Thread by @VincentFoucher

This figure is astounding. And the problem is particularly acute in the north. What an indictment of the Nigerian elites… Has anything been learned from the #BokoHaram experience? It’s in the very name of Boko Haram, ffs. “Western education is forbidden”.

https://twitter.com/LouiseDewast/status/1525011749707079680

Even if that name is a derisive designation by critics, it is true that the movement has criticised state-style education, and has brutally targeted it. It’s not just the Chibok girls: remember the massacre of schoolboys, the destruction of schools!

And even before things got violent, Mohamed Yusuf was criticising state-promoted, state-producing, Western-style education. For some of the content. But also because he perceived it as the beginning of an “allegiance” to the Nigerian state.

And he was right: school is a fundamental aspect of affiliation to statehood, as Gellner, Ben Anderson and Eugen Weber (and others) have shown. Going to school is the first of the “pilgrimages” towards the nation-state – Anderson’s choice of this religious analogy is so telling.

Of course, it’s not sufficient in itself, and there is no lack of violent conflict in other parts of Nigeria with much higher education levels. But low levels of Boko education estrange whole populations from the state.

It makes the link to the state even more difficult, tense, susceptible to manipulations and abuse, it encourages the dependence on middlemen and brokers who can be abusive or exploitative.

It reduces life chances, also, feeding into people a sense that the state is working against them, encouraging some of them to look for more accountable alternatives.

In the southwest of Borno, there are areas which Boko Haram has never been able to penetrate or strike. Why is that? Partly at least because those areas have a historically high level of Boko education.

Boko education is not a magic bullet, of course. It can go wrong. Create expectations that cannot be satisfied by the job market. Be so low quality that it serves no real purpose. But it is clearly part of the solution, notably to address the north/south situation.

I find some encouragement in the fact that a lot of the former #BokoHaram associates I have spoken to, including some who insisted they used to be real believers, have come out with the conclusion that Boko was actually "halal", good and useful.

They want some, for their children, but also for them. Incidentally, the demand for adult education in Nigeria (as a whole) is truly astounding. But the state must at the very least regulate supply to this demand, ensure quality.