You all recall that President Goodluck Jonathan had on Friday written an article for The Washington Post about our missing Chibok schoolgirls and why it seems he has remained somewhat silent about the search for the girls. Read it here if you missed it.
Well, that article has received a rebuke from an unlikely source - Rupert Murdock-owned New York Post. They just shot back at President Jonathan with a sharply critical editorial of their own. Their rebuke titled ‘Goodluck Nigeria,’ took aim at what they called ‘newspaper diplomacy.’
It reads:
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.
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