The materials were provided by the Lakes state government with assistance from education partners last week.

This comes as the one-month voluntary disarmament exercise launched by the state in an attempt to curb the cycle of gun violence ended last Friday.

The exercise which began in the first week of November was meant to reduce the level of killings due to cattle raids and revenge attacks.

It followed retaliatory communal clashes between Gony and Rup in Lakes left 53 people dead in late October.

William Koji Kirjok, the state government spokesperson told Eye Radio that the peaceful disbarment exercise went smoothly with nearly all the cattle camps disarmed.

Kirjok attributes the success to cooperation from the traditional leaders, county administrators and cattle camp leaders.

He said with the improved security situation, the state has now decided that all children including those in the cattle camps have access to education next year.

“The presence of firearms in the hands of civilians those days affected many things; it closed down many schools, it diverted the minds of children from attending classes,” Kirjok said.

“This is the right time for them to go back to schools or in cattle camps that did have school to be part of education. So it is far better than having firearms.”

Although the peaceful disarmament exercise managed to restore peace in the state, Kirjok says, there are still some youth who are unwilling to hand over their firearms.

“Whoever is going to refuse to meet the deadline given will be disarmed forcefully. The government has the ability to disarm people forcefully, if there are individuals or groups who refuse to be disarmed peacefully,” said Kirjok.

“Criminals might be hiding. Those who have been killing people and involved in robberies, some of them surrendered themselves to the police and some of them are still at large and we will treat them as criminals.”

According to Kirjok, a decision to carry out a forceful disarmament will be announced once the state puts together data of arms collected during the voluntary disarmament exercise.