President Buhari and Closed Schools in the North

President Muhammadu Buhari has signed a commitment to increase the funding for the education sector by 50 per cent in the next two years and address the problem of over 10,000 closed schools in the north. The new agreement will see Nigeria steadily increasing investment up to 100 per cent by 2025. President Buhari is declaring that the new agreement is aimed at improving learning outcomes through strengthened educational institutions, encouraging better teaching capacity, among other means.

Now that the president is winning the war on terror, there is hope he will soon reopen the more than 10,000 schools closed in the north due to banditry and insurgency. Speaking during a panel session at the global education summit,

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in London, United Kingdom recently, the president said his administration is committed to raising the budget for education by 50 per cent in the next two years, adding that Nigeria will attain 100 per cent budgetary increase by 2025. He said no Nigerian parent jokes with education, as they are aware that if their children missed the opportunity of being educated, they have missed a lot.

Buhari noted that the population of the country is a challenge for any administration; but despite this, the government and people have realised that education is the starting point for success. “You can’t succeed outside your educational qualification. Anybody who missed education has missed everything. Nigerians are acutely aware of the priority of education, and parents are making sacrifices to ensure that their children and wards get educated,” Buhari said.

President Buhari has seen that the failure of the security agencies to effectively deal with these attacks on schools is portraying his administration as weak, ineffectual and unable to inspire confidence in its citizens. President Buhari has understood that the persistent government negligence in ensuring the safety of Nigerians is a failure of governance and dereliction of constitutional responsibility. This significantly erodes the legitimacy of the government itself with the failure of protecting its people.

It is of utmost urgency for the president to correct this impression and handle the security of all schools especially in the northeast, northwest and north-central regions of Nigeria. This would ensure coordinated and collaborative efforts to end the menace of abduction of schoolchildren. The number of out-of-school children will continue to rise because parents whose children are back from bandits’ enclaves will begin to think otherwise and will not want them to go to school. The children will then begin to roam the streets and in the future, these children will be recruited into criminal activities.

Findings revealed that at least 15, 000 schools are affected by the closure of schools. A source at the Ministry of Education said that more than 4,000 public primary schools across Nigeria, and over 4,000 public secondary schools were among the closed schools. No fewer than 10,000 schools have remained closed in six northern states over the fear of attack and abduction of pupils and members of staff. The six states where some schools have remained closed are Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Niger and Yobe. Still, while concerted efforts are underway by Northern leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and International development partners like the World Bank to improve the rate of enrolment in schools across all levels amidst the spate of terrorism in Northeastern states, enrolled students themselves became the target of an expanded scope called ‘bandits’ consisting of kidnappers, armed robbers, Fulani militias, and of course terrorists for monetary gains.

Inwalomhe Donald, Abuja