Boko Haram: North-east Loses About 50% Teachers

About 50% of teachers have either died or been displaced in the North-East due to Boko Haram insurgency as they remain the primary target of terrorists.

This was disclosed by the Managing Director, North East Development Commission (NEDC), Mohammed Alkali, on Thursday at the 50th session of the State House Briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

This, according to him is why the commission now focuses on training of teachers in the region.

 “The scarcest product now, not only in Nigeria but elsewhere, is teachers. In the North-East, over 40-50 percent of teachers have either been killed or something has happened to them because tag of the insurgency is the Boko Haram and teachers are the instruments of this so called Boko Haram and they’re the primary target of those people.

“Most of them have been killed or something must have happened to them. So, we need more teachers in the region,” he disclosed.

Alkali said the federal government had completed the construction of 1,000 housing units as part of its resettlement efforts for millions of inhabitants displaced by the 13-year insurgency in the North East geo-political zone.

According to him, the houses had been handed over to the Borno State Government who distributed it to various households.

He said the houses were built in Ngwom, Borno, with plans to build 500 housing units in five other affected states each, costing N17.5bn.

He also blamed the rise of terrorism in the region on lack of a robust education system.

He noted that the commission had created an Education Endowment Fund with a seed capital of N6bn with plans to dedicate 10 per cent of its annual allocation to the Fund.

He said to execute its mandate according to the North East Stabilisation and Development Master Plan in the next 10 years, the NEDC required at least N31.05tn.

NEDC Executive Director, Humanitarian Affairs, Musa Yashi, said some of the internally displaced persons in the North East were not willing to return to their ancestral homes.

Yashi said 20 to 30 per cent of the displaced persons did not live in camps.