Are Nigerian students safe from Boko Haram in their schools?

It is getting worse and scarier daily, with no end in sight to the Boko Haram insurgency and the dreadful advent of suicide bombing.

Now, more than ever before, the need to educate the youth is met by an equally pressing need to protect them from mental and physical attacks.

Bombs are targeted at them and their teachers while religious and social propaganda are aimed at temples, threatening their fragile consciousness like the cold muzzle of a loaded rifle.

All these lead to the question: Are Nigerian students — in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, safe in their schools?

The abducted Chibok girls have not yet been brought back. Looking beyond them, the attacks on students and academic institutions in the past couple of months paint a scary picture.

At least 10 students were killed with several others injured on the 12th of November after a female suicide bomber detonated a bomb in the library of the Federal College of Education (FCE), in Kontagora, Niger State.

Two days prior to that attack, at least 48 students died after a bomb exploded at the Government Comprehensive Senior Science Secondary School, Potiskum, Yobe State.

We should also not forget the 13 students who were killed after suspected Boko Haram insurgents launched a daring suicide bomb and gunfire attack on the Federal College of Education (FCE), Kano in September.

Three prospective National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members were killed and a further 21 injured on the 20th of July when a 14-year-old female suicide walked into a crowd and blew up herself.

As recently as December 28, a water vendor died after a bomb, buried at the assembly ground of Ari Kime Primary School in Potiskum, Yobe, exploded while he pushed his truck across the school ground. Imagine if he had not passed there that night? How many pupils would have died on the following Monday morning?

Sadly, students are now left to be their own protectors, like was seen in the case of the Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK) where the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) had to take their own measures to prevent attacks on their mosques.

If education is truly important, which it obviously is, then something must be done to ensure that we don't lose another student.

This might be a good time to take physical measures, like fencing all schools like Kogi state recently did, and intellectual measures like awarding scholarships to vulnerable students as is being done by the by the Kano State government.

The search for knowledge should not be the search for death.