At last, Jonathan goes to Chibok
President Goodluck Jonathan will finally visit Chibok, Borno State, on Friday – more than a month after schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram from there.
According to a Reuters report, Jonathan will stop over at the town en route to a security meeting in Paris, France.
President Francis Hollande had last week called a regional security summit to discuss about the insurgent group with the aim of arriving at measures to put them in check.
The meeting is expected to be attended by Chad, Niger and Cameroon, as well as US and UK.
Jonathan had come under criticism for not visiting the town since the April 14/15 abduction of hundreds of girls who were writing their secondary school certificate examination.
A blast had killed 75 persons in Nyanya, near Abuja, earlier in the day.
But the president was in Kano on April 15 for a political rally.
The military chiefs visited Chibok briefly last week before returning to Abuja.
It would have been foolhardy for the President to visit Chibok or any other hot-bed of Boko Haram terrorist activities in the north-east of Nigeria without first ensuring that it was safe for him to do so. No country puts its President at risk merely to be perceived in good light. It is even wrong that the President's visit to Chibok is being announced before the trip. We must not jeopardise the President's safety for any reason.