The UN Special Envoy for Education, Gordon Brown, made this known when he briefed newsmen at the ongoing World Economic Forum in Abuja on Wednesday.
The project is the initiative of Nigerian business leaders such as eminent businessman, Aliko Dangote; Jim ovia, founder of Zenith Bank; and Nduka Obiagbena, Chairman of Thisday newspapers.
They are also working in collaboration with the UN Special Envoy for Education.
Brown said: “I believe that the headlines ‘Save Our Girls’ in every part of the world has inspired the United Nations and created awareness even in the remotest parts of the world.
“We heard that in the last few days, about 11 others were kidnapped while over 150 people were killed in the North East during the last few days.”
Brown said that two specialised teams on surveillance from US and UK would be brought to Nigeria in the next few days to locate and rescue the girls.
He said it was a welcome development for the international community to support the Nigerian government on this issue.
According to him, they will help to locate and rescue the girls before they are dispersed across the whole of Africa.
He stressed the need to reassure Nigerians that their children would be safe and secure while in schools.
Brown added: “We cannot standby when thousands of girls are afraid of going to school, when more than tens of thousands of parents are in fear of their daughters’ life.
“The education system in Nigeria has been undermined and, therefore, the business community in Nigeria should be congratulated for accepting the offer to sponsor this schools initiative.”
He said that it was imperative to support communities to come together to make schools’ safer.
According to Brown: “We need to ensure that children are safe in schools, schools are also safe and tackling of problems created by terrorism.”
He called for continuous effort to ensure that the number of out of school children was reduced in Nigeria.
Brown called on other financing agencies to support the project.
Earlier, Obiagbena said the idea was to ensure that the children were in schools and to ensure that the abducted girls in Borno State were rescued.
Obiagbena said the initiative would start with 500 pilot schools in Northern states and would focus on school and community interventions and vulnerable children.
He said: “The initiative will build community security groups to promote safe zones for education, consisting of teachers, parents, police, community leaders and the youth.
“In the long term, the initiative will focus on physical protection of schools, providing school guards in partnership with Nigerian authorities, and provision of communication tools, among others.”
Also, Saadia Zahidi, the Head of Gender Parity and Skills Initiative of WEF, said one of the greatest asset of Africa was its youths.
Zahidi said that the initiative would assist Africa to unlock its potential and this could be seen as crucial intervention.
According to her, the safe schools initiative is a public private partnership that will help protect our great asset.
NAN reports that Brown will meet with President Goodluck Jonathan this week on the project and submit over 400,000 signatures showing international support for the initiative.
A moment of silence was observed at the various meetings to support the efforts to rescue the abducted Chibok girls.
