According to many citizens, Nigeria’s education system is on a nosedive as a result of the consistent attacks on institutions of learning across the land. In this report, ELEOJO IDACHABA takes a look at this national concern.
Global concerns are mounting over the falling standard of education in Nigeria particularly in the northern part. Of major concern is the one expressed by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) where the global body says in view of the incessant cases of kidnapping of school children, the fortunes of the sector are gradually on a downward trend.
The press service officer of the global body, Thomas Mallard, said the organisation is surprised at the recent spate of attacks on schools.
He said, “All types of attacks targeting or affecting students, educational institutions and their personnel (teachers, principals, guards) have considerable negative impacts on continuity and quality of learning, both on short and long terms. This is not separate from the devastating psycho-social trauma confronting the affected communities.
“No child should ever have to choose between education and their life, but this is often the case in many countries, including some communities in Nigeria as education becomes the target of direct and constant attacks resulting in the death, injuries and abduction of learners and education personnel. As a result, many schools are shut down.
“Where they are not, parents have lost any confidence and trust in the presence of the rule of law that could protect their children and youths to ensure their security and safety. Such lack of trust among the communities might shift their decisions against prioritising education for their children and youth, which negatively impacts societies towards achieving their aspirations now and in the future.”
Mallard stated further that, “More importantly, within education management, there is uncertainty in educational planning and schools calendar which add to the complexities and challenges towards the provision of quality and equitable education for all as contained under the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) of the 2030 Agenda.
“UNESCO, as the designated agency for the monitoring and coordination of SDG4, would continue to work closely with all education partners in Nigeria in finding and implementing durable solutions to these issues.”
UNICEF as well
In another statement the UNICEF executive director, Henrietta Fore, noted that, “On July 5, 2021, 150 students were reportedly abducted from a school in Nigeria’s Kaduna state, marking the latest incident in an alarming spate of attacks against children and abductions, including of students, in parts of West and Central Africa. We are deeply concerned that as in years past, non-state armed groups and parties to conflict in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Niger and Nigeria will ramp up these violent activities over the coming weeks ahead of the rainy season when their movements could be restricted by flooding.
“In Nigeria, estimates have it that at least 950 students have been abducted from their schools by armed men since December 2020. Over the past six weeks alone, nearly 500 children were abducted in four separate incidents across the central and north-west parts of the country. Many of these children have not yet been returned. It is hard to fathom the pain and fear that their families and loved ones are suffering in their absence.”
Other global voices
While expressing similar sentiments over the fortunes of education in Nigeria, the director of education and governance research at the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa, Adedeji Adeniran, said the Nigerian education system is deep in crisis on multiple fronts, including access to quality education.
He said, “The recent spate of mass kidnappings of school children arguably represents the gravest existential threat and crisis to the education system. In less than three months between December 2020 and March 2021, more than 600 children have been kidnapped while in school, in three separate incidents.
“More worrisome is the fact that the heightened insecurity is predominant in northern Nigeria, which is already the most educationally disadvantaged region. Of the estimated 10.5 million out-of-school children in the country, 69 percent come from the northern part where cultural practices and economic deprivation limit children’s active participation in school, particularly females. The Boko Haram crisis, with its debilitating effects on economic and education systems, is also heavily concentrated in the same region. Now, with the spate of recent school kidnappings, community and parental trust in the education system could shrink significantly and the problem of access to quality and equitable education could become severely amplified.
“Furthermore, with the Nigerian education system still recovering from the devastating effects of the prolonged school closure from Covid-19, adding insecurity concerns to the basket of challenges could lead to its irrecoverable collapse.”
Blueprint’s investigations have revealed that in recent years, many countries have been part of international and regional political drives to ensure that all children have access and complete education in the countries that lag behind the most. Such efforts have had some success, with tens of millions entering primary education and more girls staying in school and pursuing their studies up to the secondary level, thereby improving gender parity in more countries.
Despite these and other advances, the warnings sounded by the UN and global policy experts indicate that the global progress in education has left behind millions of children and young people as more children and adolescents are at risk of dropping out of school, and many are at school facing unsuitable learning conditions.
This, no doubt, has resulted in education deficit which is a shortfall between the reality that children experience around the world and what governments have promised and committed to through human rights treaties.
