The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday said that Boko Haram’s attacks against civilian populations in Northeast Nigeria and its neighbouring countries have forced some one million children out of school.
A new report from the agency, a copy of which was made available to our correspondent said over 2,000 schools had remained closed while hundreds had been attacked by insurgents across Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
The report also said that the number of children missing out on their education due to the conflict adds to the estimated 11 million children of primary school age who were already out of school in the four countries before the onset of the crisis.
In an address, Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Director, said the conflict has been a huge blow for education in the region, and violence had kept many children out of the classroom for more than a year, putting them at risk of dropping out of school altogether.
The UNICEF official added that approximately 600 teachers had been killed since the start of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria alone.
UNICEF said it has supported 170,000 children back into education in the safer areas of the three states most in Nigeria affected by the conflict, where the majority of schools have been able to re-open.
“The challenge we face is to keep children safe without interrupting their schooling,” said Fontaine. “Schools have been targets of attack, so children are scared to go back to the classroom; yet the longer they stay out of school, the greater the risks of being abused, abducted and recruited by armed groups,” he explained.
So far, UNICEF has received 44 per cent of the funding required in 2015 to respond to the humanitarian needs of children in Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad.
And in 2016, UNICEF will need nearly $23 million to provide access to education for children affected by conflicts in the four countries, most of whom live around the Lake Chad region.
-Leadership