THE NORTH AND THE EDUCATION SPACE

Frequent violence in schools poses further threat to the future of children

For the umpteenth time on Thursday, bandits invaded a public secondary school in Zamfara State to abduct students and their teachers. But apparently to make a statement about their capacity, and dare the authority in the state, they went for a school in Maradun, the hometown of Governor Bello Matawalle. The Police have confirmed that 73 students were abducted, in another terrible blow to the education sector not only in the state but the entire northern region, where many schools have now been closed because of incessant insecurity. In simple term, education is under systemic attack in many of the northern states.

Seven years after 276 schoolgirls were seized from Chibok in Borno State, mass kidnapping of students is increasingly becoming a way of life. In 2018, some criminal gangs abducted 108 schoolgirls from Dapchi before most were eventually returned after a controversial deal in which a Christian girl (Leah Sharibu) was left behind. Last month, gunmen killed three people at the College of Agriculture and Animal Science in Bakura, Zamfara State, and kidnapped 15 students and four staff in continuation of a wave of mass abductions. Two days later, motorbike-riding bandits snatched eight pupils and a teacher of an Islamic seminary heading home after school at Sakki, Katsina State. As if all these were not bad enough, the Nigerian Defence Academy, the premier military university was invaded by bandits who killed two officers and went away with another.

These targeted attacks on schools, students, and teachers are widespread and dispiriting. According to the United Nations, about 950 students had been abducted since December. An estimated 1,500 schools were destroyed between 2014 and 2018 in a zone in dire need of school infrastructure. As a result of the mass displacements, many children are holed up with their parents in internally displaced camps with limited schooling at most – and with no textbooks and teaching aids. A generation of children are being deliberately robbed of the right to education, and by extension, their future. And as it stands, the cycle of poverty and violence is being perpetuated.

The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has put the number of schoolteachers killed between 2009 and 2020 at 2,295 in the ongoing conflict in the northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. The Borno Field Officer for UNICEF, Nguyen Phuong, recently said that more than one million children had been forced out of school. The figures of the killed, maimed, held hostage, or displaced will likely double if the Northwest and the North Central are added as they are increasingly drawn into the vortex of violence. Indeed, many schools in the Northwest have been shut down in response to the raging violence ravaging the zones. The students abducted from the Federal Government College, Birnin-Yauri in Kebbi State are spending their third month in captivity while several others from different schools in Kaduna and Niger States are still with kidnappers.

A generation of children are being deliberately robbed of the right to education, and by extension, their future. And as it stands, the cycle of poverty and violence is being perpetuated

This climate of fear is further worsening the low level of education and literacy in the north. It has been found that conflict reduces school enrolment as well as years of education. Expectedly, the number of out-of-school children in the country has spiked, put at about 15 million, and mostly from the north. The implication of such a state of affair is implicitly damaging. Education is fundamental to development. And the state of education in the north is increasingly falling into disrepair as safety is central to quality education.

In 2014 the Safe Schools Initiative was launched to counter the growing attacks on the right to education and to build community security groups to promote safe zones for education, consisting of teachers, parents, police, and community leaders. While the initiative has been abandoned, safety is an issue we cannot afford to push to the corner. The school child has the right to life through adequate security in the school environment. We must address the safety and protection of our children.