Reopen our schools, restore our future

I write this letter not as a politician, nor as a man of influence, but as a young student of Mass Communication at Kashim Ibrahim University, Maiduguri. I am a son of the North whose heart bleeds daily over the agonising reality facing me and millions of the poor children and our parents across our region. I write with the tears of thousands of boys and girls whose future slips further into darkness each time another school closes due to fear and insecurity. Our voices may be faint, but our pain is loud.

For more than a decade, since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency, the North has watched a generation of its children lose their bearings. Many have been orphaned, many displaced, many abducted, and many live with scars, visible and invisible caused by a war we never chose. But perhaps the deepest wound is the continued closure of schools, which was once a temporary emergency measure but has now become an institutionalised response to insecurity. This is terribly dangerous.

Sirs, closing schools is not a security strategy. It is a surrender. Every padlocked classroom door is a loud message to terrorists that they have won. Every silent playground strengthens the false belief that learning can be defeated by fear. Every child forced out of school grows more vulnerable to the same forces that have kept this region in chains.

Our region has always been proud of its scholarly heritage of Shehu Usmanu Dan Fodio, of the ancient centres of learning, of the deep intellectual roots that shaped our identity. How then can we allow fear to choke the very soul of our existence? Nations rise with education; they collapse without it.

While we understand the immense pressure on the security architecture and the limitations that exist, we also believe strongly that purposeful leadership can turn the tide. The youth of Northern Nigeria believe the terrorists are in the minority. They believe that with courage, unity, and sincerity of purpose, we can defeat them. What they do not understand is why leaders who swore to protect them now allow fear to dictate policy.

To our governors, lawmakers, traditional rulers, business leaders, and the elite, the future of the North is not in the oil wells of the Niger Delta, nor in the allocation shared at Abuja. Our real wealth is in us, your children. If you lose us to illiteracy, fear, and hopelessness, then you have lost everything.

I beg you, on behalf of the millions whose voices hardly reach your offices, reopen our schools, protect them, prioritise security, equip local communities, strengthen intelligence, and restore confidence. Do not allow this region to drift further into gloom.

The tears of the children of the poor are on your desks. Our future is in your hands.

Respectfully,

Dahiru Gambo Dahiru is a student, Department of Mass Communication,

Kashim Ibrahim University, Maiduguri

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