The registrar of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Professor Josiah Olusegun Ajiboye, has said attacks on schools by insurgents have claimed the lives of more than 2,295 teachers in the North East between 2009 and 2022.
Prof Ajiboye, who said this while delivering a paper at the 2022 National Delegates Conference of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), in Ibadan, called for the full implementation of the Safe Schools Declarations guidelines endorsed by Nigeria in 2015 and ratified by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
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He further said that over 1,500 schools were forced to close due to insurgency and more than 600,000 children have lost access to education.
The TRCN boss, therefore, called on the federal government to review its security architecture to address the deteriorating security situation because of terrorism and violent attacks on education.
He noted that as a way forward, federal, state and local education authorities should facilitate the immediate implementation of the National Policy on Safety, Security and Violence Free Schools (NPSSVFS) by making budgetary provisions.
Prof Ajiboye called for an increase in domestic education expenditure of 50 per cent over the next two years as committed at the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Education Summit.
He said a school was considered to be safe if it is located in a violence-free environment.
