Make Safe School Project work

NIGERIA needs to get its priority right concerning the safety of primary and secondary schools nationwide. This is obvious after the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps recently disclosed that an alarming 2,851 primary and secondary schools under the Safe School Project lack basic security measures. For now, 5,474 schools have logged in. There is no excuse for the laggards.

The initiative was launched by the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, alongside the Nigerian Global Business Coalition for Education and private sector leaders at the World Economic Forum Africa following the abduction of 276 girls from their school in Chibok, Borno State in 2014.

It entails a combination of school-based interventions, community interventions to protect schools, and special measures for at-risk populations. It includes training for teachers, students, and other school community members in basic safety and security skills.

Due to the resurgence of the mass abduction of pupils, the Safe School portal, www.nssrcc.gov.ng, was introduced last September to facilitate the registration of schools and enable swift and coordinated responses from security agencies in the event of an attack.

In April, The National Safe School Response Coordination Centre Commander, Hameed Abodunrin, noted that state governments were not showing commitment to the initiative.

Nigerian schools and, by extension, pupils and their teachers are still not safe from attacks.

Since 2014, Nigeria has been led by Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, and currently, Bola Tinubu serves as its president. Yet, for many citizens in the North, little has changed. Mass kidnappings of students, especially girls, have continued unabated, scuttling the chances of education for thousands of children in the region.

In February 2018, 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years old were kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in the Bursari LGA, Yobe State. Five schoolgirls reportedly died on the same day of their kidnapping. The following month, the militants freed the other girls with help from the Red Cross, except a lone Christian girl, Leah Sharibu, who refused to convert to Islam, as dictated by the Islamists. Leah is still in the den of the insurgents.

In December 2020, over 300 students were kidnapped from the Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State. The scene was not far away from the country home of the then-president, Buhari, who was observing a holiday at Daura at the time.

Bandits invaded the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Jangebe, in the Talata Mafara LGA of Zamfara State in February 2021 with pickup vehicles and motorcycles and kidnapped over 300 pupils.

According to data from Save the Children, between February 2014 and December 2022, at least 1,743 were kidnapped, nearly 200 killed, and 25 buildings and schools destroyed during terrorist raids on schools. This is a huge price to pay for Nigerian children and their parents.

In the last 10 years, thousands of students have been abducted from their schools in Kaduna, Kebbi, Niger, and Borno. In March 2024, bandits invaded a primary/junior secondary school in Kuriga, Chikun LGA of Kaduna State, where they abducted 137 pupils. The following weekend, bandits kidnapped another 15 Islamiyah school pupils in Sokoto State.

A survey carried out by the NBS and UNICEF in 2021 showed that approximately half of the girls in the North-East and about 40 per cent in the North-West were not attending primary or lower secondary school, in contrast to less than 10 per cent in the southern states.

State governors must wake up to their responsibilities of securing the lives and properties of citizens living in their domain. They would rather dwell on white elephants like airports that attract little to no patronage than focus on more pressing needs. They should invest in physical infrastructure, especially in the fencing of the schools.