By Emmanuel Ogebe
On the sixth anniversary of heroine Christian teenager Leah’s abduction, a visit to her school in Yobe State, Nigeria shows abject neglect just like her.
Leah, the world’s youngest prisoner of conscience designated by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (she was 14 on Feb 19, 2018) may be world famous but it hasn’t helped her school.
The Government Girls Science School Dapchi is a shadow of its former self, decrepit and overgrown with weeds since that fateful day, as discovered on our recent fact finding mission.
Birds now occupy the staff room as goats and other animals roam free where schoolgirls used to be. But it is not just infrastructural decay that devastated the school after the terror attack.
Many of the girls have been unable to complete or continue their education.
Several were displaced during subsequent attacks by Boko Haram on Dapchi leading to our intervention.
One of Leah’s schoolmates who went to school in Bauchi was abducted, forcefully converted and wedded by one of her lecturers leading to our intervention last year.
Another schoolmate was impregnated by a military personnel on security deployment to Dapchi who refused to take responsibility for the baby leading to our intervention last year.
Ironically as for Leah herself who was impregnated twice by her abductors, her children are being catered for by the terrorists but a Nigerian soldier abandoned responsibility for his daughter from impregnating Leah’s classmate.
Leah’s widowed birthmom and blood siblings in the village close to Sambisa Forest have experienced displacement too from continuing terror attacks leading to our intervention.
Leah’s eldest sister has also had two children while Leah was in captivity which she remains unaware of. Incidentally Leah birthed a boy and a girl in captivity and her sister also birthed a boy and a girl as well.
Sadly despite the infamous Dapchi and Chibok school mass abductions six and years ago, over 600 women and schoolchildren were kidnapped this IWD week in just two incidents in Borno and Kaduna.
Each atrocity exceeds the Chibok mass abductions of 276 students a decade ago https://naijalamp.com/2024/03/06/boko-haram-abducts-319-female-idps-in-borno/.
Picture illustrations:
- 1. Main picture story is the school dormitory where Leah Sharibu was tending a sick student just before she was abducted
- 2. First picture in the story is the classroom drawing board still showing the last thing written on February 18, 2018 – the eve of the terror attack
- 3. Second picture in the story is the computer lab of the Govt Girls Science Sch Dapchi
Emmanuel Ogebe is of the US NIGERIA LAW GROUP, Washington DC