Northeastern Nigeria is a place of suddenly interrupted lives. Nearly 3 million people have been uprooted since the Islamist movement Boko Haram began its insurgency here a decade ago, taking deliberate aim at education. The group has murdered some 2,300 teachers, destroyed more than 1,400 schools, and kidnapped scores of students. But as war grinds into its 10th year, a counterinsurgency is building on unlikely front lines: battered open-air classrooms inside camps for displaced people, and dormitories at girls’ boarding schools, jammed with chattering teenagers in pink hijabs. Many here say Boko Haram’s fight against schools has backfired, though progress is fragile. “Lack of education is the disease that caused [Boko Haram] in the first place,” says Fanne Abdullahi, a mother of five who lives in a wind-swept camp in Maiduguri. The “classrooms” are little more than grass roofs; the walls were stolen for firewood. On a recent morning, Mastapha Kaltumi taught math to about 50 fidgety third-graders as children played tag nearby. “I’m so relieved to teach again,” Mr. Kaltumi says. “It’s gotten rid of perhaps 30 percent of the trauma I felt. At least I am engaging my mind.”
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