By night, the boarding school teacher becomes a security guard. He wears a whistle around his neck in case gunmen jump the low-slung fence and break into dormitories where 300 boys sleep. They know to run if they hear the shrill warning \u2014 straight to town, toward the police station. Knock on doors until someone hides you. In a normal year, a few drop out. Since January, 20 seats in his classroom have emptied. Attackers stormed schools in Nigeria\u2019s north three times in the past five months, kidnapping at least 667 children. The abductions have instilled fear in students and teachers, leading to a wave of dropouts. The attacks are chipping away at an already fragile education system. More than 600 schools in the region have shuttered this year \u2014 some temporarily, some indefinitely \u2014 and\u00a03 million fewer children\u00a0are in class. Experts blame a combination of\u00a0coronavirus\u00a0pandemic closures, extremism, and organized crime. Politicians have pledged to vanquish the kidnapping threat, asserting that security forces will be better prepared next time, but teachers and students at 10 schools told The Washington Post that they haven\u2019t seen meaningful change. Most guards are poorly equipped volunteers from the community \u2014 a defense layer that receives inconsistent backing from police officers and soldiers \u2014 and calls to authorities when strangers are spotted near campus have not yielded more protection, the teachers and students said. Students are struggling to pay attention. Grades are slipping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally, I think guns in classrooms are a bad idea, but in this strange case of depravity, I believe that each student needs to be armed and trained.\u00a0However, in many countries, the government does what is good for the wealthy and powerful and this seems to be the case in Nigeria. To stop the mass kidnappings, Nigeria would have to shift the national priorities, massively, but unfortunately, the people in power are fine with the way things are since it does not directly affect them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By night, the boarding school teacher becomes a security guard. He wears a whistle around his neck in case gunmen jump the low-slung fence and break into dormitories where 300 boys sleep. They know to run if they hear the shrill warning \u2014 straight to town, toward the police station. Knock on doors until someone hides you. In a normal… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4791,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions\/4791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}