By Adesina Wahab, Elizabeth Osayande & Ifunanya Ndigwe
When a child leaves home in the morning with a school bag strapped to his back, the unspoken promise is simple: he will learn, grow, and return home safely. In Nigeria today, that promise is broken too often.
From Chibok in 2014 where schoolgirls were taken from their dormitories, to Dapchi, to Oriire in Oyo State, to corps members attacked in Imo, to classrooms emptied by sit-at-home order in the South-East and farmer-herder clashes in Benue, Oyo and Ogun – the classroom has become a frontline.
It was against this sobering reality that journalists, security chiefs, government officials, teachers and principals converged on Ikeja, Lagos, for the 7th Annual Summit of the Education Writers Association of Nigeria, EWAN.
The theme was deliberate and urgent: School Under Threat: From Reactive Responses to Sustainable Protection.
Chairing the summit was the Chairman, Governing Board of the National Universities Commission, NUC, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, represented by Prof. Joseph Awoyinfa. The keynote, on behalf of the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Tunji Disu, was delivered by the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Fatai Tijani. But beyond titles and protocol, the message was one: Nigeria must stop waiting for the next abduction before it acts.
The Chairperson’s Warning: Don’t stop at the press statement.
Prof. Ogundipe, as chairperson, set the tone. He did not want another conference of communiques. He challenged education journalists to change the way school safety is reported.
“When authorities announce new security measures, our reporting should not end with the announcement. When funds are allocated, we should investigate whether they are used as intended, and when investigations produce recommendations, we should return to determine what has changed,” he said.
“Our ultimate objective is not to embarrass institutions. It is to ensure that they fulfil their responsibilities.”
For a country where security votes and intervention funds often disappear into vague budget lines, it was a pointed call for accountability journalism.
“Children are not safe until every school is safe”
If Ogundipe gave the framework, EWAN Chairman, Mojeed Alabi, gave the conscience.
Standing before his colleagues, Alabi began with a line that would echo through the hall all day: Children are not safe until every school is safe.
“No parent should have to choose between a child’s education and their safety. No teacher should have to teach under the shadow of abduction, and no community should have to watch its future disappear because its schools have become targets,” he said.
In a deeply personal address titled: Why Journalism Matters in the Fight Against Violent Attacks on Schools, Alabi traced the pattern Nigerians have come to know too well: an attack happens, government issues a statement, security agencies announce interventions, public outrage rises, then attention moves elsewhere – until the next attack.
“We must therefore ask: how many more warnings, disrupted school terms and grieving families will it take before school safety becomes an unquestionable national priority?” he asked.
His answer was journalism that makes the invisible visible. Not just reporting the number of children abducted, but asking whether the school had a functional emergency response system. Whether teachers had safety training. Whether there was a channel to report threats. How many school days were lost. Whether survivors returned to school. What support they got.
“Behind every school attack are human lives. Children must never be reduced to statistics or used merely to provoke sympathy. Their stories deserve accuracy, dignity, sensitivity and appropriate protection of their identities,” Alabi said.
“We cannot promise that journalism alone will end attacks on schools but journalism can ensure that warning signs are not ignored, public resources are scrutinised, failures are exposed, promises are tracked and affected communities are heard.”
It was a call for newsrooms to invest in expertise, collaborate with researchers, and use radio, television, newspapers and digital platforms to reach communities often excluded from national conversations.
The IGP’s Question: How can a child learn in fear?
When CP Fatai Tijani rose to deliver the IGP’s keynote, he came with a question that silenced the room.
“How can a child concentrate on learning when the fear of violence, abduction or other security threats is constantly present?”
For IGP Tunji Disu, school safety is no longer a peripheral police duty it is national security. He outlined four pillars: intelligence-led policing and early warning, stronger police-community partnerships, improved preparedness and coordinated response, and professionalism with respect for human rights.
And he had a warning for journalists too: “The need for speed in journalism must never displace the obligation to accuracy.” Sensational headlines, he said, can compromise rescue efforts and endanger children.
The $15 Billion Question: Where did the money go?
One of the most revealing sessions came from Hajia Halima Iliya, National Coordinator, Financing Safe Schools in Nigeria during the panel discussion.
