In Eight Years, Terrorists Kill Over 2000 Teachers in Nigeria, 19,000 Others Displaced, Says FHIPD-Africa

The Chairman of Farmers Herders Initiative for Peace and Development Africa (FHIPD – AFRICA), Salim Umar has said that over 2,000 teachers have been killed by  bandits and terrorists since 2014. 

In a paper he presented on Friday in Kaduna at a workshop for staff of the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) from  the North Central zone, he said  over 19,000 teachers  were displaced from their places of assignments while over 1,500 schools were  destroyed in the last eight years.

Umar said, in the past 15 years, the challenges of insecurity, especially, in the north, has brought new obstacles to the survival of the NCNE.
He noted that banditry and kidnapping had resulted in loss of human lives and cattle, “as well as inability to graze or cultivate farmlands by nomads and host communities alike.”

According to him, “The growth of extortionist banditry has added new dimensions to Nigeria’s educational sector, with over 2000 teachers killed and over 19,000 displaced from their places of assignments as well as over 1,500 schools destroyed since 2014.

“This negative development has resulted in an increase in out of school children and drop in new enrolments across the board in formal and non-formal sectors of our school system”. 

According to him,  the  challenges facing the NCNE include the inability of nomandic teachers to access  places of their assignments; displacement of migrant communities, occupation of nomadic schools by terrorists, conversion of schools to IDP camps or military zones and threat of kidnapping among others. 

Speaking while declaring the workshop opened, the Executive Secretary of the the NCNE, Prof. Bashir  Usman, lamented that  insecurity characterised by violent, communal clashes, cattle rustling, kidnapping,  banditry, and sea piracy has affected the smooth implementation of the Nomadic Education programme(NEP).

Usman who was represented  by the Director, Quality Assurance, Akin Akinyosoye, said the high level of insecurity has resulted in the complete abandonment of schools and frequent migration thereby increasing  the high rate of out-of-school children.

He said, “The implementation of the NEP in the country is faced with numerous challenges most especially the issue of insecurity.
“The resultant effect of the insecurity on the programme include among others loss of lives and destructions of school facilities. 
“This therefore has worsened the rate of high teacher completion and transition.”
He said the workshop was  aimed at

developing the capacity of data collectors to generate evidence-based data on the root causes of the conflict and insecurity. 
“It is expected that at the end of the exercise reliable and valid data would be generated through the interaction with local communities and other critical stakeholders on the remote and immediate causes of the conflict and insecurity.

“Based on findings from the exercise, it is hoped that the commission would, in the future train local communities on strategies to be applied in addressing the emerging challenges and response to the early warning of potential conflicts,” he said. 

By John Shiklam 

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