President Muhammadu Buhari has disclosed that he gets so worried about the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls, making it difficult to continue to meet with their parents.
The 216 schoolgirls from Chibok secondary schools were kidnapped from their hostelmore than two years ago.
In an interview with CNN’s Christine Amanpour in London, the president said he had met twice with the families of the missing schoolgirls but said he tries to limit his meetings with them for his own “emotional balance.”
“I try to imagine my 14-year-old daughter missing for one to two years… a lot of parents would rather see them in their graves than the condition they are in now.”
“It’s tragic,” he added.
Asked about a video — exclusively obtained by CNN last month — that showed some of the missing schoolgirls alive, President Buhari said he had not seen the clip and insisted that he would not have shown it to the families even if he had seen it.
“How can we show it to them when we don’t know where they are?” he asked. “If we know where they are then we can organize to secure them. If they are divided into 5, 10 groups all over the region, there’s no way we can spontaneously and simultaneously attack all those locations. The important thing is to get them alive,” he said.
CNN reported last month that Boko Haram had made ransom demands for their release.
However, the president said that his administration is still trying to establish bonafide Boko Haram leadership before entering into talks with them.
“When we identify it, we are prepared to talk to them. We can’t just talk to whoever gets a video clip,” he said.
