomes inevitable,” Hamzat said.

PeacePro warned that children raised without education, family care or civic identity grow into adults disconnected from the state and easily recruited by criminal gangs, extremist movements and violent political networks.

“You cannot abandon children in the name of culture and expect peace in the name of patriotism,” Hamzat said. “A society that mass-produces excluded children is manufacturing future instability.”

The organisation stressed that its stance is not an attack on Islam or northern culture but a call for urgent reform grounded in responsibility and compassion.

“Religion without welfare has been weaponised against the very children it should protect,” Hamzat said.

“Nigeria’s insecurity is not a mystery,” Hamzat concluded. “It is the predictable outcome of decades of societal abandonment disguised as culture. Until that abandonment ends, insecurity will only change form — not disappear.”