The Presidency last night denied giving any form of cash or monetary gift to some parents of the over 200 school girls abducted in Chibok, Borno State, by the Boko Haram sect in April.
Following the visit of Pakistani girl-child education activist, Malala Yousafzai to Nigeria about two weeks ago, where she met with some of the escaped girls, their parents and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign group in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan finally met with an expanded group of Chibok community including all the parents of the abducted girls at the Presidential Villa last week Tuesday.
However, it was reported yesterday that the community was torn apart following a disagreement on the sharing formula of a N100 million largesse purportedly given by the presidency to parents of the Chibok girls.
Reacting to the report, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Dr. Reuben Abati said: “The allegation is completely untrue. Nobody distributed any envelope after the meeting.
“The meeting was held in the Villa, a public place. After the meeting, the President left and the parents as well as the children went into their buses in the presence of the media.
“There was no time after the meeting when envelopes were distributed or money was given”.
Stressing that President Jonathan will never do anything to bribe anybody, Abati said: “This issue is not about money. We are talking about human lives here”.
“The allegation is completely wild. What they are claiming is unknown to the President. Whoever is claiming it should prove it because no such thing happened”, he maintained.
The commitment of the President, he said, is to get the girls back safely and not about bribing anybody.
“This is a very serious matter and we will like to appeal to those who want to play politics with it, using all kinds of tricks to ridicule the efforts of the administration, to always appeal to their individual conscience and realize that what we are dealing with here is a very serious matter and not a matter of mischief”, he stated.
Even if the president gave his visitors money to augment stay expenses to, fro, &stay in Abuja, its not a sin. Courtsy demands it .