Ese Oruru — kidnapped at 13 from her mother’s food shop in Yenagoa, Bayelsa, to Kano, where she was forcefully converted to Islam and married off to the keke driver who abducted her — has graduated from the University of Ilorin with Second Class Upper Division in education technology.

On Wednesday, Ms Oruru was among the nearly 12,000 graduands at the University of Ilorin’s 40th convocation and among the few to have Upper Class honours.

Ms Oruru had a sordid encounter back in 2015 after Yunusa Dahiru, a Muslim tricycle driver, orchestrated her abduction from her parents’ custody to the northern Kano, where he secretly married her under Islamic law without the consent of her parents.

The case sparked nationwide outrage after Rose Oruru, the victim’s mother, said she was repeatedly denied access to her daughter at the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II’s palace. Mr Sanusi was the ex-governor of the nation’s central bank.

Following a sluggish trial that lasted five years, Mr Dahiru, alias Yellow, was sentenced in 2020 to 26 years’ imprisonment for unlawful carnal knowledge of a minor, trafficking, illicit intercourse, and sexual exploitation of a minor. Yellow was 18 years old when he raped the minor.

But by the time the police intervened and rescued Ms Oruru from her abductor, she was already pregnant and had already lost a year of her secondary school  education.

Ms Oruru spent nine months in captivity in Kano. The teenager returned to finish her secondary education after giving birth.

“I am super-joyful to honour and celebrate the academic achievement of Ese Oruru!” former education minister Obiageli Ezekwesili wrote on X Wednesday. “Ese graduated 2nd Class Upper Division in Education Technology today at the University of Ilorin and now stands as a testament of what a determined mind can accomplish.”

She added, “The future holds so much greater promise for this young woman whose life has evolved into an extraordinary inspiration and role model for us all.”