Our girls will acquire western education despite Boko Haram’s warnings – Dapchi parents insists

Some parents of the just released Dapchi school girls have reiterated that their children will continue to acquire western education despite Boko Haram’s threat of not doing so to avoid risking another abduction.

The members of the sect who returned the girls to Dapchi on Wednesday were said to have left a strong warning to the residents that they should not send their children to school again or they would risk being abducted.

Some of the freed girls were also said to have claimed that the insurgents warned them on the verge of their release that they should not return to western education if they did not want to be abducted again.

But some of the parents who spoke with newsmen on Friday said the threats issued by the sect would not deter them from getting their daughters educated.

Musa Kalla, father of Zara Musa, one of the girls abducted and brought back safely, said: “No one can stop me from educating my daughter. It is not possible for me to obey Boko Haram on that kind of advice.

“God is the creator and the maker of everything that happens in this world. My daughter Insha Allah (by God’s grace) will continue with her school and become what God has destined her to be.”

Another parent, Fatima Abdullahi, said that having not gone to school herself, she would never compromise her daughter’s education.

She said: “I didn’t go to school, but I know that education is very important.

“It is not possible for somebody to stop the education of my daughter except God says so.

“What Boko Haram is saying is not possible for us to follow.

“Our children will continue to go to school.

“Islam does not forbid knowledge.”

Fatima said that while her daughter may no longer school in Dapchi, she would not object the idea of her continuing her education elsewhere if that became necessary.

“We cannot say now because our children are not in our custody but in the custody of the government.

“But like I said, my daughter will go to school even if government decides to return her to me, but it may not be this school in Dapchi because we cannot have any rest of mind if our children are in that school.”

The Secretary of the Forum of Parents of the missing Dapchi girls, Kachalla Bukar, who interacted with the insurgents when they came to Dapchi to drop off the girls including his daughter, Aisha, categorically said her daughter would continue schooling but not in Dapchi.

He said with the kind of confidence and weapons he saw the Boko Haram insurgents display, he was convinced that nobody could stop them from going to anywhere they want to go.

“In fact, they can even enter Damaturu and abduct girls in any school they want to,” he said.

Asked whether he would heed Boko Haram’s advice to keep his daughter at home, Kachalla said: “We cannot send them to that particular school. It’s not safe for us to keep them at home either.

“There is no security in that school. I can send her to either school in Nguru, Maiduguri or any other state apart from Yobe, because I have confidence that those guys can come to Damaturu and abduct girls if they want to.

“I feel that Nguru is safer because there is a barrack there and it has only one road and plenty rivers, unlike Damaturu and Potiskum which are so porous.

“There are many roads in Damaturu that Boko Haram can follow and you will not catch them.”

Adamu Jumbam, one of the parents whose daughters died in the incident, told our correspondent that he had accepted his fate.

Jumbam said: “I was troubled when other girls were seen on arrival but my daughter Aisha was said to have died along with four others on the day of their abduction.

“All the same, I thank Almighty Allah for this and pray for the repose their souls. We can say the government has tried.”

“The surprising thing is that Boko Haram abducted these girls and still returned then to the heart of the town in broad daylight and went back freely.

“It is absolutely amazing. It troubles our imagination. How will Boko Haram abduct these teenagers over one month, returned them and nothing was done to them?”