The UN’s Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, has lauded Nigeria’s Safe Schools Initiative, saying two other countries are adopting it.
Brown told the Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria that the initiative continued in spite of the Boko Haram attacks.
Brown said: “We set up the Safe Schools Initiative. It was supported by Nigerian business. The government supported it and there was money from United Kingdom, America and other countries in support of this moving forward.
“And I went to Nigeria; I visited some of the areas in Nigeria where the Safe Schools were set up.
“And incidentally, because of the safe schools in Nigeria, other countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, have been looking at developing the same idea.
“That you can make your schools safer by better fortifications, by better communications, by sending out a message that you’re protecting it.
“This of course, was something we did three to four years ago. Since then, of course, the attacks by Boko Haram have discouraged large numbers of girls from going to school.
“Of course, about the fate of the girls that were kidnapped from Borno State, from Chibok, is of course another factor that has caused fear and uncertainty among girls themselves.”
NAN reports that the initiative was launched in 2014 at the World Economic Forum in Abuja, weeks after the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction.
The project brought together Nigerian business community, the government, donors and humanitarian agencies and raised $30 million.
In April 2016, the UNICEF reported the initiative had seen 213,985 internally displaced and vulnerable children enrolled in schools in camps and host communities.
Brown has continued to call on the international community to support the project, which he described as “laudable and a novel idea to alleviate the huge impacts of Boko Haram violence on education in Nigeria”.
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