President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan said Monday in Abuja that the notion
that the Federal Government has not been doing enough to find and rescue
the abducted Chibok girls, is very wrong and misplaced.
Speaking at an audience with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Girl-Child
Education Campaigner, President Jonathan said that the Federal Government
was definitely 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 yesterday with some parents of the
abducted girls that he fully empathized 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 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, on Wednesday, July 16, 2014.
The President thanked Malala for coming to Nigeria to support ongoing
efforts to rescue the abducted Chibok girls and promote girl-child
education.
“We appreciate your efforts to change the world positively through your
powerful advocacy for girl-child education,” President Jonathan told her.