President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday offered scholarships to the abducted Chibok schoolgirls to enable them complete their education in any part of Nigeria.
The scholarships are to be awarded to those victims who have escaped and the others still in the custody of their captors, the Boko Haram insurgents.
Jonathan made the pledges at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa when he met with renowned girl-child education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai, who turned 17 years on Monday.
Malala, a Pakistani schoolgirl, was shot in the head in 2012 by the terror group, Taliban, for campaigning for girls’ education.
July 14th has been set aside by the United Nations as Malala Day for the world to focus on sending girls to school.
She is in Nigeria to support girls’ education and advocate release of the over 200 students abducted from their Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Chibok, Borno State, on April 15 by the Boko Haram terrorists.
“The President said to Malala that he can guarantee that all the girls that have been kidnapped, including the ones that escaped will be given scholarships to go to school in other parts of the country.
“These were the things that he said and we hope that he will be able to bring them to pass”, Director of Communications of Malala Foundation, Eason Jordan, told a press conference after the meeting between Jonathan and Malala.
Fielding questions from newsmen, Malala, who was also accompanied by her father, disclosed that her foundation had raised $200,000 in support of continued education of the abducted Chibok girls on their return.
“We have set up the Malala Fund and through the fund, we have raised $200,000 and we want to use it to contribute to those children’s education.
“We have started working with two organisations here in Nigeria to be able to help these girls continue their education,” she stated.
She confirmed that Jonathan assured her of two things – to meet with the parents and some of the escaped Chibok girls, and to ensure the safe return of the girls still in Boko Haram captivity.
Malala stressed that the President said he is equally pained and saddened by the fate of the abducted girls, who, he noted, were like his own.
“I am here in Nigeria on my 17th birthday for a prize which is to see that every child goes to school.
‘This year, my objective is to speak up for my Nigerian sisters, about 200 of them who are under the abduction of Boko Haram and I met the President, Goodluck Jonathan, for this purpose.
“I conveyed the voice of my sisters who are out of school or who are still under the abduction of Boko Haram and for those girls who escaped from the abduction but still do not have education.
“And in the meeting, I highlighted the same issues which the girls and their parents told me in the past two days.
“The parents said they really want to meet with the President to share their stories with him. And I asked the President if he wants to meet with the parents of the girls, the President assured me that he would meet with them.
“I spoke to the President about the girls who complain 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 (Monday).
“And the President fortunately promised me that he will 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 these two promises, the return of the girls from Boko Haram and meeting with their parents will be fulfilled and we will see them soon,” Malala said.
She added that even though Jonathan made the promises, this does not mean she was going to stop talking.
“I will be counting days and I will be looking when those girls are going to be returning home.
“I can’t stop this campaign until I see those girls return to their families and continue the agitation.”
Malala decried the high number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, pointing out that “if we leave 10.5 million children illiterate, these children can become terrorists, they can be violated and they can be deprived of their basic human rights, at the end they will not be able to help their country in developing.
“So if we want the whole world to be successful, it is important that every child should go to school.
In a statement afterwards by Aso Rock, the President was said to have refuted the notion that the Federal Government was not doing enough to find and rescue the abducted Chibok girls as “very wrong and misplaced”.
The statement issued by Presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, said Jonathan explained to Malala that the Federal Government’s efforts were however constrained by the overriding imperative of ensuring that the girls’ lives were not endangered in any rescue attempt.
