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 their abductors, a 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 governors 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.
