By Nathaniel Zaccheaus, Abuja
The Senate on Thursday escalated its scrutiny of Nigeria’s failing school security architecture, ordering a full-scale forensic audit of the Safe School Initiative after yet another wave of violent attacks exposed massive gaps in the multi-billion-naira programme designed to protect students.
The Senate’s action coincided with another brazen attack in Niger State, where bandits abducted 24 people, including a pregnant woman, from a rice farm in Palaita community, Erena Ward, Shiroro Local Government Area.
Residents said the gunmen struck at about 2 pm while farmers were harvesting their crops for the season.
The community is barely five kilometres from a military base in Erena, yet the attackers reportedly fled unchallenged with their victims.
A villager said, “We were on the farm when they appeared. They surrounded everyone. The pregnant woman was dragged away despite her condition.”
Earlier on Wednesday, another group of armed men invaded the Kakuru community, also in Erena Ward, where they brutalised a blind resident and amputated his right hand after taking a neighbour’s phone from him.
The attackers met him alone at home, as other villagers had gone to their farms. The victim is currently receiving first aid at a patent medicine shop in Kuduru.
Spokesman of the Niger State Police Command, Wasiu Abiodun, confirmed the attacks, noting that at about 8 pm on Wednesday, another distress report indicated the abduction of about ten persons from Angwan-Kawo and Kuchipa villages, also in Shiroro.
He said security operatives were intensifying efforts to track the attackers and rescue the victims.
The latest attack comes barely a week after armed groups abducted over 300 students and teachers from St. Mary’s Catholic School, Papiri, in what is now one of the largest school kidnappings in recent years.
*Senate orders sweeping probe of Safe School Initiative
Meanwhile, at a plenary chaired by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, lawmakers expressed outrage that despite years of repeated appropriations, counterpart funding, donor support and high-level assurances, schools and rural learning communities remain death traps vulnerable to bandits, insurgents and criminal gangs.
Akpabio said the Senate could no longer overlook the persistent failures of a programme that has consumed enormous resources but delivered little visible protection.
An ad hoc committee chaired by Senator Orji Uzor Kalu was mandated to “uncover every naira spent, every project executed, every contract awarded and every infrastructure claimed to have been installed” under the initiative since its inception.
Members of the panel include Senators Tony Nwoye, Yemi Adaramodu, Harry Ipalibo, Ede Dafinone, Mustapha Saliu, Diket Plang, Binus Yaroe, Kaka Shehu, Musa Garba Maidoki, among others, reflecting what senators described as a “broad institutional coalition” in support of the probe.
Lawmakers said the committee must interrogate budget releases from the Ministries of Education, Finance, Interior and Defence; assess security deployments across vulnerable schools; examine procurement processes; and physically verify installations such as perimeter fencing, CCTV cameras, alarm systems, fortified gates, watchtowers and safe rooms that were repeatedly listed in budget documents.
The debate intensified when Senator Adams Oshiomhole moved a motion expanding the scope of the investigation to ensure that every layer of the project, from conception and cash disbursement to on-the-ground execution, faces parliamentary scrutiny.
Oshiomhole alleged that several schools listed as beneficiaries have either received no infrastructure, received substandard installations, or had facilities abandoned mid-project, leaving children unprotected.
Other senators supported him, accusing unnamed government agencies and contractors of building a “paper architecture of security” while leaving real children exposed to real dangers.
Senator Diket Plang lamented that “entire communities are burying victims or negotiating with bandits while billions allocated to protect schoolchildren vanish into bureaucratic shadows.”
The debate was triggered partly by last week’s attack on Government Comprehensive Girls Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi State, where gunmen murdered the vice principal and reportedly abducted 25 students. Senators described the incident as a “national disgrace” and the “clearest demonstration yet” that the Safe School Initiative has failed in its core mandate.
Senators cited earlier tragedies in Chikun, Kagara, Kuriga, Dapchi, Jangebe and other communities, insisting that the programme’s collapse has emboldened armed groups and deepened parents’ fears across the country.
The panel has four weeks to submit a report containing actionable recommendations to restructure the programme and restore public confidence. It is empowered to summon any official, agency, fund manager or contractor associated with the scheme.
Akpabio said the Senate would adopt the committee’s findings “with the seriousness of a national emergency,” adding that the safety of children “must not be left to chance or swallowed by corruption.”
