11,536 Nigerian schools shut in two years under Buhari – UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s agency,
UNICEF, says that a total of 11,536 schools in Nigeria have been shut down in two years under President Muhammadu Buhari due to the activities of bandits and terrorists, especially in the northern region.

The agency made the disclosure on Thursday while commemorating the 8th anniversary of the abduction of 276 students at Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State,

It called on the Federal Government to make schools safe for Nigerian children as well as providing a secure learning environment for every child in Nigeria, especially for girls, so as to increase girls’ enrolment, retention, and completion of education.

In a statement to mark the Chibok abduction, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, urged the government to do everything possible to return out of school children back to schools by creating safe environments that are conducive for learning.

“Today marks eight years since the first known attack on a learning institution in Nigeria on 14 April 2014, in which 276 students at Government Girls Secondary School Chibok in north-east Nigeria were abducted by a non-state armed group,” Hawkins said.

“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 north-west and north-central regions of Nigeria.

“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 and 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 percent 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.

“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,” Hawkins added.