LAKELAND Joy Bishara and Lydia Pogu nearly lost their freedom, and potentially their lives, because they dared to seek educations.
Seven years ago this month, the friends endured the horror of a nighttime abduction in their native Nigeria. They were among the “Chibok girls,” 276 students kidnapped from their school grounds by members of Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group opposed to education for girls and women.
Having daringly escaped, neither Bishara nor Pogu expected to complete high school. On Friday, each will receive a bachelor’s degree from Southeastern University.
“It’s feeling great because what happened in 2014 happened because of my education,” Pogu, now 23, said this week. “After what happened, I never even thought about graduating college even high school and now I graduated high school, I’m graduating college in two days and I’m talking about getting my master’s. So that’s like an unbelievable dream, but it’s true that it’s happ