Jonathan meets Malala, hopeful of Chibok girls’ rescue

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan said Monday in Abuja that the notion that the Federal Government has not been doing enough to rescue the abducted Chibok girls was wrong, misplaced and self-centred.

   At an audience with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl-child education global campaigner, Jonathan said that the Federal Government was doing everything possible to ensure that the girls were rescued alive and safely returned to their parents.

He, however, explained to Malala, who was accompanied by her father and other members of her Foundation, that the Federal Government’s efforts were constrained by the overriding imperative of ensuring that the girls’ lives are not endangered in any rescue attempt.

   “Terror is relatively new here and dealing with it has its challenges. The great challenge in rescuing the Chibok girls is the need to ensure that they are rescued alive,” President Jonathan said, stressing that the Federal Government and its security agencies were very mindful of the need to avoid the scenario in rescue attempts in other parts of the world where lives of abductees were lost in the effort to rescue them.”

 The President said that this challenge notwithstanding, the Federal Government was very actively pursuing all feasible options to achieve the safe return of the abducted girls.

  “The time it is taking to achieve that objective is not a question of the competence of the Nigerian Government. We have had teams from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and other friendly nations working with us here on the rescue effort and they all appreciate the challenges and the need to thread carefully to achieve our purpose,” he said.

   The President told Malala who met on Sunday with some parents of the abducted girls that he fully empathised with their pain and anguish. He said that he would meet with the parents himself before they left Abuja to personally comfort them and reassure them that the Federal Government was doing all within its powers to rescue their daughters.

  President Jonathan reiterated his administration’s commitment to ensuring the safe and proper education of all Nigerian children.

    “I personally believe that since about 50 per cent of our population are female, we will be depriving ourselves of half of our available human resources if we fail to educate our girls adequately or suppress their ambitions in any way. We are, therefore, taking steps to curb all forms of discrimination against girls and women, and have also undertaken many affirmative actions on their behalf,” President Jonathan said.

  The President said that the Federal Government was also proactively evolving and implementing policies and measures that will benefit the abducted Chibok girls when they are safely rescued, as well as others that have been adversely affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

   These, President Jonathan said, included the establishment of a Victims’ Support Fund, the Safe Schools Initiative and the Presidential Initiative for the North East.

   He announced that he would inaugurate a national committee tomorrow to oversee fundraising for the Victims’ Support Fund, which will also cater for families of security men and women who have lost their lives in the war against terrorism.

  The President thanked Malala for coming to Nigeria to support ongoing efforts to rescue the abducted Chibok girls and promote girl-child education.

   In an interaction with State House correspondents after the meeting with the President, Malala said her visit which coincided with her 17th birthday was to campaign towards ensuring that the girls and others in their situation had access to functional education.

  “I spoke to the President about the girls who complained that they cannot go to school despite the fact that they want to become doctors, engineers and teachers. But the government is not providing them any facility. They also need health facility, security, and the government is not doing anything. These are the issues I presented to the President today.

   “And the President fortunately promised me that he would do something for these girls and he promised me that the girls under the abduction of Boko Haram will be released as soon as possible. This is the promise the President made and I am hopeful that his promise will come through and we will soon see those girls return soon,” she said.

  When Malala visited the Ministry of Education Headquarters at Abuja, the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike declared that the interventionist programmes to create access to basic education for less privileged children in the country will be sustained by the Jonathan administration for national development.

  Wike said that the Jonathan administration has instituted data collection protocols to ascertain the actual number of children who are out of school in the country.

  He hinted that the Almajiri Education Programme, the Girl-Child Education Programme and the Boy-Child Special Vocational schools will be expanded for greater enrollment of less privileged children.