Insurgency: Borno re-opens secondary schools next week

The Borno government said on Monday that it would re-open public secondary schools next week, two years after they were closed due to Boko Haram insurgency.

The state’s Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Inuwa Kubo, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri that Internally Displayed Persons (IDPs) occupying the schools had been relocated to allow for resumption of academic activities.

Kubo said that repairs had been carried out on all the structures in the schools to provide atmosphere conducive for teaching and learning.

“I wish to announce that on September 26, all public schools are going to be re-opened.

“I want to state that government has repaired all the structures damaged by the IDPs in the schools, to ensure comfort for the returning students.

“Parents and guardians should please make sure that they send their children back to school,” he said.

Kubo, however, decried the prolong closure of the schools and the fact that proprietors of private schools took undue advantage of the development to charge arbitrary fees.

“We understand that some of them have taken undue advantage of the closure to hike school fees; we will not allow the situation to continue.

“We are going to visit the schools to find out how much they are charging and how much they are paying their teachers.”

NAN recalls that the schools were shut in March 2014, after suspected terrorists attacked a school in neighbouring Yobe.

The government reopened the primary schools in 2015 but could not do so with the secondary schools because they had been taken over by IDPs.