MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The teenager in the immaculate white robe stood in the ruins of what had been his school. There were no classrooms, no desks or chairs, no intact blackboards — there was, in fact, no longer any reason for him to be there.

Yet the teenager, Aruna Mustapha, and a friend had come to sign in anyway, just as they did every morning before the fire, expressing a hunger for education and a frustration with the insurgents bent on preventing it.