Again!!! Unicef warning over school closures in Northeast

Nigerian soldiers stand outside the Government Girls Secondary School , Chibok in Borno State , Nigeria . PHOTO : AFP Photo / Stefan Heunis
Most schools in the state worst- hit by the Boko Haram conflict remain shut, the UN said on Friday, blaming the jihadists for deliberating targeting education.
Unicef , the UN children’ s agency , said at least 57 percent of schools in Borno state were closed as the new academic year began this month , with teacher numbers as well as buildings badly hit by the violence .

More than 2 , 295 teachers have been killed and 19 , 000 displaced, while nearly 1 , 400 schools have been destroyed in eight years of fighting, it added in a statement .
Schools were shut because they were too badly damaged or were located in areas still deemed unsafe despite a sustained military fight - back against the Islamist militants since 2015 .

Unicef warned the situation threatened to create “a lost generation of children , threatening their and the country ’ s future” if nothing was done .
The agency ’ s deputy executive director Justin Forsyth said on a visit to the northeast that the effect of the insurgency on education was “no accident”.

“This was a deliberate strategy (by Boko Haram) to destroy opportunity for children to go to school, ” he told AFP in a telephone interview from the Borno state capital , Maiduguri.
Boko Haram’ s name roughly translates from the Hausa language spoken widely across northern Nigerian to “Western education is sin ”.

Its fighters have repeatedly targeted schools teaching a secular curriculum.
Children made homeless by fighting
In March last year, the Borno state government said 5 , 335 classrooms and school buildings in 512 primary, 38 secondary and two tertiary institutions had been damaged or destroyed.

Boko Haram’ s kidnapping of more than 200 girls from their school in the Borno town of Chibok in April 2014 brought global attention to the conflict .
Forsyth said some three million children needed emergency education support but there was a huge shortfall to fund Unicef ’ s programmes in the region, he added .
Some 750 , 000 children have been enrolled in school this year in Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa, which have also been badly hit by the fighting.
For some , such as those in camps for those made homeless by the conflict , it is the first time they have received formal teaching .
Overall , at least 20 , 000 people have been killed in the fighting and more than 2 .6 million made homeless.

Nigeria ’ s military and government claim the Islamic State group affiliate is a spent force but attacks , including suicide bombings , remains a constant threat.