Jonathan to meet only 5 Chibok schoolgirls

Only five of the 57 schoolgirls who escaped from Boko Haram captivity will meet with President Goodluck Jonathan at Aso Rock on Tuesday.

Arrangements have also been concluded for the president to meet 12 of the parents of the schoolgirls, TheCable understands.

The limited number of those to meet the president owes to “logistics”, according to a presidency source.

The meeting, which will hold at 4pm, will afford Jonathan the opportunity to interact with the parents and their daughters for the first time since the abductions took place exactly three months ago.

A presidential fact-finding committee said last month that 276 female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, were abducted while 57 of them had escaped from captivity and had been re-united with their families.

However, the committee said 219 were yet to be accounted for.

Jonathan was accused of slow reaction to the saga ─ with many critics saying the president did not even believe the girls were abducted in the first place.

However, he defended his action in an article published in Washington Post last month, apparently in response to internationalised criticism of his handling of the incident.

On Monday, while playing host to Pakistan girl-child education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai, Jonathan promised to meet the parents “in the next 24 hours” and said the girls in captivity would soon return home.

Yousafzai, who clocked 17, became famous three years ago when she was shot by the Taliban for going to school.

The Taliban believe girls should not be educated – a very similar philosophy to that of Boko Haram which said it kidnapped the schoolgirls because they were not supposed to go to school.