After weeks of suspension, some school girls caught smoking shisha in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, have been told to return to school.
The girls, who are all students of Abeokuta Girls’ Grammar School, Onikolobo, Ogun State, were caught smoking shisha while filming themselves at the residence of one of them.
After the video went viral, the management of the school was said to have suspended the students indefinitely.
The Ogun Ministry of Education, Science and Technology had taken up the matter, with efforts put in place to rehabilitate the school girls.
As of Tuesday, the teenagers were said to have undergone a series of counselling before they were returned to class.
The Commissioner for Education, Prof. Abayomi Arigbagbu, during a visit to the school, said the students would be put under manual labour as a form of punishment in the school to serve as a deterrent to others.
In her words, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mrs Abosede Ogunleye, charged students in the state to shun acts that would jeopardise their future.
Ogunleye pleaded that the reinstated students should not be stigmatised, saying, “The learners have been counselled and made to undergo some punishment and I want to believe they have changed for the better. So, I want to encourage you not to abuse, stigmatize or call them names, instead advise them and be their friends.”