Senior Correspondent, ISHAYA IBRAHIM, examines the significance of the meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and parents of the missing Chibok girls
The parley between President Goodluck Jonathan and the anguished parents of the missing Chibok girls at Aso Rock seems to have accomplished something significant – lifting the spirit of the parents – at least judging from the photographs of the event held behind closed doors.
President Goodluck Jonathan and some of the Chibok girls’ parents
The July 22 meeting was at the prompting of Malala Yousoufzai, the Pakistani girl-education advocate who, after visiting the president at Aso Rock on July 14, implored Jonathan to meet the parents of the missing girls.
The president acceded to her request and held an all-encompassing meeting with stakeholders of the Chibok community, including the girls who earlier escaped from Boko Haram captivity.
A Kaduna-based lawyer, Ibrahim Abdulazeez, observed that the meeting served two purposes. First, it proved that the abduction was real, after doubts by people close to the president, including his wife, Patience, and Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, who dubbed the abduction as fake.
The controversy was ignited by the national women leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kema Chikwe, who first publicly questioned the motive behind the abduction. She had said on April 30, exactly 11 days after the girls were taken from their boarding school in Chibok, Borno State: “How did it happen? Who saw it happen? Who did not see it happen? Who is behind this?”
On May 5, Patience Jonathan added another twist to the controversy. She asked prominent women leaders who attended a meeting she convened on the abduction: “My sisters,” referring to the women, “you can all see that within them (parents and officials of Borno State government), they know what they are doing. With what is happening now, will you believe that any children(sic) got missing?” The women chorused “no”.
She then summed up the resolution of the meeting: “So, we the Nigerian women are saying that no child is missing in Borno State. If any child is missing, let the governor go and look for them. There is nothing we can do again.”
The former militant leader, Asari-Dokubo, went a step further by leading a protest of a group who displayed placards bearing inscriptions to the effect that the kidnapping was a political scam.
So, the meeting between President Jonathan and parents of the missing girls served to authenticate the claim that several girls were actually abducted, Ibrahim said.
The second point the meeting served, according to Ibrahim, was to assure the parents that the federal government was interested in rescuing their girls.
Presidential Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, said the president used the opportunity of the meeting to empathise with the parents and the girls, and to reassure them that everything would be done to make things easier for them, especially those who had escaped and the ones that would also be rescued.
His words: “Mr. President further assured that after the battle had been won and the girls are brought back home, he, together with the parents and the state government, will focus on development, on building Chibok, on building all that the terrorists had destroyed and on ensuring that every child, either in Chibok or in any other part of the country, has his or her dream realised.”
Abati added that the parents present at the meeting were those of the girls that escaped and those of the girls still in captivity. Also at the meeting were the girls who managed to escape.
The president’s spokesman said though his principal had in the past met with different Chibok stakeholders, the all-encompassing meeting afforded him the opportunity to meet directly with the girls.
“Statements were made by all the representatives of the people. They spoke their minds and conveyed their feelings to the president. The girls spoke in great details about their experiences and their observations. It was an open and frank session in which everybody expressed his or her mind,” Abati said.
Now that the president has met the parents of the missing girls, the real question to be asked is: what next with their rescue? It is still not clear why the rescue operation is not making headway, considering that there is clear evidence of where the pupils were taken: Sambisa forest.
In an interview with the BBC Hard Talk programme, former World Bank Vice President for Africa, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, wondered why the government was indecisive on how it wants to rescue the girls, having ruled out assault on the forest because the girls might be endangered, and also negotiation with the adductors.
But the president said the girls would be rescued, an assurance that put smiles on the faces of the parents. But how he hopes to do that is still unclear.