Nigerian school reopens in insurgency-hit region

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nigeria

A Nigerian college has resumed academic activities in the insurgency-hit northeast region, nine months after it was shut down following abduction of over 100 schoolgirls by Boko Haram, local media reported.

All but one of the 110 schoolgirls -- Leah Sharibu -- have been freed by the militants but the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in northeastern Dapchi town in Yobe state had remained shut since then for security reasons.

The Feb. 19 incident occurred four years after some 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in neighboring Borno State, for the second time raising the global profile of the terrorist group which had attacked the United Nations office in the Nigerian capital Abuja a few years earlier.

“More than 80 percent of the students resumed, likewise the teachers. Almost all of them are around except very few who are away for one or more official reasons,” the country’s official news agency NAN quoted the school head Adama Abdulkarim as saying.

“School activities are moving smoothly as they were before the ugly incident,” Abdulkarim said.