Plan demands release of Dapchi girls

Plan International Nigeria has urged Nigerian government to redouble efforts to secure immediate release of 110 schoolgirls reported kidnapped from their school in Dapchi, Yobe on February 14. The kidnap comes almost four years since Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok, Borno in 2014. Plan called the Dapchi schoolgirls […]

Plan International Nigeria has urged Nigerian government to redouble efforts to secure immediate release of 110 schoolgirls reported kidnapped from their school in Dapchi, Yobe on February 14.

The kidnap comes almost four years since Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from a school in Chibok, Borno in 2014.

Plan called the Dapchi schoolgirls kidnap a “classic case of history repeating itself with no lessons learnt” and a gross violation of the girls’ right to freedom and equality.

“We know that girls kidnapped by Boko Haram are subject to unspeakable abuse including forced marriage, sexual violence and slavery so we ask the government to treat this emergency with the urgency it deserves,” said Hussaini Abdu, country director at Plan International in Nigeria.

“We know that girls who return to their communities after escaping capture, often with children, face stigma and exclusion, so it is likely this incident will affect these girls for the rest of their lives.”

Access to education, particularly for girls, has been badly affected in north-east Nigeria since 2009, with many families withdrawing their children, especially girls, from school due to the high risk of abduction, the humanitarian organisation said in a statement.

Without education, children are at risk of being seen as an ideal recruitment pool for extremist organisations or criminal gangs, their chances of employment are severely limited and the chance of them ending up in child marriages or with teenage pregnancies is significantly higher, it added.