The needless controversy over the aborted meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and representatives of the parents of the 276 abducted schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, is one embarrassment too many for the President, which reflects the moral burden his administration is now saddled with; compounded further by his failure to visit Chibok, and sympathize with the parents and families of the abducted girls. Having advertised its gross incapacitation, having demonstrated in word and deed its insensitivity and apathy towards the kidnapped schoolgirls, the President, again, lost another opportunity to reassure Nigerians and the international community that he is in charge of all of Nigeria and cares about all of her people.
The labored explanations proffered by the Presidency for what inevitably, is another public relations disaster are hardly credible. The fact remains that the President wanted to use the visit of the 17-year-old Pakistani girl-child education activist, Malala Yousafzai, to meet with some of the parents of the abducted girls. But the hastily arranged meeting scheduled was called off manu-militari after relatives of the girls decided to boycott the meeting, angry at the President’s refusal to visit Chibok and meet with the distraught families, over three months after the girls were kidnapped on April 14. Presidential spokesman, Doyin Okupe charged that the families of the girls had been manipulated by activists of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, which includes some of the president’s political opponents, who are exploiting the hostage crisis to damage the Jonathan administration. Okupe told journalists the presidency had formally asked victims to meet Jonathan next week, but the venue and number invited was not immediately clear. This obviously is too little, too late; but better late than never.
Quite predictably, the All Progressive Congress (APC) launched a blistering attack on the President, saying the failure of the meeting was a “compound embarrassment.” “President Jonathan, who has already embarrassed himself and the entire people of Nigeria by his inexplicable failure to visit Chibok since the girls were abducted over 90 days ago, has compounded the embarrassment and insulted Nigerians by waiting for Malala to goad him to meet with the girls’ parents, not in Chibok but in Abuja,” the APC said in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. After the meeting failed, because the parents were not properly informed and invited, a shameless presidency blamed the opposition and patriotic Nigerians who have been campaigning daily, under the #Bringbackourgirls group, the APC noted. “Fortunately, and to the eternal discomfiture of the presidency, the Chibok community has said the decision not to meet with President Jonathan in Abuja was theirs and theirs alone, and that they took that decision because their sole reason for coming to Abuja was to meet with Malala, and not the president who did not invite them anyway,” Mohammed said.
So, the questions are: why did the President agree to meet with the families on the sidelines of Malala’s visit? Why cancel the meeting? And why has the President not been to Chibok till now? If indeed, as the presidency claimed, Jonathan’s political opponents were behind the earlier refusal by the parents and the 57 escaped girls not to meet the president, is the Presidency now saying the political opponents have changed their minds and sanctioned the planned meeting between the President and the families of the abducted girls? The apparent absence of consensus about the Chibok meeting, the slapdash and cavalier handling of information jeopardizes the public relations potential of the administration, leaving Nigerians to wonder how the Presidency can be so imprudent.
But the irony of it all is that the Jonathan administration simply refuses to learn, even from its own past mistakes. This same manner of information mismanagement was evident with the President’s botched visit to Chibok. That trip was cancelled after the information was leaked. In a belated attempt at damage control, the Presidency denied the planned trip, even after a presidential advance team was sighted in Maiduguri, and heavily armed soldiers and policemen unusually manned the airport road leading to the Nigerian Air Force Base and the Government House, thereby lending credence to the claim that the parents of the abducted girls and people of Chibok were preparing to receive the President. There was a barrage of information coming from the same source but clashing as counter-currents, leaving the public with several unanswered questions. Was the trip canceled as a result of a leakage of the information, and who could have leaked the information that the President was going to Chibok? Why was there even an advance party for an exercise that ought to be as discreet as possible? As US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Afghanistan demonstrated, such sensitive missions of profound security concern require tact, clinical efficiency and maximum discretion from public knowledge until accomplished.
At such crucial moments of collective anguish as this, the unwarranted noise associated with the President’s aborted meeting; leads inevitably to an unnecessary dissipation of time and resources. More importantly, however, the hubris oozing out of the President’s spin-doctors, notwithstanding, the buck stops on the President’s desk. His advisers and aides, however high up, cannot substitute the will and authority of the President himself. Jonathan is the only one who can bang the table to stem the current of pestilential perfidy.
Certainly, there is everything wrong with that botched meeting and the President’s failure to visit Chibok till now. First, it portrays a reluctant President, who is either unable or unwilling to read public opinion and respond to the mood of the nation. Second, that the President would, after deciding on a meeting, call it off abruptly for whatever reason, is an obvious display of impudence. Besides, as the man on whose desk the buck stops, it also portrays the President as weak, indecisive and cowardly and unable to lead a nation in crisis. The slow, tacky and inept response of the government has been viewed as deliberate, giving credence to all shades of interpretations. Is the government genuinely interested in the plight of the missing girls, their parents and well-wishers? Is Jonathan so emotionally disconnected from the predicament of ordinary Nigerians? How would the President, vice President, Senate President, House speaker, any governor or minister have reacted if their daughters were so abducted?
To redeem himself and garner some credibility for his administration in these challenging times, Jonathan must find his way to Chibok, however he plans to do it. He can go incognito. Inviting the families to Abuja shows an obvious disregard for the plight of people outside the corridors of power. As Commander-in-Chief, the President owes the grieving people of Chibok a moral duty to see them. Above all, he should go to the theatre of war, to send the strongest signal yet to all Nigerians that he not only cares as their President, he is taking full command of the war on terror.
