Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum has enrolled 1,163 children of people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency into a school at a town liberated from insurgents in the state.
Governor Zulum, who monitored the enrolment of the IDPs children at Damasak, a town along the Lake Chad shore in the northern part of Borno on the last day of his visit to the area on Monday, said the exercise was a move to ensure sustainable development.
He appealed to parents to allow their children to enrol in schools. He said only parents and guardians who allow their children and ward to attend schools will be considered for the social welfare packages or aids from the government. He said the idea was to encourage all parents to educate their children.
He assured all secondary school students in Damasak and those who have written their senior secondary school certificate exams of government support.
Governor Zulum had been at Damasak, 189 kilometres to Maiduguri since Saturday to distribute food items and other relief to the people severally displaced by Boko Haram violence. Most of the IDPs are from another local government nearby
Damasak, headquarters of Mobbar local government, was once a stronghold of Boko Haram insurgents
Boko Haram has destroyed about 1;400 schools in North-East Nigeria and more than half of the schools in Borno have remained closed for nearly a decade now due to insurgency, a 2017 report by UNICEF said. Almost all the schools in the northern part of Borno, a stronghold of insurgency, have been burnt by Boko Haram while a few converted to military bases.