Education Is Forbidden

By Rahima Gambo

After a string of attacks on schools and universities in north-eastern Nigeria and the highly publicised abduction of hundreds of girls from the town of Chibok, officials closed public schools for two years. Now they are back in these schools picking up the pieces of an education interrupted. They are wearing the same uniforms, sleeping in the same dorm rooms, yet they have changed.

As students remember their experiences living at the forefront of the Boko Haram conflict, their stories often sound like a dark folktale somewhere between the real and the imagined. The act of remembering past traumatic experiences doesn’t fit neatly into a timeframe. Each retelling creates a third space, an alternate reality that is timeless and unresolved.

But beyond this contemporary conflict, the project explores the school site as a concept embedded in Nigerian history as a symbol of the colonial encounter and reflects on the idea of a collective memory that connects the student body and the idealisation of an education system that is falling apart.

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Rukkaya, Hadiza, Falmata, and Rashida are teenage students of Shehu Garbai Secondary School, a government school in Maiduguri, Borno State. Public schools were allowed to re-open after a two-year closure was enforced by the state when over two hundred school girls were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents from the town of Chibok. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

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Students outside class at Shehu Garbai Secondary School, a government school in Maiduguri. After prolonged closures, students have returned to schools that are in bad need of rehabilitation and suffer from a severe shortage of teachers. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

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A collage of Illustrations from “A Text book on Physical Education for Junior Secondary Schools; Book One” by J.M. Okhakhu and S.D. Tanko. Published by Evans Brothers Nigeria Publishers Limited, 1987, Ibadan, Nigeria.

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Three students from Shehu Sanda Kyarimi government school. During the height of the insurgency it was feared that some students were Boko Haram members. Officials described secondary school students as both victims and perpetrators. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

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Students wait for class to begin at Shehu Sanda Kyarimi government school. The school was attacked by Boko Haram members where a teacher and student were killed. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

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Rukkaya and Hadiza remember having to hide their school uniforms in plastic bags because they feared becoming a target of Boko Haram. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016. The photograph is seen alongside a connect-the-dots style illustration from the book, “Progressive Coloring Book three” by Christopher G. Bakare. It purports to teach 12 psychological skills to students. Published by Heineman Educational Books in Ibadan, Nigeria, 1982.

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Rukkaya, 17, Senior Secondary School student at Shehu Garbai Secondary School. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

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A student at the variety night social at Adamawa State University. Mubi, Nigeria, 2015.

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Adamawa State University students in a lecture hall. The town of Mubi was attacked by Boko Haram in 2014, causing students to flee from the campus. One year later, students are still traumatized by their ordeal. Mubi, Nigeria, 2015. Overlaid is an illustration from the children’s textbook book, “Primary Mathematics for Nigerian Schools, Pupil’s Book 5 with Answers,” published by Heinemann Educational Books Nigeria PLC for the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council.

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Winnie, 31, in her room at Adamawa state university. When Boko Haram attacked Mubi, her brother Labaga went missing and is now feared dead. Mubi, Nigeria, 2015

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Shadrach, a final year student in his dorm room. “I don’t feel safe and I’m sure none of the students and staff feel safe,” said Shadrach. Mubi, Nigeria, 2015.

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He was thirteen when Boko Haram insurgents attacked his government boarding school in 2014 during an incident known as the Buni Yadi massacre. 59 boys were killed in their dorm rooms. Three years on, he still sees the faces of fifteen of his friends who were killed by the insurgents. Damaturu, Nigeria, 2016. Illustration from the book “Ka K’ara Karatu Sabuwar Hanya” .

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“I was scared because I have never seen such a thing in my life, there were pieces of people everywhere, I was thinking, is this a movie or is this thing true,” said Bashir describing the moments after the bomb blast he survived on campus. Yola, Nigeria, 2015.

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The burnt shell of a classroom at a destroyed school in Bayan Quarters, known as the neighborhood where the Boko Haram ideology began. 910 schools were destroyed by the group between 2009 and 2015 Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016