How Command Secondary School ‘rejected’ 12-year-old student ‘over HIV status’ | TheCable Cc: HQNigerianArmy
An option she would begin with was getting him into a Command Secondary School, a chain of schools run by the Nigerian army. But an “expulsion” from school over Jude’s positive HIV status would leave Agnes Okoro, his mother, frantic about how to pull her once bubbly son out of the hollow cave of suicidal thoughts he sank into.
“They asked people with medical issues to step forward and I asked Jude to go. He got to the doctor and the next thing I heard was shouts and angry screams. I walked up to him and asked him what the problem was and he asked me what drugs those were. I told him they were anti-retroviral drugs. He then asked me why I brought ‘this’ child to school and I said ‘I don’t understand, he came to study like every other child, as you can see he’s a student’.
“So to avoid all these issues, we called her, refunded her admission fee, and added N20,000 for her to add to his medication fee so she can enrol him somewhere else. He would be better managed in a day school. You know how boarding activities get, he might even forget to take his drugs and who has time to go and look for him to remind him? There are over 1000 students here.
“As an association, we stand for our own, so we pleaded that the school takes the boy back but the commandant said the school would not take responsibility for the boy’s health since he’s still very young,” he told TheCable. “When this happened, Jude was crying and asking me why I allowed this to happen to him. He kept saying he was going to kill himself, I was so scared. Emotionally and mentally, he was damaged.”“After listening to her, we immediately arranged for psycho-social support for her son, we could see how traumatised he was from what had happened.
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