Chibok Girls Mothers To Finally Meet Jonathan Next Tuesday

Barring any other hitch in the arrangement, the distressed parents of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls will meet with President Goodluck Jonathan next Tuesday.
Sources close to the presidency said yesterday that already, formal invitation to the parents had been sent.

The Special Adviser to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, had last Tuesday said the president had instructed that formal invitation be extended to the parents to see him.
Meanwhile, the parents of the Chibok girls have explained why they failed to honour the president’s invitation last Tuesday, stressing that the decision to shun the meeting was purely theirs and not that of the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners.
In a statement released by the Kibaku (Chibok) Area Development Association (KADA), the community maintained that the near insignificant representation of the number of parents and girls who met with Malala Yousafzai, the girl-child education activist, was mainly responsible for their failure to attend the meeting.

Speaking on behalf of the Chibok community in Abuja, their Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr. Rotimi Olawale, said it was incorrect to blame the citizens’ platform, #BringBackOurGirls, for the decision made by the parents in the interest of their community.

According to him, a handful of parents of the abducted schoolgirls, who embarked on the recent trip to Abuja to meet with Pakistani school girl, Malala, did not come to Abuja with the intention to see the president and were as such not prepared for the visit.

“It is obvious that their numbers of 12 fathers and five girls is about two per cent of the parents of the 219 abducted girls still with their abductors and the 57 girls that escaped. Therefore, these parents decided on their own accord to review the announced visit, which they first heard of like every other person during Malala’s speech in Hilton,” he explained.
While insisting that the people take full responsibility for their decision, Olawale said the community “welcomes the formal invitation by the presidency as a follow up to Malala’s visit which we received this morning”.

He said the citizens’ platform of #BringBackOurGirls provided the logistics for meeting of the 12 fathers and five escaped girls who were hosted by Malala during her visit to Nigeria, adding that if the few people who came for the visit had proceeded to meet with the president, “it will mean quite a lot by the time they get back home.

“These parents and escaped girls did not come to Abuja at the instance of government or its representatives for a meeting with Mr. President, but on the full understanding that they were coming to meet with Malala; an advocate of girl child education and most importantly one who has suffered a similar fate as their daughters.

“In the course of their interactions with Malala, neither the parents nor the escaped girls asked for a meeting with the president or any government functionary, rather the narrative back home was to persistently ask why the president has not visited them in Chibok since the abduction.”

He added that the decision to revert to other family members was to incorporate every stakeholder on the matter and to avoid discord and suspicion on a change of plans from the original mission to Abuja, and that it was why they reached out to Malala’s team and through them to the Presidency; to request for a new date for an expanded and more representative meeting that has a legitimate mandate to meet with the president.

Olawale said their request is in recognition of the huge opportunity of a meeting with the president for the first time and after over 90 days of the tragic abduction of their daughters, and therefore required better consultations, structure and formality as against an instant advocacy request.