Revamping schools’ security in high-risk states

BY LEKAN OLAYIWOLA

Instead of carrying the future of Nigeria in their schoolbags, children are being carried into forests as bargaining chips. Beyond being a crime, each abduction is an indictment of the nation’s conscience. Families are left broken, communities paralysed, and the country’s credibility shaken.

When a nation records nearly a thousand school children abductions between just two states in five years,  that is not mere statistics; they are hundreds of families who wake each morning to empty chairs at the breakfast table, hundreds of classrooms where learning has been replaced by fear.

The Geography of Fear

Nigeria’s school security risks follow patterns of geography, infrastructure, and governance realities. Kaduna, Zamfara, Niger, Kebbi, Katsina, and Sokoto currently sit at the heart of high vulnerability. According to the Nigeria Risk Index, Kaduna alone saw 518 schoolchildren abducted between 2018 and 2024, while Zamfara recorded 476 in the same period. 518 households in Kaduna whose lives were violently rearranged, and 476 communities in Zamfara that learned to sleep with one ear open.

Most of these incidents occur in or around rural boarding schools, often isolated from security presence. Forest corridors, especially in Kebbi, where the recent Maga abduction occurred, provide tactical advantages for criminal networks. The physical environment becomes a co-conspirator.

Early warning and rapid response infrastructure remain dangerously thin. UNICEF reports that only 37% of schools across the ten most conflict-affected states have functional early-warning systems. In Kaduna and Sokoto, the rates drop to 25–26%. This means that three out of every four schools in these states are essentially blind to danger until it arrives at the gate.

Moderate Vulnerability: The States on the Edge

Niger State, parts of Katsina, and some North-Central regions illustrate moderate but escalating vulnerability. The 2025 abduction of 303 students and 12 teachers in Niger State shows that even states not traditionally at the epicentre can experience mass-casualty events when implementation gaps align with active threats.

Here, the challenge is not the absence of policy but the absence of coherence. The Safe Schools Initiative, though essential, suffers from overlapping responsibilities between the police, military, and NSCDC. In moments where minutes determine the fate of dozens of children, bureaucracy quietly fails in response to violence.

Lower Vulnerability Is Not Low Risk

Some southern and North-Central states experience fewer attacks, but “fewer” is not “safe.” In these areas, low public fear often leads to low public investment. Many schools lack perimeter fencing, emergency drills, trained guards, or communication equipment. Rural schools are especially exposed. The absence of attacks today says nothing about tomorrow’s risks.

What the Numbers Don’t Capture

Families pay first financially, emotionally, and generationally. A single school kidnapping can bankrupt a household, ensuring the sale of farmland, livestock, and future savings to negotiate ransoms—debts that will take years to recover from, if at all. Mothers develop chronic anxiety; fathers suffer hypertension; siblings begin to fear school itself. Trauma becomes a quiet inheritance.

Communities lose their social bearing. When a school is attacked, parents withdraw their children, teachers request transfer, and entire villages lose their developmental anchor. Schools double as community centres, safe spaces, and economic stabilisers. Once destabilised, migration begins. Communities shrink. Economic life contracts.

The nation loses productive lifetimes. Nigeria already faces one of the world’s highest out-of-school populations. School insecurity accelerates dropouts, fuels child marriage, and pushes boys into informal economies where exploitation and early radicalisation become real threats. The nation’s talent pipeline is bleeding at its source.

Trust in the state collapses. When communities see that abductors arrive before security agents do, the idea of the state becomes abstract. Citizens retreat into self-help, vigilantes, informal armed groups, or community levies. This weakens national cohesion and strengthens non-state actors.

Three Sharp, Actionable Pathways

Build Community-Driven Security Ecosystems (Not More Armed Presence): Communities always know danger before the federal government does. They hear unfamiliar motorcycles, notice strange movement in forests, recognise unusual faces, and track patterns invisible to security agencies.

This entails establishing School–Community Safety Cells with parents, teachers, and local vigilantes for real-time communication; deploying low-tech alert tools: solar-powered sirens, SMS broadcast lists, cheap, replicable, scalable walkie-talkies; and incentivising communities with micro-grants to maintain fencing, lighting, and rapid alert systems. It shifts security from “state-delivered” to “co-produced.”

Upgrade 1,000 Highest-Risk Schools in 12 Months: A national emergency requires target-driven mobilisation, not broad policy statements. This requires prioritising boarding schools in high-risk LGAs for fencing, lighting, alarms, and controlled gates; deploying trained School Protection Officers (SPOs) — one per high-risk school — drawn from NSCDC and trained on child protection, early warning, and rapid communication; and mandating quarterly risk assessments for all schools in high-risk states.

Fix the Coordination Mess — One Command, One Protocol, One Phone Number:  Nigeria needs a unified, no-excuse command for school emergencies. Create a Safe Schools Joint Operations Desk at the state level with police, NSCDC, military liaison officers, and community representatives; introduce a single toll-free rapid response number specific to school threats; and standardise 90-second alert protocols: who to call, who moves first, who secures exit routes, who evacuates. This cuts through the bureaucratic clutter that has cost children their lives.

Rebuilding Safety as a Civic Contract

Protecting children is not only a security function; it is a test of national conscience. Vulnerability mapping is about acknowledging where the country must direct urgency. It highlights that insecurity is not random; it is structured by governance quality, proximity to state institutions, and the strength of local networks.

Safety is not merely the absence of attack; it is the presence of competent, trusted, and ethical protective structures. This requires humility from security agencies, seriousness from policymakers, and active participation from communities. It requires a shift from protection as a technical fix to protection as a shared civic ethic.

Making Schools Sanctuaries Again

Nigeria can build an educational landscape where safety is not the privilege of geography but the guarantee of citizenship. Nigeria has the intelligence networks, community assets, and institutional frameworks needed to secure its schools—what has been missing is alignment, urgency, and ethical purpose.

Every child abducted is a wound to Nigeria’s soul. Every ransom paid is a tax on families already struggling. Every closed school is a community robbed of its future. If schools remain targets, Nigeria itself remains hostage. But if schools become sanctuaries again, the nation will have reclaimed not only its children, but its conscience.

When families, security agencies, teachers, traditional leaders, and government actors collaborate with clarity, children regain the freedom to learn without fear. Every functioning alarm installed, every perimeter secured, every community-led early-warning network activated is a declaration that Nigeria refuses to lose its future to preventable violence.

Lekan Olayiwola is a peace & conflict researcher/policy analyst. He can be reached via [email protected]