 The federal government has expressed concern about the 299 students who were still being held by bandits' mums after the abduction. The Minister of State for Education Chukwemeka Mwajuba described the kidnapping of students as a serious matter. Now on July 25th, when 28 of the Bethel Baptist students were released, it was said that 87 of them were still in captivity, also no fewer than 83 students of the federal government college burning Yari Kebbi State are still in bandits' den, and about 136 people were being abducted from an Islamic school at Tehgyna, Niger State in May, spent 71 days in bandits' den on Wednesday. It is obvious that schools are now being targeted by these bandits, how do we ensure the safety of these children and also the state of the level of our education does not plummet. Joining us this evening to discuss is Kabir Adamo, he is a security risk management expert and Gide Adyegbusi is an education enthusiast. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks a lot for your time. So I'm going to start with you, because of course I did point out at the beginning that it seems as if our education is being targeted. Now this is a part of the country where we're still trying to get more people to be educated, to jump on the horse of education. And we are also in a country where we have yet to scratch the surface of our SDG goals. Why do you think that education is being targeted? I mean we know for Boko Haram that they do not want western education, but these are bandits. Could this also be like a slipper cell from Boko Haram? So for my own understanding, right, so I would say majorly the two reasons why these criminal elements would want to prevent these young shouts from attaining quality or even education in the first place. The first being economic reasons. I mean imagine how much money these guys are making from the government as well as the relations of the abductors. So yes money is one of the reasons and the second is what you said earlier about the attempt against western education by this group. So it's hard because when you look at the statistics around out of school children in Nigeria, right, the northern part of this country accounts for about 69 percent of these people, right. So and that's natural, like just because of religion and the way of life and beliefs, culture of these people. Now combining that with COVID, we're just trying to, you know, overcome, and now combine that with insecurity. It's just really, really disartening and very attrenching that we are preventing people that should be, you know, future ministers, even presidents of this country from attaining education. Something must be done about it. Now we're celebrating youth day today and if you were listening to our previous conversation, we're talking about the challenges of the average young person in Nigeria and one of it was, you know, the kind of education that we get. And we're still talking about, you know, how good or how poor the education is. And then we're also having to face or deal with the type of people that universities are churning out. So we're even churning out people from schools who are still deemed as unemployable. Talk more about those who haven't gotten any access to education. And we're also dealing with criminal elements all across the country. I always say if we put a pen on a map of Nigeria and spin it, wherever it faced, there is some issue, whether it be militancy, whether it be the uprising in the Southeast, whether it be what's happening in the banditry. I mean, there's literally problems everywhere. And most of the perpetrators of these acts are unemployed. And you know what they say about an idle mind. So how do we as a society deal with it? What do we even start? So I keep telling people that, you know, the challenges in our education system, you know, are very hydrated. So when you're trying to solve one, I don't know what comes up. And but again, I've always tried to narrow it down to two basically. And the access and quality. So by access, we are one of the countries in the world where we have the highest number of out of, like I said, out of school children. Some will say 10.5, some will say 13.5, some will even say 15 million. Whereas 10 or 15 or 13 is the highest in the world, right? So that's the population of Lagos divided by two, right? So that's really very alarming. So access is one of the issues, right? And what do we have access as being an issue? The notes that we mentioned earlier, you know, it's, we have people who do not believe in Western education. So ordinarily, many of these guys will not send their children to school, right? Despite the fact that we have a Ubeq law that says that it's a criminal offense not to send a child or a children to school. But I don't know how many people have been penalized for not doing this. That's one. The second one is the quality of education in Nigeria and this part of the world, right? It's so poor that by the time that our children are out of primary school, about 69, about 70 to 80 percent of them will not even know how to read or write. Primary school, right? So we call it learning crisis. And that's really sad. And what do we have that? So we have an education system that is leading with, you know, teachers that are not qualified. That's one. Teachers that are not passionate about, you know, what is it that they do? I'm not saying we don't have, we don't have quality good teachers, but majorities. And I went to public schools, right? So majority of these are public schools that do not have that. That's one. Two, if you take a look at the lapid nature of these schools. I was coming there, but we're being joined by our security experts. And I just want to quickly put a question to him. And then I'll come back to the state of our schools. Mr. Daniel, thank you very much for joining us. It's interesting that government is lamenting about the kidnap and the abductions, the number of abductions that have happened, and of course, the space in which it continues to happen. Should government be lamenting, you know, at this point in time? I saw a terrible video of some of these students that were abducted and how they were being, you know, tortured because they wanted their parents to send ransom money. Should government be lamenting at this point in time or thinking of strategies to get these people out and put a stop to these abductions? Because it seems to be a thriving business. Yes, unfortunately, the kidnaping has become an industry in Nigeria. I saw a business and, I mean, I used my words carefully. There is an industry that's several other values with a lot of value change with several other activities leading into that industry. And it's been very difficult to come up with a figure for what represents that industry or the value of that industry. However, we know that it is enticing a lot of use into it. That's not the limit of this competition. Should government be lamenting? No, absolutely no. Government should not be lamenting. There have been several platforms for government to galvanize Nigerians, galvanize it in petition to protect education and schools. Let's start with the Safe School Initiative. It was introduced in 2014. Seven years down