Nigeria is facing an educational crisis without precedent as violent attacks on schools push state governments and federal authorities into a corner.
For the second time in a decade, the northern region is witnessing mass school closures, this time on a scale wider and more sudden than the post-Chibok era.
The question troubling parents, educators, and policy planners is simple but unsettling: What happens after we shut down education?
Widespread shutdowns
Since September 2025, at least eight northern states, Niger, Katsina, Kebbi, Plateau, Kwara, Adamawa, Taraba and Bauchi have ordered full or partial shutdowns of schools following repeated abductions of students and teachers.
Moreover, more than 40 federal unity colleges have also been ordered closed, creating a ripple effect across the region.
These closures are not symbolic; they reflect a breakdown in security strong enough for governments to suspend one of their most fundamental responsibilities.
Renewed attacks on schools
The trigger? A series of large-scale attacks, including the abduction of more than 300 students and teachers in Niger State and the kidnapping of dozens of schoolgirls in Kebbi.
These incidents revived fears that armed groups have once again identified schools as profitable targets or a precaution against military strikes.
For bandits, abducting schoolchildren guarantees swift negotiations, media attention, potentially high ransom payouts and an alleged human shield against Nigerian military airstrikes.
Meanwhile, for terrorists, attacking educational institutions reinforces their ideological opposition to Western-style learning.
Impact of these shutdowns
The impact has been immediate and severe. The closure of schools across the North has pushed thousands of children, many already behind academically, into extended periods of inactivity.
According to recent figures from education monitoring groups, more than 180 schools in northern Nigeria were already non-functional due to insecurity before the latest wave of attacks.
However, with the new shutdowns, the number has surged sharply, potentially placing over one million learners out of formal education.
Government responses, limitations
State officials insist the decisions were unavoidable. In Katsina, security intelligence warned of coordinated movements of armed groups targeting schools in remote LGAs.
Niger State authorities said the Papiri abduction proved that even schools with partial security arrangements remained vulnerable. In Kebbi, community leaders urged an immediate shutdown after repeated threats in rural districts.
Yet the closures expose a larger dilemma: Nigeria has run out of temporary fixes. Shutting schools may prevent immediate tragedies, but it deepens long-term vulnerabilities.
Social consequences for children
For many rural families, school is not merely a learning space; it is a protective environment, a feeding centre, and a bridge to upward mobility.
When schools close, children are pushed into child labour, street trading, farm work, early marriage, and, more dangerously, recruitment by the same armed groups terrorising their communities.
Data from UNICEF and local civil society organisations show that every sustained school closure in northern Nigeria leads to a spike in dropout rates, and most of those dropouts never return.
This has long-term implications. A region already battling poverty, unemployment, and limited access to opportunities risks sliding further behind.
Gaps in school security
The government’s response has focused on reinforcing the Safe Schools Initiative, deploying security personnel, and encouraging states to domesticate security frameworks.
Nevertheless, many schools in high-risk areas lack perimeter fencing, surveillance systems, functional alert networks, or trained security officers.
In several rural districts, buildings are dilapidated, and the nearest police posts are several kilometres away.
Even where security forces respond, the terrain, dense forests, unmanned borders, and remote settlements, give armed groups a tactical advantage.
The federal government acknowledges these gaps but cites resource limitations and the complexity of the threat.
Security agencies are stretched across multiple crises, from Boko Haram and ISWAP in the northeast to bandit networks in the northwest and north-central with Governors, too, facing fiscal constraints that make long-term security investment difficult.
A cycle without end
What becomes clear is that Nigeria is now operating in a cycle where schools close when attacks intensify and reopen when tension subsides, without addressing the structural weaknesses that allow schools to remain vulnerable in the first place.
If this trend continues, the North risks a generational setback. Educators warn that extended shutdowns could produce the country’s largest out-of-school population since independence, worsening inequality and fuelling the very insecurity the shutdowns were meant to prevent.
A poorly educated population becomes easier for extremist groups to manipulate and harder for the economy to absorb.
What experts say
Education expert Dr Aminu Lawal, a security and learning specialist, argues briefly that “closing schools delays violence but magnifies long-term damage if no parallel learning system is created.”
Veteran school administrator Hajara Danladi adds that “children are safer in classrooms backed by strong community security networks than at home without supervision.”
Security analyst Kunle Adigun notes that “without intelligence-led protection, schools in high-risk zones will remain soft targets even with more personnel.”
The path ahead
The pivotal question, therefore, is not simply how to protect schools from attacks, but how to ensure the region does not lose its educational future.
Experts argue that Nigeria must adopt a two-track approach: securing schools through better infrastructure, community policing, local intelligence networks, and surveillance technology, while simultaneously investing in alternative learning systems, community classrooms, hybrid learning models, and emergency education centres, so that schooling does not collapse entirely during crises.
Nigeria’s children cannot remain at home indefinitely. Shutting schools may save lives today, but without a bold and comprehensive plan, it risks sacrificing the country’s future.