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From Timothy Olanrewaju Maiduguri
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has urged the governments in Nigeria to provide safety for learners in schools.
Unucef yesterday in a statement released to mark the eighth years of the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls, expressed concern about the unsafe school environment due to increasing attacks and abductions.
“Unsafe schools, occasioned by attacks on schools and abduction of students, are reprehensible, a brutal violation of the rights of the victims to education, and totally unacceptable,” UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins said.
Hawkins said attacks on learning institutions render the learning environment insecure and also discourage parents as well as caregivers from sending their wards to schools.
“The learners themselves become fearful of the legitimate pursuit of learning,” he added.
He said girls have particularly been targeted in most of the attacks on schools, a development which he noted, exacerbating the figures of out-of-school children in Nigeria. He said 60 percent of the out-of-schools are girls.
He said 1,436 school children and 17 teachers have been abducted from schools, and16 school children died in such attacks while a total of 11, 536 schools were closed since December 2020 due to incessant attacks
Today marks the eighth years when 2760 girls were abducted at a public school in Chibok, a town in the southern part of Borno State by Boko Haram. The 14th April, 2014, the first mass abduction in a school in Nigeria, drew international condemnation. Over a hundred of the girls either fled the captivity or were rescued by the security but still leaving about 130 with the abductors
