Sustaining STEM education in Conflict-Affected Region in Nigeria: Adaptive Strategies for Teaching and Learning in Insecure Environments

Abstract

Nigeria confronts a profound paradox. The country faces an urgent national need to boost STEM education to drive innovation and global competitiveness while also facing a pervasive insecurity that has severely curtailed access to education for millions of children. Neglecting STEM education while the government battles insecurity creates a challenge of future skill deficit that can put the country in a worse crisis than it is currently facing.  This has raised the question of whether STEM education can be sustained in the face of persistent insecurity without jeopardising quality.  This study combines a synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, policy evaluations, and recent field interventions to an evidence-based, three-pillar Adaptive Resilience Framework (ARF) for STEM education in security-challenged environment. This framework is based on technology-enabled resilient pedagogy, community–industry integration, and teacher capacity building for crisis contexts. The paper argues that while insecurity remain a significant challenge to STEM education in Nigeria, recent innovations such as blended learning, mobile science laboratories, and strategic public–private partnerships demonstrate that sustainable, quality STEM education is both achievable and scalable. This paper contributes to the growing global literature on education in emergencies (EiE) by offering a contextualised, operationalisable framework transferable to analogous conflict-affected settings across Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.