KANO, Nigeria (AFP) — Horrific revelations of torture and abuse at a compound billing itself as a Koranic reform school in northern Nigeria have shone a spotlight on Islamic institutes unregulated by the authorities.

Last week police in the city of Kaduna raided a building to find hundreds of men and boys — some reportedly aged as young as five — held in atrocious conditions at a facility proprietors described as a religious school and rehabilitation center.

Inmates were discovered chained to metal railings and with their hands and feet shackled together. Some bore scars from alleged beatings while other recounted being sexually abused.

“If they caught you if you want to run away from this place, they would hang you, they would chain you,” one of the victims Abdallah Hamza said.

The shocking revelations made headlines but activists insisted they were symptomatic of abuses that have long-riddled a system beyond official control.

Private Islamic schools — known locally as Almajiri schools — are widespread across mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, where poverty levels are high and government services often lacking.

The authorities have estimated that there are more than nine million students enrolled at the institutions.

“The latest example from Kaduna represented the worst of the system and very inhumane conditions,” Mohammed Sabo Keana, team lead at the Abuja-based Almajiri Child Rights Initiative NGO, told AFP.

“But they are a clear manifestation of what a lot of children go through — including being made to beg on the streets, subjected to violence, sleeping in the worst conditions imaginable and living with terrible sanitation levels.”

Activists have long pushed the government to reform or end the Almajiri system, arguing that it fails to provide children with the basics of an education.