NIGERIA: Since December 2020, 1,436 school children and 17 school instructors have been abducted in Nigeria’s northeastern and north-central regions, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). UNICEF also stated that 16 of the abducted students were slain by their kidnappers.
Peter Hawkins, the UNICEF representative in Nigeria, stated this on the eighth anniversary of the Chibok girls’ kidnapping.
Hawkins further mentioned that the education of around 1.3 million school pupils has been tampered with and 11,536 schools have been entirely closed owing to chronic insecurity challenges in the regions.
“However, more school children, particularly female children, have been denied access to education as a result of this.”
“Girls account for 60% of the country’s nearly 10 million out-of-school children,” Hawkins stated.
It is, however, against every citizen’s human and educational rights to be denied adequate, quality, and access to education as a result of crises produced by abduction and kidnapped for ransom, since it has posed additional problems to the affected individual’s futures.
Furthermore, retaliatory attacks on educational buildings have rendered learning ineffective and dangerous for students to attend.
As a result, there will be an increase in the number of out-of-school children, as parents will be hesitant to send their children to hazardous schools, and children will be hesitant to attend school for fear of being abducted.
Some of the issues created by attacks on school buildings, according to Hawkins, include placing an undue burden on students, as well as mental and bodily pains.
“In order to arrest the situation and make school and everywhere safe for school children,” Hawkins stated.
“Organised and collaborative actions are essential to delivering a lasting solution to the ongoing insecurity in the educational sector and Nigeria as a whole.”
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