Latest news Terrible "free school" in Nigeria
Islamist terrorists have wanted it for a long time, criminal gangs have now done it: tens of thousands of schools in Nigeria have been closed within a few days for fear of attacks. Up to hundreds of thousands of children and young people in the north of the giant West African state now have to make dangerous journeys home to villages, some of them far away, where they face the threat of work and hunger.
30.11.2025, 08:15
SDA
Girls must reckon with never seeing the inside of a school again and being forced into marriage. Many worried parents believe they are protecting their daughters from abduction.
Thousands of pupils have been victims of mass abductions
"I wish we had finished our exams before the school closed. I was already prepared for the exams," 14-year-old Wulnaan from the state of Plateau told the German Press Agency (DPA). He does not want to stay. "I am worried about my safety and pray that God will continue to protect us."
Nigeria has been experiencing repeated kidnappings of large groups of students for years. In 2014, Islamists from the terrorist militia Boko Haram (meaning "Western education is a sin") abducted 274 schoolgirls from a boarding school in Chibok in the north-east of the country. Since then, according to various surveys, more than a dozen other similar cases have affected a total of around 2,500 pupils.
New attacks have nonetheless electrified the country. Most recently, more than 320 children and a dozen teachers were abducted from schools and 38 Christians from a church within a week in the states of Kebbi, Niger and Kwara.
From terrorists to gangs
The most recent cases are mostly not attributable to Islamists who wanted to impose a Sharia state, but to gangs. The transitions are fluid. In the largely starving Muslim north of the country, armed groups are increasingly an important employer. Young men see their only lucrative future in joining gangs and attacking villages with motorcycles and assault rifles - with or without religious ideology. Thousands of abductees of all ages are ransomed for horrendous sums every year or die under the strain in the bush.
Now the cases have become so frequent that nine federal states have announced that they will close schools completely or partially. This was necessary to protect the lives of pupils and teachers until the government could guarantee safety. The Ministry of Education initially announced that 47 boarding schools would be closed, but denied this a few days later. Nevertheless, according to the NGO Amnesty International, at least 20,468 schools will now have to close.
"My children were about to take their final exams when the closure hit them. The schools will probably not reopen this year," Sule Lazarus, father of four, in Plateau state, told DPA. The closure order caught the school completely off guard, says Peter Datong, a vice-principal from Plateau. "Now we are in the dark and don't know when the school will reopen so that we can finish the semester. This is not a good situation for us in the schools and for the country, because it shows how much uncertainty has gripped the country."
Boarding schools as easy prey
The situation is hitting families in rural areas the hardest. Boarding schools are their only chance of an education and are easy prey for attackers. The school in Niger state from which 300 children were kidnapped last week is located in a remote area in order to offer education there, said Dan Atori, spokesman for the local Christian Association of Nigeria.
"The students come from different remote communities, some of which are quite far from the school," Atori described. "The only way for the students to get home is by motorcycle. They usually ride a motorcycle from school, then take a boat and finally a motorcycle again to get to their villages."
Nigeria already held the record for the highest number of children not attending school. According to the NGO Save the Children, around 19 million children in Nigeria do not attend school due to danger, poverty or cultural factors. According to the children's charity Unicef, every third child between the ages of 5 and 17 has to work, and in rural areas half of all girls are married before the age of 18.
Millions of children without schooling
"What we are currently witnessing in northern Nigeria is an attack on childhood and a complete failure to ensure the safety of schoolchildren and teachers. School children are not the only ones in danger. Hundreds of towns and villages have been suffering from frequent attacks by armed men for many years," says Isa Sanusi, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.
According to current UN estimates, Nigeria has a population of just under 240 million. Half of them are children and young people under the age of 18. The violence has completely ruined the economy in the north of the country and plunged people into abject poverty. According to the World Food Program, more than 27 million people are starving, and this figure could rise significantly next year.
Outrage at the powerlessness of the state
There is great outrage in the metropolis of Lagos, the capital Abuja and other parts of the country. Anger is directed above all at the impotence of the state in the face of the arrogance of armed gangs. A video by the kidnappers of 24 girls in Kebbi state caused particular anger: in it, they proudly announced that they had been released on their own terms rather than through military pressure. Many Nigerians see it as a humiliation that pupils cannot go to school for weeks because of such demonstrations of power by armed groups.
President Bola Tinubu declared a national security emergency. The police and army are to be increased, with around 20,000 new posts planned for the police alone. However, the scale of the situation puts this into perspective: Nigeria's armed forces already number around 300,000 active personnel, plus around 370,000 police officers.
Critics point out that the problem lies less in numbers than in inadequate equipment, poor pay and corruption. Dozens of the most recently abducted were released under unclear circumstances - fueling accusations that authorities had secretly paid ransom money.
