Nigeria, May 21 -- For decades, Nigeria's education system has grappled with challenges rooted in poverty, infrastructure decay, and systemic inequality. However, in northern Nigeria, these issues have been magnified by a far more insidious threat: terrorism. Since the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009, education in the region has endured sustained and often violent assaults, resulting in the closure of schools, displacement of students and teachers, and the collapse of community trust in formal learning systems.

Before the onset of widespread terrorism, northern Nigeria was slowly closing the educational gap between the North and the more academically advanced South. Though colonial resistance to Western education initially slow...