Girls in two communities of Nigeria’s federal capital, Abuja, are being forced to drop out of school for fear of being raped. Our reporter visits the communities and reports
Aborted dreams
In February 2018, Maimuna’s dream of an education died on her way back from school. She was returning to her home in Zhiko from Ijagbagyi Secondary School, Sabon Wuse, Niger State, where she was a junior secondary school two student, when she was attacked and raped by two men.
The assault has left her broken and afraid to go to school. A constant reminder of that brutal attack remains in the form of her 13-month-old son.
“I wanted to become a nurse, but, not anymore,” the now 18-year-old single mother, whose real name is not Maimuna, said.
Managing a forced smile, the sleeping toddler in her arms, Maimuna said, “Whenever I look at him, I worry about the day he will ask me who his father is. I don’t know what I will tell him.”
‘I had kept myself and was even more devastated to find I was pregnant with twins from the rape. That was the end of school for me,’ says Grace
As she spoke, tears ran down her cheeks onto the baby’s body. “I am happy to have a child, but I wish I was prepared for him and that he was born out of love, in a marriage,” she added.
Maimuna’s case is not an isolated one. Twenty-year-old Hasiya (also not her real name) from Pesepa was raped on her way back from school in 2017. She also was a student at Ijagbagyi Secondary School, in senior secondary school two. Read more