USAID cuts leave Boko Haram victims without schooling in Nigeria

In Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, thousands of children once given a chance at education now face an uncertain future after U.S. funding cuts forced a leading nonprofit school to slash enrollment.

Among them is 14-year-old Israel Peter, who fled Boko Haram’s attack on his village at the age of six and has never returned to the classroom.

His hopes of studying engineering collapsed when the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation, which had offered free education to conflict victims, rejected his application due to funding shortages.

“Now my future will not be great,” Peter said quietly, helping his father on the family’s small farm instead of sitting in a classroom.

The school, founded in 2007 in Borno state, had educated more than 3,000 children displaced or orphaned by the insurgency.

But after the abrupt loss of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) support—part of a wider rollback of American aid—700 students and 20 teachers were cut, and new admissions have stopped.

Borno remains the epicenter of Boko Haram’s 16-year campaign to impose Islamic law, which has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced 2.6 million across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

The group, notorious for its abductions of students, forbids Western education but continues to recruit vulnerable children.

School founder Zannah Mustapha fears that those turned away may fall back into the militants’ orbit.

“With what is happening, they don’t have to be recruited; they will simply return to the hinterlands to start fighting,” he warned.

Analysts agree the crisis could play into jihadists’ hands.

“This only fuels extremist recruitment,” said Malik Samuel, a Nigerian researcher at Good Governance Africa.

Nigeria already has the world’s highest number of out-of-school children—over 10 million, according to UNICEF.

Yet the federal government spends just 4%–7% of its budget on education, well below the 15%–20% global benchmark.

In conflict-hit Borno, where infrastructure is ruined and families struggle to survive, paying even modest school fees of ₦5,000–₦15,000 ($3–$10) is often impossible.

The consequences are personal and painful.

Ramatu Usman, dropped from the program just before her final exams, now knits caps to survive instead of preparing to study medicine.

Her mother, Hajara Musa, wept: “A quality school is very important in this dangerous environment. Those who don’t go to school, their lives are miserable.”

Graduates like Yusuf Mustapha, now in his final year of computer science at a university in southwestern Nigeria, credit the school with saving their lives.

Orphaned by Boko Haram, he said simply: “If I did not go to this school, I don’t know how my life would have been.”

With international donors retreating—Britain also scaling back commitments—the fear is that many more children like Israel and Ramatu will be left behind, their futures stolen a second time.