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Securing Nigeria’s economic future by making schools safe 13 Jul 2026

Nigeria’s school insecurity crisis has become an economic risk. Each attack on a school does more than interrupt learning. It can weaken human capital formation, raise public and household costs, deepen rural poverty, and worsen food insecurity. If unchecked, such attacks could signal to investors that insecurity is becoming more entrenched in the country. Protecting schools, therefore, should be treated not only as a security priority but also as an economic development imperative.

This was not how the crisis was initially understood. When Boko Haram launched its violent insurgency in 2009, the threat was widely framed as a regional security problem in the Northeast and, in some respects, as an ideological campaign against Western education. That interpretation was not entirely inaccurate. Early attacks on schools reflected the group’s hostility to formal education, and the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State became a defining symbol of the assault on learning.

But the threat has outgrown its original framing. School attacks are no longer confined to a single region, ideology, or set of perpetrators. They now occur within a wider landscape of terrorism, banditry, communal violence, and kidnapping for ransom. As insecurity has spread across parts of the North West and North Central, and into areas once considered safer, schools have become exposed to the same criminal economy that threatens farms, highways, markets, and homes.

Generally, the economic consequences of insecurity are substantial. It reduces the predictability on which investment depends. Businesses avoid communities where people cannot move safely, where workers may be abducted, and where public institutions appear fragile. For domestic investors, it raises operating costs through private security, insurance, logistics disruptions, and uncertainty. For foreign investors, it weakens confidence in Nigeria’s capacity to protect assets, labour, and supply chains.

For households, the impacts of insecurity are even more immediate. Parents withdraw their children from school, pay for relocation or private schooling where possible, or live with the anxiety that education may expose their children to danger. Poorer families have fewer options. A disrupted school year can lead to permanent dropout. For girls, the consequences are often harsher, including early marriage, domestic labour, exploitation, and long-term poverty. These losses accumulate quietly, yet they shape the future labour force.

Human capital is built through stable classrooms, trained teachers, safe communities, and years of uninterrupted learning. When teachers fear postings to rural areas or leave the profession because schools have become unsafe, the quality of education declines. When children miss years of schooling, the economy loses future technicians, nurses, teachers, agronomists, entrepreneurs, and skilled workers. Over time, these costs often manifest as lower productivity, weaker innovation, and slower growth.

The link to food security is especially important. Nigeria cannot feed a fast-growing population in the twenty-first century through land, labour, and rainfall alone. It needs science, technology, climate-smart agriculture, biotechnology, digital extension services, storage innovation, and better market systems. These capabilities depend on schools, universities, research institutes, and teachers who prepare young people to participate in modern food systems.

In Nigeria today, insecurity is undermining the food system at two critical points: the future knowledge base needed to modernise agriculture and the current production networks that move food from farms to markets. It keeps children out of school and reduces the pipeline of agronomists, food scientists, extension workers, nutrition experts, and rural entrepreneurs. At the same time, attacks on farmers and farming communities restrict access to farmland, disrupt labour, weaken supply chains, and drive up food prices. The World Food Programme has warned that nearly 35 million Nigerians are projected to face acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, driven by conflict, displacement, climate shocks, and the collapse of local food systems.

This is why unsafe schools should concern economic policymakers as much as education authorities. A country cannot raise productivity while millions of children fear attending school. It cannot reduce poverty if rural households are forced to choose between education and safety. It cannot build a competitive agricultural economy if farming communities are displaced and the institutions that generate knowledge are under threat.

There is also a fiscal dimension to the insecurity challenge. Nigeria’s education spending remains far below the level required to address infrastructure gaps, learning poverty, teacher shortages, and the large number of out-of-school children. Reports on the 2026 federal budget indicate that education received about 6.1 per cent of total expenditure, well below the 15–20 per cent benchmark often cited for education spending. In this context, every naira spent responding to school attacks could reduce funds available for classrooms, laboratories, teacher training, health centres, research, or agricultural innovation.

School protection is vitally important, and the government should spare no effort to restore normality as quickly as possible. The Safe Schools Initiative should be strengthened by setting clearer priorities, ensuring transparent financing, and establishing measurable outcomes. The most vulnerable schools should be mapped, early warning systems linked to local security networks, and emergency response arrangements tested before attacks occur. Communities, school administrators, traditional institutions, parents, civil society, and security agencies all have roles to play.

The response must avoid becoming another channel for waste. Security spending is necessary but should be disciplined. Funds for school safety should be traceable, implementation should be independently monitored, and interventions should prioritise prevention. Fences, lighting, safe transport routes, communication systems, community intelligence, and rapid-response capacity may be less politically visible than emergency rescue operations, but they are often more valuable when they prevent attacks.

Ultimately, Nigeria must address the root causes of insecurity: poverty, unemployment, weak governance, corruption, illegal arms flows, extremist mobilisation, and unresolved local conflicts over land and resources. While these deeper reforms are pursued, children and teachers cannot be left exposed. The state has a basic duty to ensure learning is safe, especially for the poorest communities that depend most on public education.

Protecting schools goes beyond preventing abductions. It is about safeguarding Nigeria’s human capital, protecting food systems, preserving development gains, and restoring confidence in the capacity of the state to secure a better future. A country that cannot keep its classrooms safe cannot fully protect its economy.

Mojisola Karigidi, PhD, a Financial Nigeria columnist, is a Nigerian biochemist and the founder and product developer at Moepelorse Bio Resources. She is also a Global Innovation Through Science and Technology awardee and an Aspen New Voices Fellow.