Boko Haram Hitting Its Mark As Students Flee From School in North East Nigeria

Would you blame them? terrified students in northeast Nigeria have fled boarding schools after an attack by suspected Boko Haram extremists in which 59 students were shot and hacked to death and the whole school razed.

Students refused to stay overnight in their schools and colleges in the wake of the attack on the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe state on Tuesday.

“Most students of boarding secondary schools have vacated their hostels and moved back to their homes after news of the Buni Yadi attack,” Yunusa Ahmed, who lives in the state capital Damaturu, told AFP.

Ahmed’s son is currently studying at the city’s Government Secondary School but has now moved back home along with two classmates.

“They went to school but returned after classes ended because they where too afraid to sleep in the school for fear of a Boko Haram attack,” Ahmed said.

Boko Haram, which translates roughly from Hausa as “Western education is sin”, rejects a so-called Western curriculum and has burnt hundreds of schools in its four-and-a-half year fight to create an Islamic state in the north.

Last October Yobe state authorities said Boko Haram fighters burnt down 209 schools, causing damage worth an estimated $15.6 million (11.4 million euros).

The attacks are taking their toll on education in a region that already lags behind the rest of Nigeria in social and economic development.