According to Adeniran, “This not only undermines the fundamental human right to education, but has real and dire consequences for global development and entire generations of children.”
The benefits of education to children and the broader society cannot be over-emphasised.”
“Education can break generational cycles of poverty by enabling children to gain the life skills and knowledge needed to cope with today’s challenges. Education is strongly linked to concrete improvements in health and nutrition, improving children’s very chances for survival, it empowers children to be full and active participants in society, able to exercise their rights and engage in civil and political life, it is also a powerful protection factor where children who are in school are less likely to come into conflict with the law and much less vulnerable to rampant forms of child exploitation, including child labour, trafficking and recruitment into armed groups and forces,” he noted.
Attacks on schools
The history of attacks and kidnapping of school children in the country actually came to the fore in 2014, when 276 female students of a government school in Chibok, Borno state were abducted. Thereafter, it followed with more attacks and kidnapping in a male secondary school in Yobe state until it has become a norm in the recent times in other states like Plateau, Kaduna and Niger. Even the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was not spared as rumours of attacks spread to some schools including higher institutions in the territory. Blueprint Weekend gathered that in the wake of the unfortunate development, many schools situated along the borders of the territory with other states were forcefully closed and students forced to return home. Whether the coast is clear for a full classroom session in those schools or not is another matter entirely.
The panacea?
According to a report on Failure to Protect and Fulfil the Rights to Education through Global Development Partners, by The Education Deficit magazine, “First and foremost, ending the education deficit means ensuring every child has a quality primary and secondary education without the financial and systemic obstacles many face today and that relevant governments tackle the numerous violations, abuses, or situations that keep children out of school. This in turn depends on the political will to institute strong governance systems, including, the judiciary, to uphold and fulfill the right to education.”
It started further that the UN should continue to hold all governments to account for violations of the right to education. “Globally, any champion country or government representative appointed to lead on global education issues must first abide by international human rights standards for all children in its territories and abroad, in cases where they also play a key role as donors and be open to scrutiny by its own national civil society as well as UN bodies reviewing its performance.”
Speaking in the same vein, Marco Castradori of the Centre for Study of the Economies of Africa noted that, “In all areas of the northern part of Nigeria, even those removed from the Boko Haram-controlled North-east, numerous armed groups are increasingly seeing the potential to cash in on insecure schools through ‘kidnap and ransom’ approach.
“Conducting a threat assessment in all areas of the country deemed vulnerable to such armed groups—including evaluating the location of the schools, their relationship to the surrounding communities (through consultations with local traditional leaders) and the state of their infrastructure should be a first step to assessing which schools are most at risk. “Therefore, institutions determined to be unsafe should immediately be shut with contingency plans in place to facilitate temporary alternative learning arrangements together with strategies for relocating students to safer environments.
“Preventing more kidnappings should be the priority, not only for the welfare of potential future victims, but also with a view to salvaging any remaining public confidence in the safety of schools and avoiding further insecurity-related drop outs which Nigeria’s education system can ill afford.”
Virtual/alternative learning methods to the rescue?
As the country’s education system comes under constant attacks from kidnappers and those sympathetic to the Boko Haram cause, attention is said to be geared towards online learning methods in order to cover for any possible lost grounds occasioned by the forced closure of schools at all levels.
This would not be different from how schools were run in the wake of the 2020 lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking on this, the vice-chancellor of Veritas University Abuja, Prof. Hyacinth Ichoku, said in view of the security threat to most institutions of learning in the country, online/ICT models would adequately complement classroom scenario if well arranged. About Veritas University, he said in an interview with Blueprint, “Parents know that although we are a residential institution, it is not compulsory for their wards to reside in the school. We were very efficient in ICT even before the Covid-19 pandemic and were working hard to improve on our ICT to be able to run lectures both online and on site. Veritas University is the first in the country to go online when the pandemic issue emerged. So, we never lost time or academic sessions during the Covid-19 debacle. In fact, we even conducted our exams online and our students were receiving lectures right from their respective homes. Currently, some of our students attend lectures within the school while others from their homes. We have graduated from ‘blended learning’ because some students can be in their homes while others are in school and all share the same white board and interact with themselves.
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Despite these measures, it is generally believed that the federal government should strive to remove all obstacles in the way to quality education in the contry.
