The symptomatic failure of government, to protect the priceless lives of its citizens – more delicately, that of the defenceless school children – as rightly enshrined in Section 14 Subsection (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), has been amply exhibited by the infamous kidnap of 276 school girls from the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State in 2014. It is a crying shame that 10 years after the ugly incident, 89 of the girls are still in captivity.

According to a recent report released by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) more than 1,680 other children have been abducted while at school and elsewhere across the country.

Painfully, 180 of such children were killed due to attacks on schools, with an estimated 60 staff kidnapped and 14 of them also sent to their early graves. There have also been more than 70 attacks on schools, according to verified reports by the United Nations (UN).

While presenting the report, titled: ‘Minimum Standards for Safe Schools (MSSS) Monitoring Report’, at the UN House, Abuja, UNICEF Nigeria’s Chief of Education, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, aptly noted that the journey toward ensuring every Nigerian child could learn in a safe environment was far from over. Sadly, the report highlighted that only 37% of schools across 10 states have early warning systems. That is the crux of the matter.

So significant the issue of school safety has become that April 14 remains painfully memorable, not only to the affected families of the girls, aged between 16 and 18, who fell as helpless victims to the kidnap but to the global community. Indeed, it inspired the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, spearheaded by the trio of former Minister of Education, Obiagelli Ezekwesili, lawyer and child rights advocate, Maryam Uwais, and Saudatu Mahdi, who runs a women’s rights group helping to strengthen anti-violence legislation.

Though they were outraged by the conspiracy of silence and indifference from the then Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima (incidentally now Vice President) and of course, the then President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration that considered it as a deliberate act of mischief to bring the government down, the campaign went on to attract global attention. In fact, the wife of former US President at the time, Michelle Obama, joined the campaign to give it the needed traction.

But 10 years after, more has been said than done by succeeding governments to get the dehumanised girls, many of who got impregnated by their captors to regain the long-desired freedom.

On his part, the Country Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, Mr Isa Sanusi, has expressed disappointment with the Federal Government over its failure to rescue the remaining girls.

It is on record that during his presidential campaign in 2015, former President Muhammadu Buhari, who was then the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while addressing a town hall meeting in Abuja in March of the same year, promised to roll out plans to end insurgency in the country, if elected.

Subsequently, in January 2016 he went on to set up a five-man committee headed by then National Security Adviser (NAS), Babagana Monguno, to investigate the abductions of the schoolgirls, after a meeting with the #BringBackOurGirls campaign group. Unfortunately, despite its efforts, the government failed to secure the release of all the girls before leaving office in May last year.

With over 1,680 other school children having fallen as voiceless victims to similar kidnap in a decade and only 37% of schools in a meagre 10 out of 36 states are currently equipped with warning systems it has become a clarion call on the government to do the needful. What then is the way forward on school safety?

Though the South South Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, has asked President Bola Tinubu to urgently set up a special task force whose members would travel to Sambisa forest to search for the abducted Chibok girls, there should be a holistic approach to school safety.

The Federal Government in 2021 expanded the role of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to include the deployment of personnel to protect schools and educational facilities.

And in October 2023 the Minister of State for Education, Dr. Yusuf Sununu, said that the implementation of the Safe Schools Policy to prevent schools from further attacks had commenced. But the situation has worsened. More than 280 pupils and teachers at the Government Secondary School and LEA Primary School, Kuriga I, in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State, were abducted on March 7, 2024.

To find sustainable solutions to the menace of kidnapping of pupils and students in schools in Nigeria, there should be laws put in place making it compulsory for them to have safety warning systems.

Also, there should be frequent meetings between the Parents/Teachers Association and the school authorities, to come up with pragmatic partnership along with the community leaders, the local vigilantes and the police.

Above all, stiff punishments should be meted out to all those found culpable in the previous kidnappings, to serve as a deterrent to those planning similar incidents. Now is the time to do away with the culture of impunity.

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