'I can't imagine my daughter missing for 2 years' - Buhari

dimeji akinloye

May 12, 2016 5:09 PM

The President also disagreed with the idea of showing a proof of life video to the parents, noting that there is no point raising their hopes.

President

Speaking on the plight of the parents in an interview with Christine Amanpour on CNN, Buhari said that it is unimaginable having his own daughter in such situation.

“I saw the families as a group twice. The first time, they came to visit my wife. The second, they came as a group to see me, and the less I see them the better for my own emotional balance,” he said.

“I try to imagine my 14-year-old year old daughter missing for more than two years. I try to imagine what condition are they in. A lot of the fathers would rather see their graves, than imagine them under such condition."

The President also disagreed with the idea of showing a proof of life video to the parents, noting that there is no point raising their hopes when the girls have not been rescued.

CNN had published a video showing some of the girls alive and seemingly well. The video was said to have been sent to negotiators by the Boko Haram sect.

“I have not seen that video and even if I see it, I will be very careful about showing it to the family. There is no point to deliberately raise the hope of the families if you can’t meet them.

“If we know where they are, then we can organize to secure them, but if they have been divided in a group of five, ten, two all over this region of Lake Chad commission, that is Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger, there is no way we can spontaneously and simultaneously attack all those locations and get the girls and the important thing to us is to get them alive,”Buhari said.

The Boko Haram terrorists abducted the girls, numbering 276, from their school dormitory on the night April 14 - 15, 2014. Although 57 of the girls managed to escape a few months later, 219 others remained in captivity.

READ: Nigerian Army claims they have located the abducted Chibok girls

Several efforts made by the government to rescue the remaining 219 schoolgirls since 2014 till May 12, 2016, the time of filing this report, have yielded no results.

dimeji akinloye