She took the audience back to the beginning how the Safe Schools Initiative was launched to enable victims to continue education unhindered, how persistent attacks forced Nigeria to sign the Safe Schools Declaration in 2019 alongside over 100 countries, mostly from the Sahel region and West Africa.
“There is more to what we are seeing which requires collective collaboration. Some of the actors are cross-border actors. They pass through the land, through the walls,” she said.
By 2021, the Ministry of Finance convened a high-level meeting with Defence, Police, DSS, Office of the National Security Adviser, Ministry of Education, NSCDC, governors, EU and World Bank. The verdict: Nigeria had no mid-term expenditure framework for school safety.
“Under my leadership, we developed a national plan on financing safe schools 2023-2026. By 2022, this document was developed and was launched. We started full implementation in 2023, with the Federal Government releasing N15 billion to the implementing regions,” she disclosed.
A database of vulnerable communities was built with CSOs, a National Safe Schools Response Centre established, and hunters, vigilante and forest guards trained within community ecosystems. Lagos and Jigawa, she said, have become champions.
“Over 4,000 students were trained across four states last year,” she said, with technology deployed to communities without network and hardware for the Police Schools Protection Squad.
Her plea: Governors must embed Safe Schools into annual budgets. Without a budget, there can be no sustainable protection.
Fencing, data and a weak justice system
The panel also brought the conversation down from policy to the school gate.
Comrade Hassan Akintoye, Chairman, NUT Lagos Wing, representing the NUT National President, was blunt: school threat has always been around, but today it is the magnitude that frightens. He listed what keeps schools unsafe: lack of fencing, inadequate data of students and teachers, and a weak justice system.
“If we can’t get crime offenders to book, then we can’t tackle insecurity,” he said. He asked EWAN to take this summit beyond journalists – to parents, students and teachers who live the danger daily.
Mr. Olushola Masheyi, President, ANCOPSS Lagos State, representing National President Dr. Robert Okorie, echoed the need for collaborative efforts and adequate data on school structures and stakeholders.
The school without a fence
Perhaps the most haunting illustration came from Motunrayo Alaka, Executive Director, Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism. She revealed that about 60% of Nigerian children attend low-cost private schools, many without perimeter fencing.
She referenced her DFID-supported work, Teaching in Distress, which documented how teachers in Borno State became farmers, displaced from attacked communities.
She cited reports from 2021: schools in Ekiti without fencing, a nationwide mapping of flashpoints, and Igangan in Oyo State where farmer-herder crisis threatened education.
Igangan, she noted, is more than 100km from Oriire –the site of the recent abduction but both share the same architecture: deep forests, porous communities. “If it happened in Igangan, then any other school that has similar architecture is also prone to an attack. If the community is unsafe, the schools are unsafe,” she said.
She told the story of a 57-year-old primary school in Ikorodu, Lagos, where she watched a journalist drive into the compound without any challenge. No fence, no gate, no check.
“That is the same way an attacker would have driven into that school,” she said. That report was done. Six months later, Lagos State renovated the school and built a fence. Journalism worked.
But she also flagged a different threat inside Lagos: students fighting after school with knives, sticks and stones – inter-school violence she witnessed herself living on the Island.
“These children, many of them, are very big hands for bandits,” she warned, urging journalists to learn what a standard school should look like – fencing, design, safety protocols – and to report the socio-economic conditions pushing children to carry knives to school.
Lagos says: Security starts from the community
Hon. Jamiu Alli-Balogun, Lagos Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, pushed back gently. Students fighting after school, he said, are products of environment, not the school. “The school does not create anything that is negative. It is the failure of our social system – parenting and the community,” he said.
He said Lagos has deliberately fenced schools even in interior areas, holds quarterly security reviews with principals, and has for almost six years permanently stationed four different security personnel, including MOPOL, in a riverine school accessible only through forest – a sign of commitment.
He described a security architecture where a text message triggers immediate response from the ministry and Lagos State Security Trust Fund.
“Security is also about welfare,” he added, citing housing loans and annual merit awards for teachers. “The best security system we can manage is from the community where the school is situated. We need the Baale, we need members of the community, we need political leaders,” he said.
Beyond the summit
As the summit ended, four new members were inducted into EWAN – a quiet but symbolic act that the circle of those holding power to account is widening.
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