42 Escaped Chibok Schoolgirls Graduate from Plateau, Katsina Schools

42 Escaped Chibok Schoolgirls Graduate from Plateau, Katsina Schools

*NGO: Some private schools refused admitting girls

Forty two girls who escaped from Boko Haram members 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-profit humanitarian organisation, Girl Child Concern, chaired by Dr. Mairo Mandara, a foremost advocate of girl-child education in Nigeria.

The girls were part of the 56 girls who escaped few days after the terrorists abducted 276 final year female students while they were writing the 2014 West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. Some of the girls jumped out of the moving truck while others fled from where the girls were detained in Boko Haram territories.

Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, attended a special graduation ceremony organised for the girls at A Class event centre in Abuja today.

The event had in attendance the 42 Chibok escapees and 34 other vulnerable girls exclusively sponsored by the Girl Child Concern with support from some other humanitarian partners.

Chairperson of the Girl Child Concern, Mandara, recalled that after the escape, the girls went through psycho-social rehabilitation in 2014, Shettima gave her a special task of taking over the management of the education of the girls. 

"Some of the schools we contacted all refused to admit the girls as soon as we told them that they were those who escaped after the abduction in Chibok. The school authorities were afraid that Boko Haram could go after their schools. Some of them were concerned that parents of other 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 Plateau States which accepted the girls. After the girls were evaluated, they couldn't compete with existing final year students so they had to go back to SSS 1 to begin their senior secondary education. We are glad that today, these girls have graduated from the secondary schools and have indicated their interests on future careers in tertiary institutions," Mandara said.

‎The girls were enrolled at Bethel International Christian Academy and Ulul-Albab Science Secondary School, Katsina State, for those who are Christians and Muslims respectively.

Shettima said at the occasion that the abduction had exposed the poor standard of public school education in Borno State which was his greatest concern.

‎"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 because they can’t express themselves in English, and it was not the fault of the girls. That was the quality of education they were provided. I live with a huge embarrassment concerning the quality of education provided by public schools in Borno State as it is in the case in many other states. I do not intend to make excuses but those familiar with what I met on ground would corroborate what I said. I inherited a disaster in the name of basic education. The situation was so bad that the amount of money being allocated for feeding boarding students across all secondary schools in the state was a paltry N20million per month which amounted to less than N5 per meal for a student. Of course, we have since addressed that in 2012 by jerking up the allocation from N20million to N100million per month. We are drastically repositioning our educational system with focus on totally changing basic education which is the most important step in the education of any child‎,” Shettima said.