IBADAN — The Registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Prof Josiah Ajiboye said more than 600,000 children have lost access to education due to insecurity in some parts of Nigeria.
Ajiboye disclosed while delivering a paper at the 2022 National Delegates Conference of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, in Ibadan, added that over 1,500 schools were forced to close down due to insurgency.
He also said that over 2,295 teachers were killed in the North East from 2009–2022, added that over 19,000 others have been displaced, and over 910 schools were damaged or destroyed due to the conflict.
The Registrar called on the Federal Government to review its security architecture to address the deteriorating security and violent attacks on schools and for full implementation of the Safe Schools Declarations guidelines endorsed by Nigeria in 2015 and ratified by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
“As a way forward, federal, state, and local education authorities should facilitate the immediate implementation of the National Policy on Safety, Security and Violence Free Schools, NPSSVFS, by making budgetary provisions.
“Federal Government to increase domestic education expenditure of 50 percent over the next two years as committed at the Global Partnership for Education, GPE, Education Summit.
“Attacks on education could create lead to discouragement, early marriage, early pregnancy, and stigma associated with sexual violence and children born from rape, all of which can dramatically affect female students’ futures.”
“Schools used for various military purposes, as barracks for insurgents, further contributed to parents’ and students’ fears about the safety of sending their children, and especially their daughters, back to school after the insurgents had departed,” Prof Ajiboye said.
He said the destruction of school buildings, classrooms, students’ hostels, staff quarters, laboratories, and equipment will require billions of naira to fix which affects the economy of the nation.
The Registrar noted that attacks on schools and terrorism have reduced foreign investment in Nigeria, thereby putting much pressure on our local economy.
“The cost of security expenditure to manage violence and conflict as well as its economic impact has increased since 2007, almost doubling from $69.3 billion to $132.6 billion in 2019, according to data from the 2021 Economic Value of Peace report by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP). Likewise, between June 2011 and March 2020, at least $18.3 million has been paid to kidnappers as ransom, according to a report by SBM Intelligence.
“A school is considered to be safe if schools and learning centers are violence-free environments, schools and learning centers can mitigate the effects of natural hazards; schools and learning centers could address conflict; schools and learning centers could prevent or mitigate the effects of everyday hazards, and school infrastructure is safe,” Prof Ajiboye said.
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