Parents and guardians of the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok about 3months ago have lamented President Goodluck Jonathans unconcerned attitude toward their plight, saying he should meet all the affected parents and guardians not a selected few.
On Wednesday some relatives of the schoolgirls who boycotted a meeting with the president on Tuesday, said the find it very offensive that the president called just a few of them and that the meeting was hastily put together even after three months after the kidnapping.
More than three months after Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from Government Secondary School Chibok the president has not met the parents of the hostages, neither has he met with any of the 57 girls who have escaped.
But on Tuesday, after a visit by 17-yearold Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, Jonathan was persuaded to meet the victims’ relatives.
A meeting scheduled for Tuesday was called off at the last minute. The presidency had claimed that the families of the girls had been manipulated by activists who are exploiting the hostage crisis to damage the current administration.
But Chibok community leaders told journalists that if Jonathan truly wants to make amends for his disappointing response to the abductions, he should visit the town or, at the very least, bring all the victims to Nigeria’s capital.
“It is embarrassing that the president had to wait for Malala to come all the way to Nigeria to convince him to meet with us three months after the attack,” said Dauda Iliya, a member of the Chibok panel of elders.
Iliya said the community deserve a visit by the president, adding that if Jonathan cannot go to the remote north-eastern town for security reasons, he can bring all the 219 mothers to meet with him.
“This meeting should not be selective,” he said.
“If our governor (Kashim Shettima of Borno State) was able to come and go back safely, why can’t the president, with all his helicopters,” added Ayuba Chibok, whose nieces are among the hostages
Jonathan spokesman Doyin Okupe charged that the group had been co-opted by the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, which includes some of the president’s political opponents.
Okupe told journalists the presidency had formally asked victims to meet Jonathan next week, but the venue and number invited was not immediately clear.
