Why we snubbed Jonathan —Chibok girls' parents •Govt worried over motive of campaigners

MEMBERS of the Chibok community in Abuja and representatives of the parents of the abducted girls have explained why they declined meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday.

Elder and spokesperson of the community, Mr Dauda Iliya, told newsmen in Abuja, on Wednesday, that the parents came only to meet with Malala Yousofazai, the Pakistani girl-child education activist and a victim of terrorist attack and not President Jonathan.

He said the parents were not properly informed of any meeting with the president, adding that they were not in Abuja on advocacy visits to have been railroaded to visit the Villa without prior notification.     

Illiya said the visit of the parents to Abuja was on the invitation of Malala, not Mr President.

He, however, hinted that President Jonathan had officially written the community for a meeting with the parents, which is likely to hold next week.

He added that the letter, addressed to the chairman of the Chibok Community in Abuja and signed by the Chief of Staff to the President, was received on Wednesday morning, adding that the meeting might hold next week.

  He exonerated the BringBackOurGirls campaign of any blame or complicity in the botched meeting with President Jonathan.

The community elders, at a briefing in Abuja, on Wednesday, said it was totally misleading, unjust and without foundation to hold the Citizen’s Platform BringBackOurGirls or any individual(s) responsible for their decision.

According to them, “the logistics and meeting between the 12 fathers and five girls and Malala was facilitated by the Abuja Chibok community and BringBackOurGirls campaign with our consent and on trust, considering their sustained and focused advocacy to ensure the return of the abducted girls.

“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.

“In the course of the 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 Mr President has not visited them in Chibok since the abduction,” he said.

Iliya noted that “it is obvious that their numbers 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 to review the announced visit of Mr President, which they first heard of, like other persons, during Malala’s speech at Hilton Hotel.  

“Consequent to their decision to revert to other family members, in order to incorporate every stakeholder on the matter, as well as avoid discord and suspicion on a change of plans from original mission to Abuja, they reached out to the Malala team and, through them, to the presidency, to request for a new date for an expanded and more representative meeting that has legitimate mandate to meet with the president.”

He said their request for a new date for the meeting was also in recognition of the opportunity of a meeting with the president for the first time and after 90 days of the tragic abduction of their daughters.

“We, therefore, take full responsibility for our decision and welcome the formal invitation by the presidency as a follow-up to Malala’s visit, which we received this morning,” he said.

It is recalled that the presidency, on Wednesday, accused Dr Oby Ezekwesili, one of the key members of Citizen’s Platform BringBackOurGirls, as being the brain behind the botched meeting with the president.

Nigerian Tribune gathered that the government was pointing accusing fingers at the movement and accusing its members of using the campaign for the rescue of the Chibok girls to blackmail government and achieve some political mileage in projection for 2015.

The government officials, Nigerian Tribune gathered, were worried about the real motives of the campaigners, especially in view of a recent declaration by a United Kingdom Public Relations consultant that it was contacted by some opposition party leaders to facilitate a visit by the BringBackOurGirls movement to the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

According to the sources, some state government officials, alongside leadership of the movement had persistently prevailed on the parents of the Chibok girls as well as those who escaped from captivity from honoring several invitations in the last couple of weeks.

The sources claimed that efforts of the Borno State Commissioner of Police, the Chief of Defence Staff, as well as the Presidential Fact Finding Committee to have a one-on-one meeting with the parents of 219 girls still missing had been rebuffed at various times in the recent past.

Reports of the General Sabo-led fact finding committee recently submitted to the president expressed its frustrations at the fact that parents of the missing girls refused to meet with the committee, after several efforts, including a guarantee of privacy and adequate security.

According to a member of the committee “the excuse given by the parents for refusing to honor our invitation for a meeting was fear of reprisal by the insurgents.”

On the aborted meeting with the president, a security source wondered why parents who would not honour the invitation of government agencies and the presidency found time to meet with Malala and grant interviews with the foreign media without fear of reprisals from the Boko Haram.

Investigations further revealed that Mr Eason Jordan, Director of Administration of the Malala Foundation, aborted his schedule flight on Tuesday to prevail on the leadership of the Bringbackourgirls movement to drop the pressure on the parents and girls not to honour the appointment with the president, but the group was said to have insisted on the their return to Borno State.

Meanwhile, the #BringBackOurGirls, in its response, observed with consternation the escalation of the pattern of the campaign of calumny by government officials on the advocating movement.

The group, in a release signed by Hadiza Bala Usman and Oby Ezekwesili, said “on Tuesday, July 15,  the leadership of our movement was invited to a meeting by the Chibok chairman and leadership of their development association with the 11 parents in attendance. 

“At the meeting, they conveyed to us their unanimous decision to request for a rescheduling of the Malala facilitated meeting with the president. 

“They further informed us of their intention to reach out to the Malala team and officials of the presidency to request for an expanded meeting within a sufficient time frame for necessary planning with the rest of their community in Chibok.

“We want to repeat for the avoidance of doubt that we are not responsbile for the cancellation of the meeting with the president by the 11 parents and five escaped girls from Chibok as being insinuated by some government officials.

“As a movement, we wish to seize this opportunity to express our gratitude to Malala, who helped amplify the advocacy for concerted efforts towards the rescue of our girls.

“Meanwhile, it is pertinent to firmly state that since the inception of our movement in April 2014, we have remained steadfast and adopted all means and channels of civil engagement in the advocacy of our singular issue, which is #BringBackOurGirls now and alive,” the release said.