Fourteen states, along with the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, are under the looming threat of assaults by bandits and insurgents, as cautioned by Hajia Halima Iliya, the National Coordinator of Financing Safe Schools in Nigeria.
She told The PUNCH on Sunday, that the data of at-risk schools had been collected for intervention.
Iliya did not name the states, but the Commander of the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre, Nigeria Security, and Civil Defence Corps, Hammed Abodunrin, said the states are Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Benue, Yobe, Katsina, FCT, Kebbi, Sokoto, Plateau, Zamfara and three others.
Iliya said the Federal Ministry of Education, the police and the NSCDC had trained their men and senior officers, including all divisional police officers across the country on Safe Schools.
She said the security agencies had acquired equipment that would be deployed to various state commands for the operations.
“Data on at-risk schools from 14 states, including the FCT have so far been collected for intervention. The Defence headquarters and DSS (Department of Security Services) are expected to mainstream Safe Schools through capacity building of their officers. N15b was provided and released as takeoff in 2023; utilisation is still ongoing,’’ she stated.
Abodunrin said the four-year project was being implemented simultaneously in all the states but in phases, adding that it began with the sensitisation and training of security personnel late last year.
He said the latest abductions of school pupils was condemnable saying the attackers operated in locations with poor telecommunication service.
Abodunrin said, “The attacks are unfortunate. What the attackers do is to look for soft targets. They now go to villages where they feel they can quickly operate before help can come. They also target when communication networks are bad. The cases in Ekiti and Kaduna are examples where community members could not quickly call for help. There is also the need to raise more awareness in the communities.
“There is a need for more cooperation. Schools are to register on www.nssrcc.gov.ng detailing their addresses and at least a phone number. Registration is free. Any registered school will automatically be on a database with their coordinates for easy accessibility.
“There are patrols. Global standards do not allow security operatives to be in schools for various reasons. Those who want to target them may kill or injure students and other members of the school communities in the process. There will be more patrols.’’
He said security requires personal attention, adding that based on this students and teachers would be given training on personal safety and protection.
“Equipment and platforms are also being developed to facilitate easy communication even without a network. They will be trained on this too. Capacity of various communities are being built in the areas of personal security and information management for effective preventive and response efforts,’’ he disclosed.
About 465 pupils, teachers, and women kidnapped in the past week are still in captivity.
It would be recalled that in the early hours of Saturday, 15 pupils of an Islamiya school in Sokoto State were kidnapped , less than 72 hours after 287 schoolchildren and teachers were abducted from the LEA primary school and the Government Secondary School both at Kuriga, in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
However, 28 of them escaped on Sunday, leaving 259 with the captors.
A few days before the Kaduna incident, 200 female Internally Displaced Persons were taken away by terrorists in Borno State.
The women were kidnapped in Ngala, the headquarters of Gambarou Ngala in Borno state while fetching firewood in the bush.
On Sunday, there were reports that nine of them had regained freedom remaining 191 in captivity.
Penultimate Thursday, bandits abducted an undisclosed number of people in the Gonin-Gora community in the same Chikun LGA of Kaduna, prompting residents to barricade the Kaduna-Abuja Expressway in protest.
As a response to the April 2014 abduction of the Chibok school girls, the Safe Schools Initiative was launched by the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, alongside the Nigerian Global Business Coalition for Education and private sector leaders at the World Economic Forum Africa.