By Aisha Gambo
The National Orientation Agency (NOA), together with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), is offering psycho-social support, trauma counselling and healing to kidnap survivors from Bethel Baptist School, Kaduna.
The NOA State Director, Alhaji Zubair Galadima-Soba, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Monday.
Galadima-Soba said the agency, in collaboration with Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) and UNICEF, conducted a three-day interactive session on confidence building and dialogue for survivors of kidnapping and violence extremism.
NAN reports that on July 5, 2021, bandits abducted 121 students of the school, situated in Maraban Rido, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
Meanwhile, 120 of the students had been released, leaving one that allegedly decided to stay behind.
“The session will help the participants get out of trauma, make them re-focused and set their agenda again to propel their vision of coming to school.
“The agency and development partners will give them a feeling and experience that will take away the violent experience they went through and replace it with proper feelings of normal young adolescents,’’ Galadima-Soba said.
He also said that the students were given proper guidance by experts from SARC.
He said that they were also encouraged to speak up on their experiences as it would help to wipe away the pains they passed through.
He further said that narrating their ordeal in the hands of the bandits would help the UN to know how to assist them. (NAN)
