According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at least one million Nigerian children may miss school this year as the new school year begins amid an increase in mass school kidnappings and insecurity.
Armed groups in northern Nigeria have used schools as a target for mass kidnappings for ransom. Kidnappings like this were originally carried out in Nigeria by the Islamist group Boko Haram, then by its spinoff Islamic State West Africa Province, but criminal gangs have now embraced the practice.
This year, there have been 20 attacks on schools in Nigeria, with over 1,400 students abducted and 16 killed, according to UNICEF, with more than 200 children still missing.
“As a result of the surge of school attacks and student abductions in Nigeria, learners are being cut off from their education,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF representative in Nigeria.
According to UNICEF, more than 37 million Nigerian children will begin the new school year this month. After schools were stopped due to COVID-19 lockdowns, an estimated eight million people had to wait more than a year for in-person learning.
In Nigeria, school cancellations are also a result of insecurity.
Several western states have sought to stem the tide of kidnappings by prohibiting the selling of gasoline in jerry cans and the shipment of firewood in trucks, in an effort to disrupt gangs that travel by motorcycle and camp in remote locations.
After kidnappers seeking ransoms targeted schools in neighboring states, the start of the school year in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, was pushed back to an extremely late date with no explanation.
