Nigeria - Boko Haram Islamists Slaying Schoolteachers, Children

Nigeria’s Islamist Boko Haram militia is destroying schools, killing students and teachers, in an impoverished, long-neglected part of the country, where children were already struggling to receive an education.

At the Ali Al Yaskari primary school, the classrooms are silent. In the morning, teachers sign their names on an attendance sheet to receive their salaries, then quickly leave without teaching a single course. 

A few students sit under a tree, idling away their time in the sandy schoolyard.

“People are afraid to come,” said Lawana Bura, 47, the only teacher in the school on a recent day. “That’s why the classes are empty.”

It has been that way, he said, since gunmen entered the school one morning in March and fatally shot a teacher. Three other schools were attacked that day in Maiduguri, leaving a total of six teachers and four students dead.

For the past four years, the Islamist Boko Haram militia has been known to target schools, burning them down at night in its fight to install sharia law in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north. But in recent months, the group, whose name translates to “Western education is a sin,” has escalated its campaign to cripple the region’s education system.

Militants raid schools in broad daylight, killing teachers and students. They kidnap professors and order schools to shut down, forcing thousands of children to seek an education in safe zones protected by soldiers — or outside the region if they can afford it.

The schools are being destroyed in an impoverished, long-neglected part of the country, where children were already struggling to receive an education. Many of the schools attacked didn’t have desks, textbooks and other resources.

“The schools are the bedrock to change the minds of people,” said Babangida Labaran Usman, a senior investigation officer with Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission. “They are perfect targets for the Boko Haram.”