Schools under attack

One morning in March, dozens of gunmen riding on motorcycles kidnapped more than 280 schoolchildren from their school premises in Kuriga, a town in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kaduna.

The gunmen were bandits, the catchall term for gangs of rampaging armed groups that continue to strike fear in the hearts of residents of the region by regularly abducting, torturing and in some cases, killing unarmed civilians. The Centre for Democracy and Development, an Abuja-based think-tank estimates that there are around 30,000 bandits active in the region today. A few weeks later, the state’s governor Uba Sani said 137 schoolchildren had been released.

The politician described reports that more people had been taken as a figment of people’s imagination. It remains unclear if any ransom was paid and how many children remain in the kidnappers’ custody. This mass abduction is a sad culmination of a series of crimes that began almost exactly ten years ago. Back in April 2014, members of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from the small town of Chibok in Borno state.

“The scale of the response shocked even Boko Haram but also emboldened it”

Since that incident, more than 1,600 schoolchildren have been kidnapped across northern and central Nigeria, according to figures from the nonprofit “Save the Children”. The abduction of the girls from Chibok was a turning point. At first, the Chibok episode was a low-key affair for the authorities. Kashim Shettima, then governor of the state and now vice-president, did not call the then president Goodluck Jonathan to inform him, saying afterwards that he expected security agencies to have briefed him.

Jonathan, a university lecturer turned reluctant politician, eventually acted after civil society leaders began a cry for help. Their actions soon snowballed into a global activist campaign “Bring Back Our Girls” with millions of social media shares and celebrity defenders from Lagos to Los Angeles, from Angelina Jolie to Kim Kardashian and Malala Yousafzai to Michelle Obama. The scale of the global response shocked even Boko Haram but emboldened it.

“Experts say children are an easy target. They stoke emotions and therefore increase the probability of ransom payments”

The ideology of the jihadists had been simple before then: to implement a strict version of Islamic law by way of a caliphate that would replace elected governments in Nigeria. The sect’s full name is Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād but its more popular moniker Boko Haram is a direct allusion to its mantra that Western education is forbidden. It intially targeted schools to disrupt education.

With the Chibok girls gaining global sympathy, the armed group - which was led by the unpredictable Abubakar Shekau until 2021 - saw an opportunity to harness its newfound fame. An exchange which saw BH commanders freed led to the release of many of the girls. The Wall Street Journal reported that a 2017 release of 82 of the schoolgirls happened after €3 million was paid surreptitiously as ransom, something government officials have refuted. Ninety of them are still missing and likely still in captivity.

Since then, Boko Haram has struck repeatedly; in February 2018, 110 girls were taken from a school in Dapchi in Yobe state and one, Leah Sharibu, remains in captivity; twenty-two months later, 303 children were taken from an all-boys institution in Kankara, Katsina state. Experts say children represent an easy target that could stoke emotions and therefore increase the probability of ransom payments. Their impressionability is also a factor, reports suggest.

“With the ransoms Boko Haram buy ammunition and stock its multimedia centre to broadcast with the world”

Indeed, the “Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack” estimates that Boko Haram has killed an estimated 2,295 teachers. Also, over 1,400 schools have been destroyed or looted, as per data from UNICEF.

While abductions of schoolchildren have made the headlines internationally, other victims have been taken too: teachers, priests, train passengers, government officials, village heads and in some cases, entire villages. Between July 2022 and June 2023 alone, ransom demands of three million were made for 3,620 people, according to data from Lagos-based geopolitical risk advisory SBM Intelligence.

Eventually, only around six percent of that was paid, though local media reports suggest that the numbers of victims and amounts paid might be much higher as many incidents go unreported. The ransoms the group has received have helped fund its operations: purchase of more sophisticated ammunition and stocking its multimedia centre in the heart of Sambisa forest, its Borno base, to broadcast with the world.

The explosion in activity has been due to a proliferation of other actors at play now besides Boko Haram and its factions. It’s a trend towards spiralling violence that has been hard to reverse. On paper, Nigeria is a federation with 36 states and 774 local government council areas.

“There is a widespread lack of investment in Nigeria’s institutions that has severely dented their capacity to perform”

But in reality, most of the power rests with the federal government. A smaller portion of resources trickle down to the states and little to nothing goes to councils, except at the whim of the governors. It is a legacy of Nigeria’s military constitution. Consequently, there are large swathes of ungoverned and under-governed spaces across the country. Nigeria’s security agencies are understaffed, underequipped and undertrained.

The country’s military spans 230,000 people, making one of the largest combat forces in Africa. However, it is overstretched in its bid fighting multiple insurgencies across the nation, including secessionist agitations in the southeast and militant activity in parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The police force has around 370,000 personnel, which adds up to one officer policing 600 citizens, far below the UN-recommended ratio of one per 450. Experts say there is a widespread lack of investment in Nigeria’s institutions that has severely dented their capacity to perform.

“The social rights of children in Nigeria are underinvested and poorly recognised by institutions across many of the areas where mass abductions continue to happen. Schools are severely underfunded and educators poorly trained,” said Leena Koni Hoffman, associate fellow of the Africa Programme at London-based think-tank Chatham House. In 2024, only 6 percent of the national budget was allocated to education, far below the 15 – 20 per cent recommended by UNESCO. And then there is the important matter of political willpower - or in this case, the lack of it.

“If present governance and security trends continue, there is scant scope for hope”

Jonathan’s lacklustre handling of the situation in part led to his historic defeat in 2015 when he was the first sitting president to lose an election. His successor was Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general who promised to bridle insecurity and tackle the institutional corruption that continues to stifle governance in Nigeria today.

Instead, his government spent the first 100 days claiming that the group had been “technically defeated” and restricting the press’s access to some of these areas. In 2023, the current President Bola Tinubu came to power. He had also promised to improve the security situation, but the problems remain unchanged.

“Addressing the security of kids requires the government to admit it has a problem”

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, an aggregator of real-time political violence data, there were around 4,550 fatalities and 7,000 kidnappings between 29 May 2023 and 22 May 2024.

Experts say if present governance and security trends continue, there is scant scope for hope. People across the north will remain vulnerable to abduction. “The Tinubu administration still doesn't have a security strategy,” says Ikemesit Effiong, head of research at SBM Intelligence.

“The last two governments and the current one have been reactionary in their posture while kidnappers have become increasingly surgical in their targeting. As a result, schools are undefended, often unfenced.” He added:  “At its heart, addressing the security of kids requires the government to admit it has a problem. However, the political will, nationally and in the north, to make that admission is absent.”