Nigeria's sharia police, hisbah, have carried out night raids on several locations in the city of Kano since the beginning of the year. During the raids, many children have been taken away while sleeping.
The country is in a severe economic crisis, which means that more and more people are forced to fend for themselves.
We have so far collected 300 of these boys from the streets and have taken them to rehabilitation camps, says hisbah's general director Abba Sufi to AFP.
Their continued life on the street is a huge social and security threat since they are potential criminal recruits, he says and calls the children "a ticking bomb".
The state governor formed a committee in November to remove homeless children from the city. Many of them sleep under the open sky and have no access to education or care. Many of the children survive by begging, selling goods at traffic lights, or searching for scrap metal to sell to buy food.
In all of Nigeria, there are 18.5 million children who do not attend school, according to the UN children's fund Unicef. Of these, 1.9 million are in the state of Kano, which is 39 percent of all children there.
The hisbah police say that there are plans to provide "psychosocial" support and counseling to the children who are taken away, and that those who are interested will be allowed to attend school. Others will be helped to find a profession.
Previous attempts to remove homeless children from the city's streets have failed.
