Student abductions spread fear, closing many schools
LAGOS, Nigeria — Mounting school abductions in Nigeria have disrupted the education of more than 1.3 million children in Africa’s most populous country, the United Nations says.
“Children are traumatized. Parents are scared. Teachers and school administrators are afraid. Attacks on schools are gradually spreading to areas not known to insurgencies. With education under attack, the collective future of Nigeria is under threat,” U.N. resident coordinator in Nigeria Edward Kallon said.
The West Africa nation has seen at least 10 abductions in the past 12 months in which 1,436 students have been taken, according to U.N. Children’s Agency Nigeria Representative Peter Hawkins.
About 200 students are still being held and 16 children have died in the attacks, he added.
“From September 2020 to June/July 2021, up to 1.3 million children in total have been affected at some point during the academic year or learning interrupted at some point,” Hawkins told the Associated Press.
School kidnappings by gunmen — whom analysts identify as mostly young, former nomadic cattle herders — have taken place in nine different states, and targets have included everyone from preschoolers to university students.
Schools are set to open and begin the academic year this month, but many educational facilities have been shut by some governors in the northwest and central parts of Nigeria amid efforts to contain the security challenge.
The health of the freed students is also a source of concern. Some of those who have been seized from their schools are as young as 4, and parents have said that after selling off most of what they have to pay for ransoms demanded by the gunmen, they now don’t have enough to pay their children’s medical bills.