Denied the chance to learn, laughed at, and shunned by classmates and teachers alike, the children of persons with leprosy in Lagos State are paying a heavy price for a disease they didn’t contract. Stigma and rejection have become the unwelcome companions of these young souls, forcing many to abandon their dreams of education and a better life. SODIQ OJUROUNGBE writes
The sun had barely climbed over the cluttered rooftops of Jakande when nine-year-old Aishat settled beside her mother’s outdoor kitchen, a makeshift setup of rusted pots, soot-darkened stones, and the sharp scent of yesterday’s meal lingering in the air.
Some of the children at the only well in the environment
Her tiny frame, wrapped in a faded purple Ankara dress two sizes too big, was folded carefully on the bare, dusty ground. In her hands, she held a worn-out children’s book, its spine broken, pages curled at the edges, but her eyes danced over every word like they were windows to another world.
“She started reading when she was five,” her mother, Ramota, said with a tired kind of pride, squatting over the firewood stove a few feet away.
She quickly added, “Even when we didn’t have light or money for books, she would read anything: flyers, torn newspapers, even empty cartons.” But books are no longer a regular part of Aishat’s day. What should have been the beginning of a young girl’s academic journey has turned into a daily routine of survival.
Young Aisha reading
Instead of preparing for school each morning, Aishat now trails her mother through the dust-choked alleys of Alaba Market, where Ramota begs for loose change, their only means of feeding, surviving, and existing.
For Aishat, the classroom has become an impossible dream, shuttered not by poverty alone but by a deeper, more silent barrier, which is stigma.
Their home, the Lepers’ Containment Colony in the Jakande area of Alaba Rago, Ojo Local Government Area of Lagos State, is often spoken about in hushed tones by outsiders. It is a community of over 2,000 people, mostly survivors of leprosy and their families.
Though many of the residents have long been cured, the disease still clings to them in the minds of the public. And it is this perception, the fear, the disgust, and the ignorance that has pushed Aishat and countless other children like her out of schools and into the shadows.
“They laughed at her. Called her dirty. Told their children not to sit near her. The teachers didn’t say anything. After a while, she stopped wanting to go,” Ramota recounted. In a city that prides itself on progress, Aishat is one of many children whose futures are being quietly stolen, not by disease, but by society’s refusal to let them move beyond it.
Some of the children(photo credit: Sodiq ojurohungbe)
Across the Lepers’ Containment Colony and similar communities in Lagos, our correspondent gathered that many children face the same challenges. The stigma associated with their parents’ past affliction leads to exclusion, bullying, and discrimination in schools, forcing them to abandon their education. This situation contributes to Nigeria’s alarming statistics on out-of-school children.
As of 2024, Nigeria has approximately 18.3 million children out of school, the highest number globally. This figure underscores a national crisis where millions of children, including those from marginalised communities like Aishat’s, are denied their right to education due to various socio-cultural and systemic barriers. During a visit to the leper’s containment, it was observed that countless children of lepers have faced similar struggles, their dreams of education shattered by the cruel hand of stigma.
Many of Aishat’s age-mates, our correspondent gathered, have abandoned school altogether, their potential lost to the harsh realities of a society that shuns and rejects them. Walking through the narrow alleys of containment, children who should be in classrooms, learning and growing, were seen with no choice but to beg on the streets, their young lives marked by hardship and struggle.
Unfulfilled dream
Umar Abdullahi still remembers the smell of chalk and the soft hum of morning assembly at the small northern school where he once taught mathematics. That was before leprosy took away his fingers, and with them, the life he had built.
Diagnosed in the early 1980s, Umar found refuge in the Lepers’ Containment Colony at Jakande, where time moves differently, slower, quieter, and forgotten. But the pain that haunts him now is not just what the disease took from him but what it continues to deny his children and those of others like him.
“I had dreams; we all did. We thought maybe our children would not suffer like we did. Maybe they would go to school and become something more. But now, I see those dreams slipping away,” he expressed bitterly.
As the leader of the lepers’ colony, Umar has become the reluctant keeper of shattered childhoods, the first person parents run to when their children return home from school, sobbing, confused, and humiliated. Again and again, the stories echo each other: being called “beggars”, “lepers’ children”, being told to sit alone, or worse, to leave.
