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Dozens of teenagers had been accused of treason and faced possible death sentences, but indignation over their treatment, including lack of food, has the government backpedaling.
By Elian Peltier and Ismail Auwal
Reporting from Dakar, Senegal, and Kano, Nigeria
Dozens of teenagers, some as young as 14, had been held for nearly three months in a squalid detention center that houses murder suspects. They faced treason charges and possible death sentences for alleged participation in protests against Nigeria’s government.
But since they were arraigned in a courtroom on Friday, their appearance there shocked people around the country, creating a wave of indignation at their treatment. Videos showed the boys, gaunt and haggard, hastily grabbing crackers handed to them, collapsing or just staring around blankly.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has since ordered their immediate release and the opening of an investigation into their arrest and ordeal in detention. The authorities have dropped all charges against them.
But the announcements may do little to calm the widespread outrage that has gripped Africa’s most populous country for months, over economic policies adopted by Mr. Tinubu’s administration that Nigerians say are making them hungrier and poorer.
And lawyers, civil society activists and rights organizations say that the boys’ ordeal epitomizes a pattern of arbitrary detention and human rights violations by Nigerian authorities, who seldom face accountability.
Abba Hikima, a lawyer representing the minors, said the government had wanted to make an example of children to deter others from protesting against Mr. Tinubu’s policies.
“Let’s not forget the genesis of the problem: that the government is incapable of tolerating protests against its unpopular measures,” Mr. Hikima said in a telephone interview.
Among the alleged abuses the teenagers endured, lawyers and activists said, were inhumane detention conditions, including malnourishment and jailing them with adults; and charges far out of proportion to their alleged crimes, with possible death sentences that would be incompatible with Nigeria’s children protection law.
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In one video, a group of youths is seen scuttling for food as some stand behind a lectern and others sit on the floor. In another, some are lying in the courtroom in Abuja, the capital, and grimacing as lawyers and judges surround them.
“They were supposed to be kept in a juvenile center or children rehabilitation center,” said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s country director in Nigeria. “Not in a place where robbery and murder suspects are detained. They came out famished, emaciated, hungry.”
Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, has been grappling with its worst economic crisis in 30 years. More than 40 percent of its population lives in extreme poverty, on the equivalent of less than $2.15 a day, and many say their ordeal is only getting worse.
The teenagers’ hunger in the courtroom videos mirrored the alarming situation in Nigerian cities and towns. Last week, United Nations’ food agencies labeled the country as one of a handful of “hot spots of very high concern” for hunger, its second-highest ranking for food insecurity, with only Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti and Mali faring worse.
Many Nigerians blame Mr. Tinubu, who was elected last year, for devaluing the national currency, the naira, and cutting a popular fuel subsidy that gave Nigerians access to cheap oil but weighed heavily on government coffers for decades.
Thousands of demonstrators, driven mainly by hunger, protested this summer and again this fall, rallying under the hashtag #EndBadGovernance. Some looted businesses and set government buildings on fire.
More than 1,000 people were detained in the aftermath of the protests, according to Amnesty International. Of the 76 defendants who were arraigned on Friday, about 30 were under age 18, Mr. Sanusi said.
Fatima Muhammad, a mother of two boys aged 16 and 18, said her children had been arrested on Aug. 2 while on their way to collect money from a telephone market in Kano, in northern Nigeria, the country’s second largest city.
They were later transferred to a detention center in Abuja, more than 200 miles to the south. The facility’s officials called Ms. Muhammad to demand money for her children’s food, she said. She said she exhausted her savings to visit them in detention, and had to beg for money to feed them.
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