In Northern Nigeria, Boko Haram militia aims to mold the schools through violence

Peter Omagbemi

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — At the Ali Al Yaskari primary school, the classrooms are silent. In the morning, teachers sign their names on an attendance sheet to receive their salaries, then quickly leave without teaching a single course. A few students sit under a tree, idling away their time in the sandy schoolyard.

“People are afraid to come,” said Lawana Bura, 47, the only teacher in the school on a recent day. “That’s why the classes are empty.”

It has been that way, he said, since gunmen entered the school one morning in March and shot and killed a teacher. Three other schools were attacked that day in Maiduguri, leaving a total of six teachers and four students dead.

For the past four years, the Islamist Boko Haram militia has been known to target schools, burning them down at night in its fight to install sharia law in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north. But in recent months, the group, whose name translates to “Western education is a sin,” has escalated its campaign to cripple the region’s education system.

Militants raid schools in broad daylight, killing teachers and students. They kidnap professors and order schools to shut down, forcing thousands of children to seek an education in safe zones protected by soldiers or outside the region if they can afford it

The schools are being destroyed in an impoverished, long-neglected part of the country, where children were already struggling to receive an education. Many of the schools attacked didn’t have desks, textbooks and other resources.

“The schools are the bedrock to change the minds of people,” said Babangida Labaran Usman, a senior investigation officer with Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission. “They are perfect targets for the Boko Haram.”

The assaults underscore how dramatically the conflict in Africa’s most populous nation has changed this year — from a simmering homegrown insurgency to a guerrilla conflict that has spread into neighboring countries and entered its most violent stage. Nigerian officials and analysts say Boko Haram militants are using more sophisticated military tactics and weaponry brought back from the battlefields of Mali.

Since 2009, militants have attacked churches, mosques, police stations and government buildings across the north, killing an estimated 3,000 people in more than 700 attacks. During the past few months, hundreds more have died as the militants have launched bold incursions into small towns and villages, prompting retaliatory attacks by Nigerian security forces. The insurgents have also kidnapped Westerners and government officials for ransom and have attacked military bases and soldiers heading to help quell the Islamist insurgency in northern Mali.

Much of the violence has occurred in Borno state. Eight schools have been burned there this year, said Musa Inuwa Kubo, the state education commissioner. Maiduguri is the state’s capital and the cradle of the insurgency.

Some Nigerian government officials say the attacks on schools reflect Boko Haram’s increasing number of recruits and shifting tactics. An overstretched government security force, which has gone after the militants in their jungle bases, has been unable to protect the schools in towns and villages.

The Washington post

 

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