By Tony Obiechina, Abuja
Education minister Tunji Alausa says the federal government will strengthen coordination of the Safe Schools Initiative with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
Mr Alausa spoke during an official visit to the commandant-general of the NSCDC, Ahmed Audi, in Abuja on Wednesday to discuss security coordination.
He said the government had zero tolerance for attacks on schools and would deploy all necessary measures to keep children safe and ensure uninterrupted learning nationwide.
He said incidents of student abductions were unacceptable, stressing that protecting children in schools remained a collective responsibility of government, security agencies and communities.
“We will move from knee-jerk responses to a continuous security presence, especially in vulnerable schools. Our children must remain safe in school, and this administration is committed to providing the resources and structure required,” Mr Alausa said.
The minister said a full-fledged Safe Schools department was being established in the Federal Ministry of Education to coordinate national implementation and improve collaboration with the NSCDC.
He said improved response systems, including technology-driven alert mechanisms such as panic buttons linked to command centres, would be introduced to enable rapid deployment of security personnel.
Mr Alausa said the government was also exploring sustainable financing options to ensure continuous funding for school security, independent of delays in budgetary releases.
He said the NSCDC had been identified as the lead agency for school protection, adding that clearer operational coordination would replace fragmented, reactive security arrangements.
In his response, the NSCDC commandant-general, Ahmed Abubakar Audi, said the corps had conducted nationwide vulnerability assessments revealing that more than 60,000 of about 81,000 schools lacked adequate security.
Mr Audi said the schools identified nationwide were porous and needed urgent attention to safeguard students and learning environments.
“These schools are porous in the sense that there was no presence of security men or no fences in those schools, so that gave us a guide on how to develop our operational strategy in terms of mutual security and safety for the schools.
”In doing that, what we did first was to provide the data and submit the same reports to the Federal Ministry of Education,” he said.
Mr Audi said the corps also established specialised female squads and community security structures that had prevented over 110 security threats against schools across the country.
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“The Safe Schools Protection Squad and community engagement initiatives have significantly strengthened intelligence gathering and emergency response,” he said.
Mr Audi, however, identified inadequate funding as a major challenge, noting that only a fraction of the required resources had been released for school protection operations. He described the situation as challenging, noting that running the centre under the funding constraints had not been easy.
Mr Audi, however, assured the minister of the corps’ commitment to deeper collaboration to guarantee safe learning environments for students nationwide.
