Secondary school students as soft targets of kidnappers

THE alarm raised recently by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) on the rising wave of abduction of students by kidnappers should be of serious concern to the country. The agency lamented that between December 2020 and now, a total of 950 students had been abducted from schools by armed men. The most recent of these abductions took place at Bethel Baptist School in Kaduna, where 150 students were taken away by the outlaws. In a statement by its Executive Director, Henrietta Fore, UNICEF said: “On July 5th, 150 students were reportedly abducted from a school in Nigeria’s Kaduna State, marking the latest incident in an alarming spate of attacks against children and abductions, including of students, in parts of West and Central Africa. Such incidents appear to be increasing in frequency, raising fears for the safety and well-being of the region’s children. Already in 2020, according to the latest report of the United Nations Secretary-General on children and armed conflict, one in three child victims of grave violations has been in West and Central Africa.”

UNICEF further said that though Nigeria was at the forefront of this assault, Burkina Faso also ranked high in Africa among countries where violations of international humanitarian law are predominant, especially with the killing, on June 5, of about 130 villagers in the Yagha province of the country, an attack that lasted for many hours. UNICEF however focused on child victims, categorising the recent attack as “the single deadliest attack in the country since the outbreak of violence in 2015.” It further lamented that this month alone, “178 civilians have been killed, including children” and that “more than 1.2 million people, 61 per cent of whom are children, are now displaced because of violence; a 10-fold increase in just the last three years.” The United Nations’ analysis of the menace is no less scary. It estimates that apart from the 950 students abducted from Nigerian schools since December, in the last six weeks, about 500 children “were abducted in four separate incidents across the central and northwest parts of the country. Many of these children have not yet been returned. It is hard to fathom the pain and fear that their families and loved ones are suffering in their absence.”

These serial abductions are emblematic of state failure. Over 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped months ago by unidentified gunmen from a school in Jangebe, Zamfara State. Armed gangs have made a pastime of seizing schoolchildren and asking for ransom thereafter. In Zamfara, the kidnappers who abducted school children even asked for foodstuff to feed them and in Kaduna State, over 300 secondary school children were also abducted recently. The consequences of persisting insecurity in Nigeria, especially in the North-East, have been huge and far-reaching, especially with the disruption of farming and life generally in the areas of impact. The kidnapping of children makes the menace more debilitating. Apart from leaving parents distraught and helpless, it would further discourage them from sending their children to school. It is tragic that amidst the pandemic of having the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, Nigeria has to confront the menace of serial abduction of school children.

This perhaps is why the UNICEF has been hugely concerned about the implications of kidnapping and general insecurity in Nigeria and the deleterious effects on the education of Nigerian children. With the growing closure of schools and the reluctance of parents to allow their children and wards to go to school again, the country is set to lose a whole generation of children. This portends a bleak future. It approximates a mortgaging of the future of the children and of the country itself. The Nigerian government cannot, therefore, continue to pretend that all is well. This is a crisis that speaks to the failure of government and governance: it shows that there is an absence of government, properly so called, in Nigeria at the moment. Where a government is unable to guarantee security for the people, governance is in abeyance.

We enjoin the government to wake up to its responsibility of securing Nigeria, particularly schoolchildren. It should apprehend the full implications of the reports by UNICEF and the United Nations and take urgent and concrete steps to arrest the continuing descent into anarchy. Delay is dangerous.

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