Nigeria, July 11 -- Eight-year-old Marvellous gripped a worn pencil tightly as she wrote on a single sheet of paper, kneeling on the bare concrete floor of an unfinished compound in Karshi, a satellite community on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria's capital city.

Around her, four younger siblings sat barefoot, watching every movement of the pencil. Among them was a two-year-old toddler with mucus running from her nose.

The children barely noticed the visitor.

Because she is a minor, this reporter did not interview Marvellous directly. When asked if her parents were around, she quietly disappeared into the unfinished building behind her and returned moments later with her mother, Joy Kelvin.

Mrs Kelvin offered this reporter a wooden cha...