UNICEF tasks Nigerian gov’t on secured learning environment in schools  

Story from Beatrice EARLAND, Bauchi

United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has urged the Nigerian government to make schools safe and provide a secure learning environment for every child in Nigeria, especially for girls, to increase girls’ enrolment, retention, and completion of education.

This was contained in a press statement signed by a UNICEF official, Samuel Kaalu, and made available to newsmen quoted Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria as saying that, since December 2020, 1,436 school children and 17 teachers have been abducted from schools, and 16 school children lost their lives.

The call coincided with a deep reflection as today marks eight years since the first known attack on a learning institution in Nigeria on 14th April 2014, in which 276 students at Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in north-east Nigeria were abducted by a Non-State Armed Group.

Since then, a spate of attacks on schools and abductions of students – sometimes resulting in their deaths – has become recurrent in the last two years, especially in the northwest and north-central regions of Nigeria. Since December 2020, 1,436 school children and 17 teachers have been abducted from schools, and 16 school children lost their lives.

“Unsafe schools, occasioned by attacks on schools and abduction of students, are reprehensible, a brutal violation of the rights of the victims to education, and totally unacceptable. Their occurrences cut short the futures and dreams of the affected students.

“Attacks on learning institutions render the learning environment insecure and discourage parents and caregivers from sending their wards to schools, while the learners themselves become fearful of the legitimate pursuit of learning,” added Hawkins.

“The invisible harm school attacks inflict on the victims’ mental health is incalculable and irredeemable.

“Girls have particularly been targeted, exacerbating the figures of out-of-school children in Nigeria, 60 per cent of whom are girls. It is a trajectory which must be halted, and every hand in Nigeria must be on deck to ensure that learning in Nigeria is not a dangerous enterprise for any child, particularly for girls,” said Hawkins.

In Nigeria, a total of 11, 536 schools were closed since December 2020 due to abductions and security issues. These school closures have impacted the education of approximately 1.3 million children in the 2020/21 academic year.

This interruption of their learning contributes to gaps in children’s knowledge and skills and may lead to the loss of approximately 3.4 billion USD in these children’s lifetime earnings. This risks further perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality.

UNICEF, with generous funding from donors, is collaborating with the government of Nigeria to protect children’s right to education in a safe and inclusive learning environment. This involves building the capacity of School-based management committees (SBMCs) on school safety and security and strengthening community resilience.

In Katsina State, 300 SBMC members have been trained, and schools, supported through the Girls’ Education Project (GEP3) funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK, have developed Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans to mitigate the impact of potential and actual threats.

Multi-sectoral task teams on school safety have also been established across all the 34 LGAs of Katsina State to provide timely and efficient networking among actors on school security, with a particular focus on the safety of girls. Additionally, 60 Junior Secondary Schools have developed emergency plans and tested the plans in evacuation drills.