Relatives of some of the schoolgirls seized in a mass kidnapping by Boko Haram demanded Wednesday that Nigeria’s president meet everyone affected, describing a hastily-arranged plan for a visit with a select few as offensive.
More than three months after the Islamist rebels seized 276 girls from a secondary school in the northeastern town of Chibok, President Goodluck Jonathan has not met the parents of the hostages or with any of the 57 girls who have escaped.
Visiting Nigeria this week to campaign for the girls’ release, Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, who survived a 2012 assassination attempt by the Taliban, urged Jonathan to hold face-to-face talks with those touched by the abductions.
A meeting scheduled for Tuesday was called off at the last minute, with the presidency saying the families had been manipulated by activists who are exploiting the hostage crisis to damage Jonathan politically.
But Chibok community leaders told AFP that if Jonathan truly wants 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.
- ‘We deserve a visit’ -
“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.
“We deserve a visit by the president,” he added, saying that if Jonathan cannot go to the remote northeastern town for security reasons, he can bring “all the 219 mothers to meet with him. This meeting should not be selective.”
Jonathan had scheduled a visit to Chibok in May but called it off at the last minute, without providing an explanation.
“For more than three months all we are praying for is for Goodluck to come and see what happened to us and see us crying,” said Ayuba Chibok, whose nieces are among the hostages.
“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,” he added.
Jonathan on Monday asked to meet a small delegation of parents and escapees who were selected by Chibok leaders to travel to Abuja to greet Malala.
Chibok residents said the group would have faced significant backlash at home had they met the president.
“It would have been a big insult to those of us who were not present,” said a father of a girl who was kidnapped, requesting anonymity.
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.
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Did GEJ kidnap your wards or is he not making attempt to rescue them?
ReplyDeletegej refusal to meet you is for security reason. one of you could be pretending to be a parent while wearing a suicide belt. leav gej alone to help you appropriately.
ReplyDeleteattempt after 3 months- Please spare us. All this pro-Jonathan folks. Call a spade a spade etc.
ReplyDeleteASK YOUR GOVERNOR TO BRING BACK YOUR CHILDREN WHERE HE HID THEM AND LEAVE JONATHAN ALONE.WICKED AND EVIL SET OF PEOPLE
ReplyDeleteWill the visit bring back the girls
ReplyDeleteHmmm...So much for compassion.
ReplyDeleteThe visit will not bring the girls back, but a little concern from the president could have given those people some form of confidence in him. Even if it had been these few selected ones he had invited earlier on, they wouldn't have ignored him. He had to wait for 3 months & Malala to decide. Not nice at all.
As for Okupe, now I believe he must have fallen on his head as a baby. Every single thing with him is considered political? Smh!
God save us.
Just thinking aloud! why will a parent of a kidnapped child plead anonimity when his/ her child's life is at stake? Am yet to see anybody who comes out openly to say my child is among them, what we hear is my relative is among the kidnapped victims. If relative of victims could come out what is wrong REAL PARENT coming out. Those who were arranged to meet MALALA were fake!. You cant deceived the government and Nigerians any longer!
ReplyDeleteJonathan is a coward. Nigerians know.
ReplyDeleteLeave Gej Alone Na Only Him waka Come, Chai Chai Dearis God wooo.
ReplyDeleteI read with keen interest all the comments made so far and is like hmmmmmm people. No woonder God himself knows the mind of people and decide to stay where we could not ordinarily come to. The state where chibok is has governor, securities, the school they attended has been left out of mentioning and bringing all to Jonathan. Jonathan will do what he could do as a human being and why the so much clamor over him seeing seeing the parents as if that will bring back the girls. what about the governors and many people that have been mentioned involved in this Boko Haram thing yet they are not the only people involve here. How about families that have lost their lives in the hand of this Boko Haram should Jonathan begin to visit them one after the other?
ReplyDeleteJonathan will readily compere himself on TV (paid adverts with tax payers money) to Barak Obama, Nelson Mandela et al (God forbid!). A man that will not match words with action and live up to the same level of responsibility as those legendary great men he's comparing himself with. We might ask what self sacrifice has he done for Nigerians, except claim cheap heroism that he has not earned. It is a Cataclysmic Cataclysm for Nigeria to have ever allowed a Coward to a come out as a President, whose achievements are merely fantasies to make him and his wife happy.
ReplyDelete