[FILE] This screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. / AFP PHOTO / BOKO HARAM / HO• Use your votes wisely, Oyebode-Muhammed advises Chibok parents• Parents of missing Chibok girls demand action
Part of the statement signed by Amnesty International’s Nigeria Director, Osai Ojigho, reads: “Since then, abductions have continued. Between December 2020 and October last year, 1,436 school children – and 17 teachers – were abducted from schools in Nigeria by armed groups. The recent upsurge has triggered prolonged school shutdowns – and in turn led to a decline in school enrolment and attendance, as well as a rise in child marriage and pregnancies of school-age girls.
Ojigho added: “Nigeria is failing to protect vulnerable children. By refusing to respond to alerts of impending attacks on schools across the north of the country, Nigerian authorities have failed to prevent mass abductions of thousands of school children. In a statement issued yesterday, UNICEF’s Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, said the interruption of the children’s learning contributes to gaps in their skills and may lead to loss of $3.4 billion in their lifetime earnings.
“Girls have particularly been targeted, exacerbating the figures of out-of-school children in Nigeria, 60 per cent of whom are girls. It is a trajectory, which must be halted, and every hand must be on deck to ensure that learning in Nigeria is not a dangerous enterprise for any child, particularly for girls.”
Further, she emphasised that the election period should be used “to make the search and rescue of your daughters an election event. The students bared their minds in letters written on the eighth anniversary of the infamous abduction and sent to Oby Ezekwesili, a former Minister of Education and one of the leaders of the BBOG movement. The movement had advocated the release of the Chibok girls since 2014 when the incident happened.
“I don’t like the school. We were thinking when the government said they will give us the best education anywhere of our choice, we will be given the right to make our choices where we will be free, not looked down upon and discriminated against, as if it was our faults that we have poor education background and even to be abducted,” she said, though thanking the government for the scholarship and the rescue.
North have no security challenges ,interest is for a northerner to remain in power
An indictment on our politicians. Today they are busy as if nothing happened...