Three years ago we added another cohort of 42 girls from Chibok, who were victims of the Boko Haram insurgency/abductions and who managed to escape from their abductors, when they were taken alongside the 276 Chibok girls in 2014 while writing their final secondary school examination.
While on captivity with the Boko Haram members, some of the girls managed to escape and were traced back to neighboring villages and then to their respective communities.
Out of the escaped abducted school girls, 42 were been taken and enrolled back to various secondary schools under the Girl Child Concerns (GCC) Female Students Scholarship Scheme (FSSS).
Consequently, the escaped school girls were enrolled into secured and comfortable schools, GCC was faced with a lot of challenges due to the peculiarity of nature of the situation.
GCC program, being the first of its kind in the area, kept a group of girls out of the lime light for the past three years. It was difficult getting a school for them at the time. We got custody of these girls and schools refused to accept those students out of fear of the consequences that could follow if it was discovered that the girls were in the school. In one school, some parents threatened to withdraw their children if they are offered admission. Bethel International Christian Academy Jos and Ulul Albab Islamic School Katsina gave us succor by not only giving admission to the girls but also created special remedial classes to get the girls up to speed to be able to catch up with others. There was lack of trust from the girls and their parents and they were highly skeptical to allow their children to go back to school again to complete their O level education. They felt that Boko Haram sect could come after their daughters again.
In order to meet with the objective of the program, there were series of meetings and consultations with the partners, communities, religion and traditional leaders.
Finally, 42 of them were graduated on 25th July 2017 by GCC in Abuja.