Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday met with parents of the girls abducted from the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, on April 14 by Boko Haram insurgents.
Journalists were barred from the meeting which took place inside the Banquet Room of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, exactly 99 days after the girls were forcibly taken away from their school hostel at night .
The Presidency had in a statement last week promised that the meeting would be “open to the Nigerian and international media for coverage.”
But our correspondent gathered from a source at the meeting that some of the 51 girls, who escaped from their captors wept as they narrated their ordeal to Jonathan.
He said that the girls appealed to the President to expedite action and ensure that their colleagues who are still in captivity are rescued on time.
The source added, “The girls narrated how they jumped out of moving vehicles on the night of their abduction.
“They said they ran into the bush without any knowledge of where they were and where they were heading for.
“The girls said they trekked cautiously inside the thick bush up until daybreak before they saw some Fulani men who offered to assist them because they were still in their school uniforms.
“They said they were moved on motorcycles by the Fulani men who assisted them.”
Our source added that four other girls also told the President that they escaped when they went to fetch water from a stream.
According to him, the girls who said they were five as of the time of their escape, regretted that they could not locate one of them who fled in another direction.
He said, “They told the President that they managed to escape when they went to fetch water from a stream.
“They said they were being guided by two men, that at a point, five of them managed to escape. Four of them went in the same direction while one went in another direction. They do not know the whereabouts of the fifth girl who went in another direction.”
Some of the Chibok schoolgirls who escaped Islamist captors alight from a bus to attend a meeting with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan at the presidency in Abuja on 22 July 2014
Some of the girls managed to escape after being abducted from their school
He added that many at the meeting, especially women, shed tears when the girls started pleading with the President to do everything within his powers to ensure that their colleagues were rescued.
The meeting was also attended by the President of the Senate, David Mark ; Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima; his Bauchi State counterpart, Isa Yuguda; some members of the Federal Executive Council, security chiefs, the principal of the GSS, opinion and community leaders from Chibok.
The 51 escaped girls, their parents and others were conveyed to and fro the venue of the meeting in four red luxury buses belonging to the Abuja Urban Mass Transport Company Limited amid tight security provided by a combined team of men of the Department of State Service and policemen.
The security operatives shielded them from journalists before and after the meeting that lasted about three hours.
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