The Presidency has lamented the impact of insurgency and banditry on school attendance in the country.
Chief of Staff to the President, Ibrahim Gambari said this on Tuesday at the fourth International Conference on Safe Schools Declaration in Abuja. Gambari, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the event, blamed increased insurgency and banditry for the rise in the number of out-of-school children.
“The incessant attacks on the country’s education system in the form of kidnapping, abduction of pupils; students through the increased activities of insurgents and general insecurity in our schools have been chief among contributing factors responsible for the growing number of out-of-school children.
“These perpetrators of evil, having turned their attention to innocent children in boarding schools or institutions outside city limits, adopt young learners in large numbers,” Gambari said.
He pointed out that fear of abduction and a traumatic experience from school children, who have been victims of kidnapping, has forced many children of school age to stay out of educational institutions, thereby increasing the problem of out-of-school children.
The Chief of Staff, however, assured Nigerians that the government is mindful of the fact that, to record adequate achievements in the education sector, the system would require a total overhaul and changes to improve the education sector.
Meanwhile, 12 million children are reported to have been affected by the rise in insecurity in the country
The first mass school abduction in the country was in the northeast region in 2014, when Boko Haram members picked 276 girls from Chibok, triggering a global campaign called #BringBackOurGirls.
Since then, attacks on schools “have grown in number and spread across the northern part of the country,” President Buhari’s Chief of Staff said during the conference.
“There are more than 12 million children currently traumatized and afraid of going to school”. Girls were particularly affected, he added.
Gambari said further that “even when the abducted students are released, the trauma of the incidences remain long in their minds.”
