By its admission, its report did not cover the epicenters of the Boko Haram insurgency, namely the BAY States of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Neither did it succinctly capture the banditry in Plateau State in which, by April 2025, sixty four communities had been displaced. Nor did it give us a clue on the havoc being wreaked by insurgents in Taraba State.
Nonetheless, the DAILY TRUST’s front page story of Thursday, October 2, 2025, brought to the fore the poignant state of the education sector in the Northern part of Nigeria as it is being daily assaulted by insecurity.
Entitled:”Insecurity: Over 180 schools shut in North”, the DAILY TRUST story details how, on account of insecurity, at least 188 (Primary and Secondary) public schools have been shut in Northern Nigeria. A breakdown of the schools is as follows: 6 in Kaduna State; 6 in Sokoto State; 30 in Niger State; 52 in Katsina State; and 55 in Benue State.
Though the story does not give us a full or comprehensive picture, it does offer us useful glimpses. And these insights are deeply troubling. Even at the best of times when insurgency had not engulfed the North, it trailed far behind its Southern counterpart: It boasted of an inordinately huge number of out-of-school children. It also ranked as the poverty capital of the world until the recent war in Sudan. By the UN’s reckoning, were the South of Nigeria to mark time or to stand still, it would take the North another fifty years to catch up with it. Insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and genocidal killings have further increased this gap. It is now a yawning chasm.
Also, even before the North became the vortex of insurgency and banditry, Nigeria was said to have one of the highest out-of-school children rates in the world with estimates put by UNICEF at between 10-20 million. Most of these children were in the North.
The DAILY TRUST story, graphically illustrated with telling pictures, shows that Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs) in the North are often quartered or hunkered down in Primary and Secondary Schools. The IDPs, by taking over these schools, in turn displace the Learners/Students of these schools. In only a few instances are those displaced Learners/Students catered for in terms of instruction.
The displacement of these Learners/Students can only increase the number of out-of-school children in the beleaguered Northern States. And since there is a correlation between lack of access to education and pervasive poverty, it means that continued insurgency and banditry in these Northern States can only compound and prolong the massive poverty in the North.
In the interim, and in view of the severity of the situation, the governments in the North should not surrender or suffer paralysis of will. They should rather be challenged to think creatively and out of the box. Inventories should quickly be taken of Learners/Students who have been displaced by the advent of these IDP Camps plus those who came with the IDPs. Tents, complete with plastic chairs and whiteboards, should be erected at each of the IDP Camps and Teachers should then be deployed to instruct these pupils. That way they will not be left behind and they can catch up with their peers in safer havens.
This approach should, however, be an interim or temporary measure. In the long haul, communities and schools destroyed by insurgents should be re-built, after heinous acts of insurgency, banditry and genocidal killings, have been addressed headlong with Governors and the President working assiduously and in concert.
We have seen, in the past two decades, that heightened insecurity has implications for, not only education and prosperity, but for food security as well. Proper learning cannot take place in an insecure environment. Neither can farming, which would have gainfully engaged millions of Nigerians and engendered bumper harvests, thus bringing down the cost of foodstuffs. Nor can any serious investment take place in a violence-prone environment. This is for the simple reason that no serious investor will put his hard-earned money in an uncertain and insecure haven.
As this writer has often said – and this has since assumed a refrain with him – the federal government must prioritize security. It should appreciate that the prevalence of insecurity in any part will adversely affect its other constituent parts. And in a situation where the security architecture, by law, is configured in such a manner that it reduces Governors to the statuses of glorified Chief Security Officers, the buck actually stops on the President’s table.
The President, who is the Commander-in-Chief, must view the entire country as his constituency and be prepared to succor and protect all the country’s constituent parts without fear or favor. A situation where Governors, embattled by bandits and insurgents, have to scamper to, and genuflect at the Aso Rock Villa, with their elders in tow, before they are succored, is to say the least, unbecoming and demeaning. It smacks of feudalism of the vilest type.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President should order our security agencies to do periodic evaluations and appraisals of their strategies. Where a particular strategy appears to be failing or ineffective, they should quickly do a re-think and fashion out others. The insurgents have left footprints of agility and networking in visiting death and mayhem on Nigerians. Our security agencies, who have a pedigree of successes in different local and international war theaters, should be even more adept and savvy. If, for instance, piece-meal engagements with the terrorists is not paying off, is it not time to consider a surge in troops and a head-on confrontation that would overwhelm and decimate these insurgents in one fell swoop, and once and for all?
Above all, should the war on terror be an interminable one, without end? Why can’t we give our security agencies all the resources they really need and appoint for them a realistic and practicable deadline upon which it should end? For so long as the war goes on, without an end in sight, so long shall be the trauma and the grief the country will come to in terms of deaths, out-school-children, massive poverty, a sullied image and outright desolation.