When Boko Haram raided and abducted 276 Chibok girls on 14th April 2014 at Government Girls Secondary School Chibok, both local and mainstream media were awash globally, and there was a global concern on the issue.
Nigeria came to a complete standstill as intellectuals, and those in positions of power struggled to accept the narrative of how more than 200 children could vanish into thin air without a trace. The event led to a heated discussion that led to the Bring Back Our Girls movement, which kept the previous administration on its toes.
Nigerian authorities are having trouble tracking how many schools have been invaded by armed men who have kidnapped pupils for ransom since December. The media has steadily grown less interested in the reports of student abductions, which have now started to happen often. Sadly, because it has become the new normal, tales of student abductions no longer make headlines.
Abduction scenarios
According to the sequence of student abductions starting in December last year, at least 12 schools in Northern Nigeria had students abducted. Around 300 Kankara children were kidnapped on 11th December 2020. Then 80 kids were seized from an Islamic school in Mahuta, Katsina State, on 20th December 2020.
Similar events occurred at a Government Science College in Kagara, Niger State, on 17th February 2021, when roughly 27 students were kidnapped and held for ransom.
Throughout 2021, terrible incidents and a string of student abductions took place in areas like Zamfara, Kaduna, and Niger, and the situation only worsened.
The most shocking reports were the recent attack, deaths, and kidnappings of troops at the Nigeria Defence Academy in Kaduna. This reveals the highest degree of insecurity that northern Nigeria is experiencing and shows the breakdown of the regional security system.
Additionally, the frequency of school kidnappings is negatively harming Northern Nigerian education. More than 1,000 pupils have been kidnapped from schools in the north since December 2020. Due to the threat of attack and kidnapping of students and staff, more than 10,000 schools in at least seven northern states have been enclosed.
In Northern Nigeria, parents who send their kids to school are essentially writing their own death certificates. Due to the risk of kidnapping for ransom and wrongful death by armed zealots, most parents would rather keep their children at home than send them to school.
No parent from the other parts of the nation would want to send their children to school in the north due to the perception of insecurity in the region that has been spread to the other areas of Nigeria. Additionally, the area has damaged its reputation among its nearby countries.
Education in the north will continue to erode if action is not taken. The number of school dropouts will keep rising every day, which will raise the number of street kids who will eventually become a burden on the country.
Conclusion
The security system in northern Nigeria is crumbling, harming education there due to the threat of student abductions and assaults on school communities. The situation would worsen to the detriment of education and residents’ well-being unless the Federal Government and State Governments take decisive action to solve the issue.
