The chairman of Farmers-Herders Initiative for Peace and Development, Africa (FHIPPD-AFRICA), Salim Umar, has disclosed that over 2,000 teachers have been killed and over 19,000 displaced from their places of assignment due to banditry since 2014.
He further disclosed that 1,500 schools have also been destroyed in the period under review.
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Presenting his paper titled, Rural Banditry and its Implication for Effective Service Delivery in National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) at a training on data collection for staff of the commission yesterday in Kaduna, Umar said that in the last 10 to 15 years, the challenges of insecurity in the northern part of the country had brought new obstacles to the survival of nomadic education.
He said, “Foremost is the issue of armed banditry and kidnapping, which has resulted in the loss of human lives and cattle, as well as the inability to graze or cultivate farmlands by nomads and host communities.”
He lamented that the negative effect had resulted in an increase of out-of-school children and drop in enrollments across board in the formal and non-formal sectors of the nomadic school system.
The executive secretary of the NCNE, Professor Bashir Usman, said that by the training, the commission hoped to develop the capacity of data collectors to generate evidence-based data on the root causes of the conflict and insecurity.
Represented by the Director, Quality Assurance, NCNE, Mr Akin Akinyosoye, the executive secretary said that based on the findings from the interactions with the local community and other critical stakeholders, the commission would train such communities on strategies to apply in addressing the emerging challenges and response to the early warning of potential conflicts.
