GAWE: The need for quality and Inclusive Education for All. Our Schools Must Be Safe.

The school is a play where we build the future of the people, we call future leaders. A place where we cultivate the future of our country. The case in Nigeria has proven to be different from the abduction of 1114 school children in the past year. The Nigerian schools have been subjects of attack since 2011, being chips in the hand of terrorists in the struggle between the government and the terror groups.

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When the Chibok girls were abducted in 2014, the world is of the belief is that the kidnapping is a one-stop thing that will not re-occur. Today, attacks on schools and abduction of school children have become so normal that it doesn’t bother many Nigerians.

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Thousands of children in the region have been killed, maimed, abducted, displaced, and experienced multiple violations of their human rights. On many occasions, the attacks were meted out on the children while they are in the school; where they are being groomed to become leaders and contributors to the country’s social and economic development.

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Unicef Nigeria’s office has repeatedly put out a statement that millions of Nigerian children have been caught up in zones characterized by violence. This, no doubt, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of students dropping out of school in the affected regions. With households fleeing their country home and IDP Camps rejecting new applicants because they are occupied beyond capacity, children have been forced to live without education.

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The Nigerian educational system and structure have been under immense attack in several ways by the attacks from the terror struggles since they begin in 2009. The attacks have taken different forms;?attacks on students, teachers, and other education personnel; military use of schools and universities; forcing or attracting (recruiting) children into joining armed groups at school or on the way to school; sexual violence at, or on the way to or from, school or university and attacks on higher education.

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The Nigerian government following the abduction of school children in Borno State rushly made the announcement of the commencement of the Safe School Initiative at the World Economic Forum in Abuja. The initiative was designed to ensure all schools in Nigeria are safe from attacks in the future.

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The Safe Schools Initiative, at the start, was expected to reach over 500 schools, especially in vulnerable areas, through a $10 million fund pledged by a coalition of Nigerian business leaders, working with the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, the Global Business Coalition for Education and A World at School. The following day, government committed an additional $10 million. During the following weeks, commitments were made by the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, and the African Development Bank to support the initiative.

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Several promises as to the implementation plan of the programme designed to keep the school environments safe was made. As of today, it is not clear how much has been raised and how much has been done to keep schools safe. However, a document (Nigeria Safe Schools MDTF Financial Reporting on Sources and Uses of Funds For the period ending 31 December 2019 indicated that $1,750,240 was donated in 2018. In that same year, $1,736,316 was spent, according to The Guardian.

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Safe School Initiative, though recording little success, is one among several initiative that have been PRed as the solution to the issue of school children abduction in Nigeria and has failed to meet the standard set by the PR like many others of such initiative.

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The Nigerian education system have suffered from several other attacks, and they all have evidently prove that the system is vulnerable and not prepared to protect the students. The outbreak of Covid-19 slammed the door of the Nigerian schools on the student and teachers. The statistic has it on record that Nigeria accounts for 1 out of every out of school children around the world. This is a situation further exercabated by the outbreak of the virus and the lockdown imposed on the schools.

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There’s an unnegotiable need for the schools to be safe for learning; for the students and the teachers among other persons involved in the educational structure. There is thee need to cultivate practices and policies that keep the school a safe haven for the children in Nigeria.

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In order to keep the school safe, there is the need for all stakeholders to frontline the commitment. There is the need for the school to put in place a structure that could prevent invasion, and the teachers should be able to carry out preventive surveillance. All the school school create a security plan that enables the school children to know what to do whenever there is an emergency.

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It is necessary that schools with boarding facilities are properly fenced round with gate, CCTVs installed where possible and properly lit. Building of new schools and renovation of school buildings should have provision for strong windows and doors to create kind of safe rooms which will help school authorities to fortify protection of children in case of any alarming situation before external help will come from outside. Picking up of children after school hours should be seriously monitored. Only parents or duly assigned students should be allowed to pick students from schools. School buses should be registered with ministries of education and security agencies and they should be closely monitored by security agencies while picking and dropping children. This will help in transmitting information to these buses carrying children in case of security risks suspected or occurring along their routes to halt them before they run into such risk areas while carrying children. School management should also inspect all school buses before take-off and drivers’ numbers and ID should be ready for supply to relevant agencies when quickly needed. Where possible, school buses should have tracking devices installed to help in recovering buses and students in extreme cases.

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Olasupo Abideen is a Good Governance, Youth Investment, Education activist and Public

Policy enthusiast. He is the Executive Director, Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative. Please send comments and feedback to?[email protected]?. He tweets @opegoogle.