Marte is a town in Borno State, North-East Nigeria. Farmers, herders, businesspeople and a few civil servants all lived peacefully together in the town untilIn 2014, some new faces arrived in the community to preach religion. Soon, the residents realised the new arrivals were terrorists who unleashed mayhem that year, turning the once-bustling community into a ghost of its former self.
“When the insurgents began forcefully taking young men, I, my two older brothers and friends fled to Dikwa on motorcycle and from Dikwa to Maiduguri by car,” he narrated. “In Maiduguri, we settled in Abbaganaram and in mid-2015, out of loneliness, I enrolled in College of Health.Many of his peers who fled Marte to Maiduguri had also either enrolled in tertiary institutions or were planning to do so at that time.
Kachalla Ali, 29, is another youth from Marte who embraced western education after his forced migration to Maiduguri. He had completed secondary school in 2014 and was into trading in clothes at the only market in Marte when the terrorists attacked and his life changed for worse, and then for better.
He currently has one child in the College of Health Technology, Maiduguri, one in Ramat Polytechnic, two in primary and secondary schools and two are graduates working as civil servants in Marte local government.Due to distance and age-long culture of obtaining only secondary and Islamic education, the likes of Messrs Tijjani, Abba, Ali and some others who spoke to this reporter would not have had a chance at western education.
Hajara Muhammed, 27, is one of those who broke the jinx. She now has a National Diploma in Forestry Technology from Mohamet Goni College of Agriculture. However, Mr Jibril said the choice of education depends on the family, stressing that even before the displacement, Marte had B.Sc., M.Sc., and PhD holders and professors.