The containment leader recounted a scenario, “One boy, about eleven, came to me crying. They had mocked him in front of the whole class. Another girl said the teacher told her not to share her food, that it might carry a disease. “How do you make a child believe in school again after that? Some of them still try. But many of them stop going. Some follow their mothers to beg. What else can they do?
One of the children fetching water while his mates are in school
“These children have dreams. One wants to be a nurse. Another talks about being an engineer. But how can they do that when people treat them like they are dirty, like they don’t belong?”
The hidden scars
The indignity doesn’t stop at the parents’ doorstep. In Jakande’s forgotten colony, children inherit not just the poverty but the shame of a disease they never had.
At an hour when other children are tucked into noisy classrooms, dozens of boys and girls run barefoot through the dust, chasing old bicycle rims, tugging at kites made from nylon bags, or fiddling with dead electronics salvaged from Alaba Market’s scrap heaps. These are not recess games, they are full days, lost to time and to a world that refuses to let them in. Concerned by the growing number of out-of-school children in the community, our correspondent approached Mohammed Modu, a father of seven and one of the long-time residents of the Lepers’ Containment.
Modu, originally from Galtimari in Borno State, now carries the burden of watching history repeat itself, a future for his children not unlike his own past, marked by rejection and dashed hope. He explained that despite their efforts to chart a new trajectory for their offspring away from life of begging, their children couldn’t cope with mocking from their peers at school.
To their peers, Modu said, the lepers’ children are the disease the parents once had. “The nearest government school is about a 40-minute walk from here, and our children walk there everyday. But even at school, they call our children names and tell them their parents are dirty. With these, the children refuse to go back.
“They (children) don’t want their parents to be disgraced, even though everybody knows we were not born like this. We became this way due to illness. Still, we are insulted and embarrassed,” he said.
Modu added, “We pacify our children to remain patient and explain to them why schooling is important for their future, even after we’re gone. But some of them are too young to understand why they have to endure such discrimination.”
Abandoned and forgotten
Just a few minutes’ drive from the chaotic bustle of Alaba International Market, one of West Africa’s busiest electronics hubs, lies a world that Lagos would rather forget.
Filthy environment they lived in
The Lepers’ Containment Colony in Jakande is not marked on most maps. No road signs are pointing to it, and no official government boards acknowledge its presence. Yet, it is home to over 2,000 people, survivors of leprosy and their families, tucked behind crumbling walls and rusted zinc roofs, living in silence, surviving in neglect.
Here, children grow up barefoot in alleyways riddled with stagnant water and refuse. The buildings made with makeshifts, most of them already rusted, single-room structures, sag under years of abandonment.
During the visit, it was observed that the containment is a place that smells of damp earth, burnt firewood, and the unwashed exhaustion of people who have long given up on being seen.
“This place is not on anyone’s agenda. We have been here for decades, but it’s like we don’t exist. Until election time, maybe. Then they remember us for one day,” said Umar, the colony’s leader.
While Lagos continues to build sky-high towers and announce smart city projects, it was observed that entire generations in this colony are being raised with little access to healthcare, clean water, or education.
The children, like Aishat, carry the visible weight of being born into invisibility. They live just outside the frame of the city’s glossy billboards and progress narratives. For them, school is not only a right denied but a dream that fades with every mocking word, every cold shoulder from classmates, and every teacher who chooses silence over protection.
The damage runs deep
The consequences of such rejection, experts warned, are not merely academic; they are psychological and potentially lifelong.
Dr. Samuel Aladejare, a consultant psychiatrist, explained, “The childhood stage is when mental structures form. When a child is constantly told they are dirty, unwanted, or less-than, they internalise it. That becomes the foundation they grow on.”
Left unchecked, the psychiatrist said, the stigma these children endure may spiral into long-term mental health issues, depression, low self-worth, and the kind of emotional scars that no classroom can heal.
He added, “Your environment shapes the limits of your imagination. If all you see is rejection, you stop dreaming beyond it. Even if a child manages to stay in school, the discrimination can weigh down their academic performance.”
#Sodiq Ojurohungbe, a Lagos based journalist and 2025 Africa Foundation for Young Media Professionals’ 2025 Disability and inclusion reporting fellow sent this piece from lagos
