FG commissions schools’ security, emergency response centre in Abuja

while an estimate of 1, 500 schools had been destroyed since 2014, with over 1,280 casualties among teachers and students.

“These violent attacks have a negative effect on teaching and learning thereby reversing our sustainable national development efforts.

“In view of the importance of education and human capital development towards overall national development, it has become expedient for the Federal Government to deploy extraordinary measures to tackle the spate of attacks on school facilities in Nigeria.

“Such effort is the commitment and endorsement by the Federal Government of Nigeria to ensure that all Nigerian schools become safe and secured for uninterrupted teaching and learning activities.”

He said the NSCDC has been made the lead agency with the mandate to host the National Safe Schools Response and Coordination Centre.

“A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been designed for the project, Audi disclosed.

Similar, Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, said the government was determined to make the schools safe for students and teachers again.

Represented at the occasion by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Shuaibu Belgore, Aregbesola said the initiative would place additional demands on the NSCDC, adding that more personnel would be employed across the country to meet the manpower need to execute the project.

On his part, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, said education was essential to the success of every one of the 17 sustainable development goals, assuring that the FG would finance the project.

“The Federal government has already committed to the financing of safe schools through the National Plan on Financing Safe Schools,” he said.

Agba also vowed to ensure the prompt release of budgeted funds for the implementation of the programme.

Also, the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), pledged its support to the initiative, adding that insecurity in schools had become a national emergency.