Eleven years of conflict in northern Nigeria have left hundreds of thousands of children traumatised. Doctors and many other caregivers are concerned about the long-term effects on young children - and the impact on their communities as they grow up. Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris reports from Maiduguri, Nigeria.
Related stories: Video - Is Nigeria's kidnapping crisis out of control?
Video - Boko Haram victim recounts time in captivity
Gunmen release 10 Nigerian students after collecting ransom
Emmanuel Benson was planning to get his diploma in horticulture and landscaping from Nigeria’s Federal College of Forestry Mechanization next year. Now, he’s not willing to risk the return to school, after he was kidnapped by bandits with dozens of others earlier this year.
“Our lives are at risk — Nigerian students, especially in Kaduna state where we are,” the 24-year-old said. As much as he wanted to complete his studies “the kidnapping and everything that is going on haven’t stopped yet ... staying here anymore doesn’t benefit anybody.”
Benson is among a growing group of Nigerian students seeking alternative solutions to their education that won’t further endanger them, as bandits in Nigeria’s northern states grow more ambitious, staging increased kidnappings of students for ransom.
At least 25 Nigerian students who spent nearly two months in the custody of gunmen in the country’s troubled northwest region are now putting resources together in the hopes of leaving the West African nation to study in another country, like the U.S., according to teachers and parents at the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in the state of Kaduna.
Some of the students, as well as parents and teachers at the Kaduna college, told The Associated Press that after spending about seven weeks in captivity before regaining freedom in May, life hasn’t remained the same. They fear pursuing an education in Nigeria, and they are now relying on the help of a school committee overseeing their application process for overseas education.
There are no clear plans yet on how that enrollment would work out, except that they are hoping for scholarship opportunities in the U.S. or elsewhere.
Nigeria is no longer an option for them because “the country is not safe,” according to Paul Yahaya, one of the 25 students.
Many families in Kaduna state say they now stay mostly indoors over fears of attacks. Ransoms are hefty, and in Nigeria, with a national poverty rate of 40%, parents are struggling.
“Even the parents don’t have money, because they have been struggling to pay their (abducted children’s) ransom and they paid (so) much amount to the negotiators (who helped to secure the release of the children),” said Abdullahi Usman, the chairman of the committee of parents and teachers who is overseeing the application process for interested students.
If the students left, that would mean starting tertiary education afresh and losing at least three years spent so far for some.
The 25 students hoping to leave are among 1,436 students who have been abducted in the last year in Africa’s most populous country, according to Peter Hawkins, the U.N. Children’s Agency Nigeria representative. The education of up to 1.3 million Nigerian children has been affected because of the school abductions, he said.
The Kaduna school and many other schools in at least four states remain closed because of insecurity.
Kauna Daniel wants to leave, despite not having the money to do so or a passport, but is still frightened.
“I don’t want to go anywhere again,” her voice rang out angrily over the phone. She said she hasn’t been able to sleep since she was released from captivity in May because of trauma and an eye problem.
“The trauma we are passing through is getting out of hand and it is even now that everything is getting worse,” the 19-year-old said, adding almost as if she is pleading that “it is better for me to stay at home.”
The United Nations estimates that the country of more than 200 million people already has 10 million children not attending school, one of the highest rates globally, with 1 million more afraid to return to classes as schools reopen in the coming weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated those numbers, according to Save The Children Nigeria, which said 46 million Nigerian students have been affected by school closures as a result of the pandemic.
With the school abductions by groups of gunmen who often camp in abandoned forest reserves across the northwest and central parts of the country, some parents are caught in a dilemma. Should they brave the odds and send their children to schools, which are often located in remote areas, or keep them home, away from the prying eyes of the gunmen?
The Kaduna school committee chairman Usman said parents of affected students in Kaduna are “eager” for their admission to schools abroad because their children “are still vulnerable … and can be kidnapped anytime.”
Friday Sani is one such parent. He said his two daughters spent weeks in captivity along with other students of the Kaduna college, and they now await responses from places outside of Nigeria, mentally unable to return to school in the West African nation.
“The government of Nigeria needs to have a plan to better prepare education systems to respond to crises,” said Badar Musa of Save the Children International, Nigeria. “There is need for increased investment in education systems from both government and international donors.”
By Chinedu Asadu
Gunmen in Nigeria on Sunday freed 10 students abducted in the northwest Kaduna state after collecting a ransom, a school official told The Associated Press.
