By EMMA EMEOZOR President Goodluck Jonathan has been accused of playing newspaper column diplomacy with the fate of the over 200 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok abducted by Boko Haram militants on April 14. The accusation comes on the heels of the president’s opinion published by United States-based newspaper, the Washington Post on Friday. Jonathan had explained reason for his silence on efforts to rescue the girls, saying he did not want to compromise investigation. But hours after the publication of the article titled: “Goodluck Jonathan: Nothing is more important than bringing home Nigeria’s missing girls,” another American newspaper, the New York Post, wrote an editorial, accusing Jonathan of playing “newspaper column diplomacy.” As at press time, both the New York Post’s editorial titled “Goodluck Nigeria” and the president’s article have gone viral in the social media.
The New York Post’s editorial read: “When in April the Islamist group Boko Haram abducted nearly 300 girls from their school in northeast Nigeria, it commanded global attention and sparked a #BringBackOurGirls movement.
“But the girls are still missing. The campaign seems to have moved from hashtag demands to newspaper column diplomacy. On Friday, The Washington Post carried an op-ed by no less than the president of Nigeria himself, Goodluck Jonathan.
“In it he wrote, “Something positive can come out of (this situation) in Nigeria.” He says, “Most important, the return of the Chibok girls, but also new international cooperation to deny havens to terrorists and destroy their organizations.”
“And he says he’s going to ask the UN General Assembly to establish and coordinate a system to share intelligence, etc. Remember, this is the same leader whose military initially claimed it had freed the girls, whose wife’s anger was directed at Nigerians protesting the government’s inaction rather than the kidnappers and who presides over “Africa’s largest economy and fourth-largest armed forces.
“Meanwhile, this week Boko Haram kidnapped another 90 Nigerian children and set off a massive bomb in the heart of the nation’s capital. Apparently the government’s secret plan to get the girls back which President Jonathan says he has to “remain quiet about” isn’t much impressing them.”
