In recent months, there have been rising cases of abduction of school children from schools in seven northern states of Nigeria. This is not just one or two but we are talking about 200 to 300 students at a go. Some persons have wondered how possible it is and the kind of logistics employed in the movement of such number of students from their schools.  Others have reasoned it to be an “arrangee affair”.
Security in the education system is very crucial because the importance of education in our society today cannot be overemphasised. It is worrisome how school children are regularly taken from one location to another under threat.  The psychological trauma alone can affect their academics.
For about a decade now, some of the terrorist groups or insurgents have continued to criticiseWestern education. From recent happenings, they have been launching attack on schools to the extent that many parents have become skeptical about sending their children and wards to boarding schools.
From the cases of Chibok girls in Borno, Dapchi Girls in Yobe, Kangara Boys in Katsina, Jangebe girls in Zamfara, Kagara Boys in Niger State, to mention but a few, have become an everyday affair.Some parents have continued to wonder how safe it is to send their children to school under such threat, apprehension all over and especially sending the girls back to boarding house.
Before the closure of schools by the seven northern states about two weeks ago, parents were asked to send their children back to school but greater percentage of them were wondering if it was the same place others were kidnapped a few days before that time.One wonders how many of the schools have vans to evacuate the students, and police contacts to protect them when the bandits storm their schools.
The schools are not built in the bushes but around the residential areas so that villagers can also help in rescue operations instead of folding their arms and just giving information about the abduction.
As a nation, should parents start teaching their wards defensive measures so as to enable them secure themselves during such emergencies?  Should parents teach their wards how to jump windows and fences to secure siblings and friends in schools. Of course, the students are too tender to confront the bandits in such encounters. They don’t and cannot carry arms.
If we have to protect these children, the Federal Government should, as a matter of urgency, employ more security personnel, be it Police, Civil Defence and other security outfits that can handle some of the situations.  Every school should have about 10 well-armed security officers.
There are problems and the Federal Government should channel more funds to volatile zones, especially as it concerns education in the North. Carrying out such action is not too much for the government.
Definitely when the bandits arrive such venues they will pause, once they realise the presence of security men on the ground, may not be able to penetrate.
I remember those days in boarding school when security guards stationed at the gate without arms and nobody dared them or harassed the students, not to talk of kidnapping.  Now the story is different. Once in a while, they patrolled the school compound both day and night. Their function was to ensure that both teachers and students were secured and no external body could come in without proper identification.
Are there no security guards in those Northern schools to identify some of the bandits? They should be able to identify the routes they take. We need to understand how they watched the bandits put the students one after the other on motorcycles and drove away.
There have been calls from some quarters asking that students should be taught security measures in their various schools.  This insecurity issue in schools has lasted for so long with associated risks, especially for girls. They cannot jump windows and fences neither can they defend themselves.
Imagine a situation where they are asleep in the dormitories and suddenly heavily armed strange persons come in, the girls may not have the presence of mind as to know the direction to go. This is worrisome and their feminine nature calls for concern as they spend couple of days or weeks in the hands, of their abductors.
After the abduction of Chibok girls from their dormitories in 2014, it is appalling that the Federal Government could not set up good security architecture to ensure the safety of pupils and students in schools in the North.
As if it was a child’s play, look at the extent it has gone. The abducted girls face grave danger in terms of unwanted pregnancy as well as contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The boys are sometimes compelled to join one group or the other.
Another consequence is that their education is negatively affected.  For instance, the students are not preparing well for nationwide exams such as the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), like their mates in other regions and states since it is either they are abducted or schools are shut down by the authorities.
Recall that last year, the Federal Government shutdown schools due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, this is the time to make up for all that the students lost, yet they are being distracted.
There was a time when vigilantes were engaged to, at least, identify some of the insurgents but as time went on nobody heard about them anymore. Community heads and their subjects should be held accountable for those who perpetrate evil in their domain and report same to the appropriate quarters.  Those who are perpetrating those acts are indigenes and know the terrain. It is difficult for anyone to go into another’s domain to commit crime.
Like Mr. Mike Obi, a social analyst said, the Federal Government should wake up as there had not been any previous experience of this in the primary and secondary schools. He condemned a situation where 317 female students were kidnapped from their school at midnight by heavily armed persons.
A business consultant, Udom Ekpo, said citizens are living in a compromised environment where some persons are hypocrites and nobody seems to say the truth.The released Jangebe school girls narrated their ordeal on how the bandits threatened to kill, fry and eat them if they misbehaved.
Imagine where a girl will be taken away from her mother, the trauma alone! When you talk about the issue of Chibok girls, I am not sure all returned home and reunited with their parents.Although a lot of funny stories came up thereafter.

By: Eunice Choko-Kayode