42 escaped Chibok girls graduate from Plateau, Katsina schools

.. Why we concealed schools’ identity – ShettimaBy Sadiq Abubakar Maiduguri Th e 42 girls who escaped from Boko Haram after their abduction at Government Secondary School, Chibok, on April 14, 2014, have graduated from private schools in Plateau and Katsina states through a joint sponsorship by the Borno state government and a non-profi t humanitarian organisation, Girl Child Concern, chaired by Dr Mairo Mandara.

Governor Kashim Shettima attended a special graduation ceremony organised for the girls at A Class event Centre in Abuja yesterday morning. Chairperson of the Girl Child Concern, Dr Mairo Mandara, recalled that after the escaped girls went through psycho-social rehabilitation in 2014, Governor Shettima gave her a special task of taking over managing the education of the girls. “Some of the schools we contacted all refused to admit the girls soon as we told them that they were those that escaped after abduction in Chibok.

Th e school authorities were afraid that Boko Haram could go after their schools. Some of them were concerned that parents of existing students were going to withdraw their children from their schools for fear of Boko Haram if they had the Chibok schoolgirls in their schools. Finally, we got two schools in Katsina and in Plateau states which accepted the girls,” Mandara said.

According to her, the girls were enrolled at Bethel International Christian Academy and Ulul-Albab Science Secondary School, Katsina, for those who are Christians and Muslims, respectively. Governor Shettima said at the occasion that the Chibok abduction had exposed the poor standard of public school education in Borno state which was his greatest concern. He said: “One other painful aspect of the Chibok abduction tragedy was that it exposed my greatest concern, which is the poor quality of our public schools.

Since 2014, my priority has always been about the rescue of all our abducted girls but then, we saw some of them granting interviews in local languages due to problems of expression in English and it was not the fault of the girls. “Th e situation was so bad that the amount of money being allocated for feeding boarding students across all secondary schools in Borno state was a paltry N20m per month which amounted to less than fi ve naira per meal for a student. Of course, we have since addressed that in 2012 by jerking up the allocation from N20m to N100m per month

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