the road, where are we with the Safe School Initiative? That's what I would hope to have heard from government. An evaluation of the Safe School Initiative. What did we do right? What did we do wrong? Rule it down the years a little bit. We embraced the Safe School Declaration and we set up a body. I can't recall immediately the name of that body. To work with government to implement and help us to achieve the objectives of that Safe School Declaration. The last time there was any statement from government on that declaration was in 2019. I would, instead of lamenting, what I would have hoped to hear was an evaluation of that declaration to say, this is what we've done rightly. This is what we did wrong and this is what we need to do to correct it. Now in a nutshell, both the Safe School Initiative and the Safe School Declaration, what is the objective? The objective is to provide a safe environment for the Nigerian child to attend schools, whether public or private, and to allow him to do what he went to that school to do. And unfortunately today, that environment has not been provided. So that evaluation, if it's done, hopefully would point out what is wrong and what is right. If time would allow us, I would, on my own part, as an expert, point out to you what the gaps are and where those gaps need to be blocked. Government in itself alone cannot deal with this issue. They need people like you to suggest. But then on this show, we've continuously had conversations like this, you know, giving ideas as to how government can deal with the situation. But we never ever, you know, see that happen. We always just hear government say, I mean, the minister was saying yesterday that, you know, they would have wanted to attack, but they're scared because of the students that are in the custody of the abductors. And it really makes me wonder why the government is telling us this, because we do not have the power to go rescue these abductees. Exactly. You know, one of the missing elements within our security architecture is the component of MIE monitoring and evaluation that would have provided the basis for the measurement of the performance of this security agency. Now I bring in this because you mentioned or you voiced out your concern why they are not attacking, you know, the group holding these gaps. Now we have tactical units in almost all the 12 agencies that have or we point bearing capability for capacity in the country. Each of those units have tactical, each of those departments have tactical units within them. And every year we budget money for that tactical unit. In fact, I can tell you with all sense of responsibility that a lot of these tactical units go abroad or trade in some of them to the U.S., some of them to Israel and several other countries. Now we need them here. It is tactical units that can go in and take out the leadership of these groups and rescue this kid. Now why they are not doing that is the question that the appropriate body within the government, you know, set up should be asking this particular military department. But because they know MIE mechanism, a good one that would ask these relevant questions in a manner that would force these security departments to respond and be functional. And unfortunately we are not seeing that. Now let's go back to 2019 when the office of the national security advisor launched the revised national security strategy 2019. This was what we are promised that there will be a paradigm shift in our security architecture so that the security department will be responsible to Nigeria. In other words, there was an attempt by the warrior administration to democratize our security, make the security departments answerable to us as Nigerians. Now I'm not in any way saying that the years of rot and things that have happened within the security architecture are a fault of the warrior administration. All I'm saying is that there is an issue there and it needs to be corrected and currently the owners lies on the entire infrastructure government, the federal government, the state government, the legislature, the executives and the judiciary to correct these gaps that are allowing this thing to happen. We cannot have our children. It is unfathomable that we have children for almost two to three months in the hands of these persons that have shown their bestiality in manners that even animals unfortunately should never depict and we allow it to happen. It's rejectable, it's something that I don't want to be efficient at with. Okay and finally because we're out of time, do you see us ever being able to in the next 10 to 20 years achieve our SDG goals in this country, having bearing in mind how much we budget every year for education which is mega and of course now the fear of allowing your children whether male or female to go to school, how do we achieve safe spaces? Yeah it's actually very tricky to say because whatever it is that is going to happen in the future it's going to be predicated on what it is that we're doing at the moment. And I'm not sure we're doing enough. Like I said we've always done less than 10 percent allocation to budget, I mean to education from a budget right so that's not anywhere near what UNESCO says. UNESCO says 27 percent. Besides that policy wise I'm also not sure if we have if you're putting like the right policies in place to ensure that our children access quality education and also being prepared for the future. So it's very difficult but let's see what happens. Oh wow, I don't think that that's very encouraging but thank you so much. Kabea Damu is a security expert and GD Ayibusi is an education enthusiast. Thank you gentlemen for being part of the conversation, you're appreciated. Thank you Amira. All right well thank you all for being part of the show. We'll take a quick break and I'll give you my take. Here's my take. Our children have become targets. Our education is being targeted. Kidnappers have built a business from abducting students from schools. Some have even resorted to touch us so ransom can be paid. All these is happening at the expense of our education. That's even yet to you know scratch the surface of our SDG goals. What worries me you know the most is the future of these children, the future of education in those parts of Nigeria because how do you convince a parent to let their child go to school when they're unsure if they'll return home safe or if they'll be kidnapped while they're there? Can you really blame these parents if governments of the day cannot seem to even be pulling its weight in terms of guaranteeing the safety of these children? Today as we celebrate young people across the world I wonder if Nigeria is being fair to its youths. Is this a country that supports and builds up its younger you know generation or is it the one that tears it down? Does it create an atmosphere for growth and development? What is the future of the average Nigerian youth if they remain in this country and do not leave in search of green and pastures? As we push for good governance and a better Nigeria let us also consider the future of the Nigerian youth because it is also Nigeria's future. I am Mary Annicole. Thank you for watching. You have a good evening.