At least one million children have displaced, 910 schools destroyed while 1,500 other schools were closed, over 611 teachers killed and 19,000 teachers forced to flee north Eastern Nigeria between the year 2009 and 2015 due to attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group according to the United Nations reports the Premium Times.
“By early 2016, an estimated 952,029 school-age children had fled the violence. Teachers are at risk,” said Oluseyi Soremekun, UN National Information Officer quoted a UN report “Launch of the 2016 Global Education Monitoring Report in Nigeria” that is to be launched on Monday in Abuja.
“Across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, over 2,000 schools remain closed due to the conflict — some of them for more than a year — and hundreds have been attacked, looted or set on fire. In far north Cameroon, only one out of the 135 schools closed in 2014 has re-opened this year,” the UNICEF said
“In its brutal crusade against western-style education, Boko Haram is robbing an entire generation of children in northeast Nigeria of their education,” said Mausi Segun, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should urgently provide appropriate schooling for all children affected by the conflict.”
According to the Human Rights Watch, an estimated 2.2 million people, including about 1.4 million children, have fled the fighting in the northeast, according to UNICEF, which says that 952,029 of the displaced are children of school age. Only about 10 percent of the children are in government-recognized displacement camps, where some educational services are provided by volunteer teachers. The remaining 90 percent are with friends and family members, with little or no access to schooling.
The Government of Nigeria estimates that the reconstruction of the damaged northeast will cost $9 billion.
