TerrorismTeaching under siege in Nigeria gripped by fear of Boko Haram
The world is waking up to Boko Haram. More than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the classes last month remain missing. A car bomb in Abuja on 1 May killed at least 19 people. Figures released by the International Crisis Group indicate that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began. The war has displaced more than half a million inhabitants, ravaged the economy of an already impoverished region and put stress on relations between Muslims and Christians as well as among Muslims. Education has been singled out for violent attacks with lethal regularity since early 2012. No less than twenty schools have been burnt, and the attacks on schools and the killing of students and teachers has become a war strategy of Boko Haram.
The world is waking up to Boko Haram. More than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the classes last month remain missing. A car bomb in Abuja on 1 May killed at least 19 people.
I live in fear of Boko Haram. The group’s insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009. Yola in Adamawa state, where I live and teach history, is relatively calm at the moment. But following the imposition of a state of emergency in 2013 many of my colleagues have fled.
The University of Maiduguri in neighboring Borno state is in a worse situation. At least three of its professors have been killed and one abducted within this period. Many students have withdrawn, teachers relocated, and academic exchange even with other Nigerian universities has virtually ceased. During a one-year sabbatical that I took there in 2012, it was shut down for six months.
Following Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’s reiteration that all schools are targets, we are all living in fear.
Education forbidden
Figures releasedby the International Crisis Group indicate that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began. The war has displaced more than half a million inhabitants, ravaged the economy of an already impoverished region and put stress on relations between Muslims and Christians as well as among Muslims.
Education has been singled out for violent attacks with lethal regularity since early 2012. No less than twenty schools have been burnt. These burnings, which started as revenge for the military’s assault on Islamic schools at Maiduguri in January 2012, have since escalated and become a war strategy of Boko Haram.
The attacks on schools can be explained even though they cannot be justified. The Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Liddawa’ati wal Jihad, better known as Boko Haram, has not hidden its disdain and opposition to western education. Its name Boko Haram is often roughly translated as “western education is forbidden”.
The group ascribes the rot in governance, corruption, conspicuous consumption of the ruling class as well as their exclusion and marginality in contemporary Nigerian society to western education and the secular system it gave rise to.
The educated elites, especially in northern Nigeria, have not been good role models in the eyes of their uneducated compatriots. This is because they are living examples of corruption, conspicuous consumption and oppression of their unlettered compatriots and co-religionists.
