I'll meet Chibok girls' parents, Jonathan promises Malala

President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday promised that he would soon meet with parents of the abducted pupils of Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.

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.

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 enrolment of less privileged children.