Vigilante Group Deployed To Guard Schools As Students Resume For Exams

Kareem Haruna
— June 2, 2014
Local hunters under the aegis of the
Vigilante Group of Nigeria have been
deployed to Chibok town to provide
security for junior secondary school
(JSS) students, who are resuming to
write both their second and third term
examinations, official sources informed
LEADERSHIP.
The Borno State government had in
March announced the closure of all
public schools, following increasing
attacks on schools by the Boko Haram
sect.
The hunters had as at yesterday moved
to Chibok ahead the students, who
resume today.
An official of the local vigilante group
said they had been contacted to give
the school and the students a security
cover as they commence their exams, as
parents had expressed fear that their
wards’ lives might be endangered,
should they go back to school.
The junior secondary school is run by
the Universal Basic Education Scheme in
Borno State.
Apart from Government Secondary
School, Chibok from where over 200
girls were abducted by Boko Haram, the
UBE school, which has a primary as well
as a junior secondary section, is the
only public school in Chibok town.
Last week, the Borno State government
had dispersed over 300 local hunters
and members of the Vigilante Group of
Nigeria from where they had assembled
at a pilgrims’ camp in Maiduguri, ready
to go in search for and rescue the
abducted schoolgirls from the Boko
Haram. The state government had said
that sending local hunters into the
Sambisa forest would not only be
suicidal for them, but could also
interfere with the ongoing international
efforts to rescue the girls.
Besides that, Governor Shettima had
said he had no executive powers to
sanction such local effort, as only the
presidency was vested with that
authority. Shettima, who addressed the
hunters through his deputy governor,
Zanna Mustapha, had said he would
rather deploy them to guard the primary
and secondary schools, when they
resumed to write their promotional
exams.
Officials of the vigilante group said that
over 300 of their members had been
deployed to Chibok alone, to secure the
town as the students write their exams