Some weeks back, there was tension in the educational sector in Nigeria, especially in the primary and secondary schools. The tension began when a certain boarding school in the northern part of Nigeria was raided by bandits; students were taken away, while some teachers were shot to death on the spot. The alarm was raised, and it resulted in many schools—both the ones in the north and outside the north—being closed down. Yeah, there was a pause because no one knew the next target.
I can imagine the trauma and horrors the parents of the kidnapped pupils faced. It felt as if it was a crime for them to send their children to seek education. What an omen!
Fortunately, the pupils were released after staying in the kidnappers’ den for about two weeks, and guess what? All the parents who had children in the school withdrew them, and most of the pupils are currently at home with no intention of going to another school or furthering their education due to the fear of kidnapping that’s ravaging the country. And the school itself is closed down for now. Imagine the loss the school is running at currently!
Okay, that aside, I woke up yesterday to see a circulating news story from my hometown about schools being closed down for a week because of fear of bandits attacking the schools in the community and kidnapping students. I was surprised because my hometown is far away from the troubled states. So when I dug deeper to get information, I saw that the action by the community was implemented due to a circulating video of bandits boldly declaring that they were going to attack the community this week. Well, the information was allegedly so, but it's what people are saying is the reason why schools were put on hold.
When I saw the video, I was very angry because the trending video is AI-generated, and it's so bad how the community fell for such a thing. Don’t they know the trends of AI videos? Look at how they paused school activities for a week due to a fake video.
Maybe there’s another bigger reason why they suspected the kidnappers were going to invade the schools, but if it’s based on the trending AI video—which I watched—then it’s really a slap on every leader in that community.