Better late than be the late

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

The panic closure at the weekend of public boarding secondary schools by, at the last count, six Northern state governments, hot on the heels of the closure of forty-one Federal Unity Colleges by the Federal Ministry of Education, reminded me of a huge billboard that Nigeria Police used to erect on highways in the 1970s. It was warning motorists against over speeding. The police billboard pictured blood spilling from a crash site, and with it was the boldly stated message, “Better be late than be the late.”

Even before the nation-wide shock from the killing by Boko Haram insurgents of Army Brigadier General Musa Uba wore off, bandits last week stormed two boarding schools and a church in rapid succession and carted hundreds of children and worshippers into the bush, there to hold them for ransom. Almost nothing shocks and alarms Nigerians like a mass kidnap of school pupils. Since Chibok in 2014, there have been many others in Katsina, Zamfara, Niger and Kaduna states over the years, but there have not been any for some time now, so we [erroneously] thought the school kidnap nightmare is over.

Until bandits stormed the Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School at Maga, in the Zuru area of Kebbi State on Sunday last week and carted away 26 girls and the school principal. While bandits had attacked boys’ boarding schools before at Tegina, Niger State and Kankara in Katsina State, they know that there is greater panic and distress when the kidnapped victims are girls, as in Jangebe, Zamfara State and Federal Government Girls College, Birnin Yauri. Extremely vulnerable junior secondary school girls aside, bandits also carted away 137 primary school pupils from Kuriga, Kaduna State.  Also very distressing was the kidnap of 120 students of Bethel Baptist Academy, Chikun; 39 students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka and 22 students and two staffers of Greenfield University, all of them in Kaduna State.

The storming last week of Christ Apostolic church at Eruku in Kwara State, during morning service, was very distressing. Two people were killed and 35 were abducted. This was a local church in a rural community; installed cameras captured a bandit collecting the handbags of worshippers who either fled or were taken hostage. It was reported at the weekend that the kidnappers are demanding N100 million as ransom for each kidnapped person. A hundred million naira, for people who were obviously struggling to make ends meet.

Hot on the heels of the Kwara church attack came the mother of them all, the attack on St. Mary’s Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools, Papiri in Agwarra local government area of Niger State. Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN’s] Niger State chapter said 303 students and 12 teachers were kidnapped. The latter two episodes, just when a large Federal Government delegation led by the National Security Adviser is in the United States to dispel President Trump’s allegation of a genocide against Christians in Nigeria, could not have been more ill-timed. Right-wing American Congressman Riley Moore, rushing to buttress Mr. Trump’s genocide allegation, quickly said “the attack occurred in a Christian enclave in Northern Nigeria.” While Zuru Emirate of Kebbi State has a large native Christian population, the local government chairman published the names of the kidnapped girls, and they all happen to be Muslim. It punctured the American talking point, but did not ameliorate the national angst in Nigeria.

On Friday afternoon, another story swept through the social media, alleging that bandits raided St. Peter’s Academy, Rukubi in Doma Local Government Area of Nasarawa State and kidnapped two school girls. Nasarawa State Police Command later denied the story; it said school girls sighted local hunters carrying dane guns; they mistook them for kidnappers and fled into the bush. Two girls were at first thought to be missing, but they later reappeared.

The Presidency is distressed; who wouldn’t be? Nothing tarnishes an Administration’s and a nation’s image or throws all socio-economic plans into disarray like insecurity. New Army Chief Lt General Waidi Shaibu rushed to Kebbi State; President Tinubu sent Vice President Kashim Shettima to Kebbi to commiserate with victims’ families and assure them of their daughters’ safe return; the President at first suspended, then cancelled his trip to the G-20 Summit in Johannesburg “in order to receive security briefings”; he sent the Vice President to the Summit instead; he then sent Minister of State for Defence Bello Mutawalle to Kebbi State to coordinate rescue efforts; and government  postponed the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) billed to start in Enugu today, November 22.

Meanwhile, boarding schools are closing all over the North. This makes sense, since all the school kidnap cases over the years took place either in the dead of night or at dawn. Day schools are not yet affected by the order, and majority of secondary schools in the North have been Day since 1980, when state governments realized they could not accommodate all the UPE intakes about to emerge from primary schools in boarding secondary schools. The way things are going, state governments may seize upon this situation to do away with many, if not all, boarding schools on security grounds. Someone has suggested that students of the closed boarding schools should be going to the school in the day time, but that is unfeasible because most of them probably came from different towns. That is certainly the case with Federal Unity Schools, whose students are from across states.

School closures all over the region are a big setback for education, and our kids will fall behind the school calendar, when they will have to sit for the same WAEC, NECO and JAMB exams with their mates in other parts of the country. But then, it is what Nigeria Police said, better to be late than to be the late. In any case, schools have a way of recovering from calendar setbacks, like they did after the Covid-19 pandemic and the long ASUU strikes. I once heard Igbo community leader Chief Ogbunugafor saying on NTA Sokoto that he dropped out of school when all the schools in Sokoto Province were closed for one year in 1936 due to a CSM outbreak. So, it is not today that we have been closing schools.

Educationists believe that boarding schools offer a more intensive learning environment than day schools, but how can we collect children in boarding schools if we can’t secure them? The bandits, who are most familiar with the bush and with rural communities, also have thousands of informants in most communities. They have instant information on vulnerabilities. Policemen cannot guard all the schools; they are too ill-equipped to do so. Soldiers are better trained and better armed, but they, too, lack the numbers to guard all the schools. If the entire Nigerian military is posted to guard secondary schools, it might at best come to one soldier per school.

Bandits swoop on a targeted school in dozens or even in hundreds. Since the Maga school kidnap, Kebbi State Governor Nasir Idris has been saying that there was advanced information that the school would be attacked but that the soldiers posted to guard it left just before the kidnappers arrived. What could be the explanation? Defence Headquarters must be investigating the allegation, but even as a person with zero military experience, I can hazard a guess. If, say, there were ten soldiers posted there and they heard that a hundred bandits were coming, they will reach a certain conclusion. Soldiers do not fight to die; they prefer to approach a situation with superior numbers and superior force. The government must be strategizing now on how to vastly increase troop numbers and greatly improve their armaments, but Rome was not built in a day. If we start now, it will still take years or even a decade to achieve.

It was alleged recently that Western nations offered help during the Chibok girls kidnap saga of 2014 but that the Jonathan Administration rejected it. I don’t know if that was true, but maybe this is the time to turn Donald Trump’s “particular concern” on its head and seek intelligence, logistical and greater firepower support from the American 101^st Airborne Division, Britain’s Special Air Service, France’s Groupe d’intervention de la Gendamerie, Germany’s GSG 9 commandos of Mogadishu fame and Russia’s Spetsnaz GRU. With our government’s full knowledge, permission and cooperation, they should shoot up the bandit camps and bring our kids and worshippers safely back home.