BOKO HARAM: NIGERIA HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION LAMENTS NUMBER OF CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL

The National Human Rights Commission has lamented the increasing number of school children displaced by insurgency in the North East.

The acting coordinator of the commission in Adamawa State, Grace Mamza, made the observation in Yola on Saturday when its officials embarked on a state wide monitoring of formal and informal camp settlements for Internally Displaced Persons in the state.
Ms. Mamza, while expressing dismay at the condition of education facilities, said “our advocacy to aid agencies is to assist and correct the problems so as to have good result”.
At Sangere, where one of the schools for IDP children is voluntarily run by 58 parents displaced by the insurgency, one official of the school, Peter Banu, said “education must continue”.
Mr. Banu, the head master of the school visited, said the intervention of the NHRC helped to increase enrolment, taking the initial population of kids who came to the centre from 570 to above 1000.
Mr. Banu lamented that the school has 54 volunteers but none of them has received any financial assistance or relief materials from the government. He said the volunteers have been living off the assistance of non-governmental organisations and other public spirited individuals.
Represented by Ibrahim Gadaka, Ms. Mamza, while inspecting tents and educational items donated earlier by the Ministry of Women Affairs, Social and Child Development and other aid agencies in the state, said “adequate attention has not been paid to education of children displaced by insurgency in the North East”.
“We are here to assess the impact of some of the relief items, like tents and shelters we helped to secure for most of the camps in the state.
“And our concern has been the number of kids, who do not have access to education under their present conditions as IDPs. Unfortunately, in most cases a lot of this kids have been kept out of the school system due to government’s failure, in most cases, to provide alternative schooling environment for them,” she said.
About 20,000 people have been killed in the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria with north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa most affected. Over a million people have been displaced both internally and to neighbouring countries by the insurgency.