Girls’ parents prefer to meet with Jonathan in Chibok

Leaders of Chibok community and representatives of the parents of the abducted schoolgirls yesterday said the community prefers the proposed July 22 meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan to take place in Chibok, Borno State.

The spokesman of the Kibaku people of Chibok, Dauda Iliya, who made this known at a news conference in Abuja yesterday, said the parents expected the President to visit and console the grieving people in Chibok and not in Abuja.

“Ordinarily, we would have wished that this meeting held in Chibok,” he said.

“If you look at it, the custom for northern Nigerians and indeed most Africans is that when you have this kind of pain, it is akin to being bereaved truly, isn’t it? You don’t go to whoever it is, to go and ask for condolences; condolences come to meet you.”

The parents, however, did not say they would stay away from the Abuja meeting.

“The thing has become so complex now; 92 days we are praying for these girls to come back. We want government to tell us what they are doing. We can if you like wave our rights if this meeting would hold in Abuja, so be it,” Iliya said.

He said the #BringBackOurGirls campaign in Abuja and the representatives of the Chibok people did not stop the parents of the girls from attending an earlier unscheduled meeting with the President.

He said the decision for the parents to meet with the president was a last minute after thought.

He said, “There was a lot of a mishap in the entire thing. The Malala team working with some security and government agents, like they say locked the stables after the horse had escaped.

“Meaning even without consulting and without getting the buy-in, they had made announcement and reached out and they thought it is going to be fait accompli and it did not happen.”

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Chibok community in Abuja Tsambido Abana said: “the parents were not allowed anytime to make a decision. It was when they were on the stage that this information came that the President will meet with you, not that the President is asking for a meeting with you.

“Then as we were still there, they were on the stage, when the speech was over, they were all carried to Malala’s room, not even given the chance, not even allowing one of us to follow them.”

He also said it was misleading to blame the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners “for a decision made by 12 parents and their association. We take full responsibility for our decision and welcome the formal invitation by the Presidency.”