Girls who escaped Chibok kidnappers take their school exams

Some of the Nigerian girls who escaped after Boko Haram kidnappers attacked their school in Chibok have been sitting exams.

They travelled to other schools to take their National Examination Council tests because the Government Girls Secondary School was badly damaged in the assault in April.

On of them, Sarah Lawan, spoke at the examination centre in Maidaguri. She said: “We are 15 girls that came from Chibok to write the exams here.”

She told the Nigerian newspaper Leadership that she misses the adbucted girls who have yet to come home, “erspecially now that we are to write our NECO exams”.

A father of one of the missing girls said he wished it was his daughter who was taking her exams.

Lucky Chibok added: “It is another sad day for me and her mother and other siblings.

“When we heard that some of the girls would be travelling out of Chibok to write the NECO exams, I became sad because the dream my little girl has for the future is gradually slipping off our hands and we cannot do anything to help her as parents.”

The 57 girls who escaped are to be moved to other schools outside Borno state. Some of them and their parents met the state governor, Kashim Shettima, who said the move would help them to cope with the psychological trauma of their ordeal.

A Safe Schools Initiative has been set up to pilot 500 safe schools in northern Nigeria.

Find out how you can donate to the Safe Schools Fund…
And how you can take action on Day of the African Child in support of safer schools.