The Rev. John Hayab said the students were released on Sunday afternoon, nearly three months after they were seized by the gunmen in Kaduna. Their release comes about a week after 10 of their other schoolmates were also released.
Eleven of the 121 students of the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna are still being held, Hayab said, expressing frustration at the refusal of the gunmen to release all the students at once.
“If we have the power, we would have brought them,” he told AP when asked why the gunmen held back 11 students. “The bandits are the ones in control, we now have to play along softly and get our children back.”
He was referring to the gunmen who have abducted at least 1,400 schoolchildren in Nigeria in the last year, according to the U.N. children’s agency.
“Our anger is not with the bandits as it is with the government, because we can’t have a government that is supposed to protect us and the bandits are having a field day. There is no day they have ever released one child for free,” the official added.
In the wake of increasing school attacks in the northwest and central parts of Nigeria, some governors have temporarily shut down schools and imposed phone blackouts in their states as they struggle to contain security challenges in Africa’s most populous state.
The first mass school abduction in Nigeria was carried out by the Boko Haram extremist group in 2014. But the West African nation has witnessed more than 10 other attacks on schools in the last year, a sudden spike that authorities have blamed on outnumbered security operatives in remote communities where the affected schools are mostly located.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, who rode to power in 2015 on a wave of goodwill after promising to end the country’s security challenges, has come under growing pressure over the security crisis, especially regarding the gunmen abducting schoolchildren and the Boko Haram extremists.
Security analysts have told the AP the gunmen and the extremists might be working together.
By Chinedu Asadu
Related stories: Video - Boko Haram victim recounts time in captivity
Gunmen release 10 Nigerian students after collecting ransomAfter captivity, Nigerian students seek overseas education
A cholera outbreak in north Nigeria's Kano state has killed at least 329 people since March, a state government official said on Wednesday.
Addressing a media forum on the cholera outbreak in the state capital Kano city, Sulaiman Iliyasu, a disease surveillance officer in the state, said 11,475 suspected cholera cases were reported across the 44 local government areas of the state since March.
Iliyasu said out of the number, 11,115 cases had fully recovered, while 329 people had died, noting that 31 cases were still receiving treatment from three local government areas of the state as of Tuesday.
The officer said Kano ranked second in the country in terms of the number of cholera cases, adding the state government has established cholera treatment centers and intensified social mobilization and community awareness in the state as part of measures to check the disease.
Cholera is a highly virulent disease characterized in its most severe form by a sudden onset of acute watery diarrhea that can lead to death by severe dehydration.
The outbreak of cholera in Nigeria has remained persistent, occurring annually mostly during the rainy season and more often in areas with poor sanitation, overcrowding, lack of clean food and water, and areas where open defecation is a common practice.
A Nigerian court on Thursday ordered the immediate release of a woman held in detention since February accused of being a member of a banned separatist organisation, her lawyer said.
The court in Abuja ruled that the police had illegally detained Ngozi Umeadi and ordered it to pay her damages of 50 million naira ($121,500), lawyer Ejiofor Ifeanyi said.
Nigerian authorities routinely detain people for months or years without charge.
Umeadi was accused of being a member of the Indigenous People of Biafra, which campaigns for the southeastern region to secede. Nigerian authorities blame it for attacks on police stations and other targets and have been cracking down on the group, which denies wrongdoing.
IPOB members and supporters accuse the authorities of arbitrary killings and detentions in the southeast, which they deny.
Ifeanyi also represents IPOB's detained leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is facing trial for treason.
Kanu disappeared from Nigeria while on bail in 2017 after spending two years in jail. The Nigerian authorities announced in June that he had been captured abroad and brought back for his trial to resume, without explaining the circumstances.
Kanu's family and lawyers have alleged that he was illegally transferred from Kenya to Nigeria. Kenya has denied involvement.
Kanu's detention, and the fact that the authorities failed to produce him in court at the last hearing in July, have fuelled tension in the southeast, where a series of mass "sit-at-home" protests have taken place in solidarity with him.
Amnesty International said in August that Nigerian security forces had killed at least 115 people in the southeast this year and arbitrarily arrested or tortured scores of others. The authorities made no comment on the findings.
The southeast, homeland of the Igbo ethnic group, attempted to secede in 1967 under the name Republic of Biafra, triggering a three-year civil war in which more than a million people died, mostly of starvation.
