Deteriorating insecurity in Niger and Kaduna states is taking a significant toll on education in the two states. Parents now withdraw their children from schools in the states to safer parts of the nation. The action, which places more burden on the parents’ finances, further shows the low capacity of the states to protect school children and education facilities. The ICIR’s Senior Investigative Reporter, Marcus Fatunmole, reports.
SENSING danger the kidnapping of schoolchildren by bandits portends for his child, Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai secretly withdrew his six-year-old son, Abubakar Al-Siddique, months after he enrolled him at the Kaduna Capital School in September 2019.
During the campaign for his election as governor, el-Rufai had promised to enrol the boy in a public school in the state to set an example for his counterparts in other states, and other public office holders who send their children to schools abroad or private schools in the country.
Siddique’s enrolment coincided with when bandits preyed on the state capital and other communities in the state – killing, abducting school children and other residents.
The bandits often demand that ransome be paid, or the victim is slaughtered in the forest.
The Government Science Secondary School, Kagara, Rafi Local Government Area of the state is one of the facilities where the bandits have launched an attack.
Since they attacked the institution on February 17, 2021, and abducted 27 students, the school has remained a ghost of itself.
Only soldiers use the premises. Its teachers have not been deployed to other schools to work, according to The ICIR’s findings.
A number of the schoolchildren have moved to different communities in the state and other parts of the country.
Similarly, it took the Greenfield University in the state some time to relocate and resume teaching after gunmen attacked the school and whisked away 20 students and three staff on April 20 2021.
The kidnappers killed five of the students before releasing the others after collecting ransom.
Between January 2020 and the time the reports on the withdrawal of el-Rufai’s son from the school emerged, deaths from insecurity in the state were already three times higher than the North-East, enmeshed in decade-long terrorism conflict, recorded within the period.
According to the state quarterly security report, from January to September 2021, 888 people died while kidnappers held on to 2,353 persons in the state.
Chapter Two, sub-section 2b of the Nigerian constitution (1999 as amended), states that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.
With worsening security misfortunes in the state, parents like Governor el-Rufai are pulling their children out of schools to save them from terrorists, who operate under different guises, namely bandits, kidnappers and gunmen.
But the action comes with varying consequences.
How parents withdraw their children from schools in Kaduna State
Olola Akioye Seun is a journalist based in Abuja. In 2020, he pulled out his 11-year-old son from the Command Secondary School in the state capital and enrolled him in Abuja.
He said it was challenging for him to keep going with the child from Abuja to Kaduna and be checking on him because of insecurity.
Going to Kaduna by road from Abuja was risky, while using the train cost him more because many a time, he got the train tickets through the black market.
“When the issue of kidnapping in schools started happening, I didn’t have peace of mind. I kept thinking about where next the kidnapping would occur in the state. Every call from that school to me caused me fear.
