OCB BBpin: 7E314696
A
meeting between President Goodluck Jonathan and parents of the over 200
girls abducted from their school’s dormitory in Chibok, Borno State, is
ongoing in the Presidential Villa under very strict security.
Fifty-one
of the girls who escaped from the terrorist group, Boko Haram, were on
Tuesday morning brought to the presidential villa alongside the parents
of those still in the camp of the Boko Haram.
Channels
Television’s correspondent, Chukwuma Onuekwusi, says security is tight
at the venue of the meeting and that not even the State House
correspondents were allowed to cover the closed-door meeting.
Four
of the brand new buses for the Abuja Urban Mass Transit were used to
convey the girls and their parents from their hotel to the venue of the
long expected meeting.
Journalists
and security personnel watched as the girls and their parents, one
after the other, beginning with the school principal, alighted from the
buses.
The parents of the missing girls alighted from one of the
buses, with some of them looking devastated by the situation they found
themselves in.
Into
the hall proper, the escaped girls were meant to seat together about 51
of them. Parents of the girls still in captivity sat at one end,
parents of the escaped girls were together, while the community and
opinion leaders, who are not direct parents of the girls, also sat
together.
President Jonathan joined them at about 11:15am local time to kick-start the special meeting.
The
President came in with the governor of Borno and Bauchi States, Senate
President, Ministers of Education, Finance, Information and other key
officials in the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, including security
personnel.
Journalists were barred from the meeting, with the
indication that the outcome will be made known to the entire world
thereafter.
The president’s decision to host the parents is coming only three days
after Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage activist, convinced him to
see the parents of girls. PremiumTimes reports Mr. Iliya said:
