More than a year after the Boko Haram sect abducted 219 Chibok girls, Mrs. Graca Machel, widow of the late former South African President, Nelson Mandela, met with parents of the schoolgirls.
Machel met with some of the girls’ parents in Lagos on Friday and urged them to remain strong, reported the BBC.
She said the world had not forgotten about the girls.
Seventeen of the girls’ parents have died since their abduction, but Machel, who is a prominent child rights activist, said she usually speaks about the girls wherever she goes.
“I shook hands with all of you and feel what is in your blood… I share the pain with you of not knowing when the girls will come back,” she reportedly told the parents.
She also urged Nigerian and the international community to do more to free the missing girls.
The meeting was organised by the Murtala Muhammed Foundation to support the parents as they deal with the trauma caused by the April 14, 2014 incident.
Though the Nigerian Army has rescued hundreds of hostages from Boko Haram, none of the kidnapped schoolgirls have been found.
An international human rights group, Amnesty International, stated in a report recently that at least 2,000 women and girls had been abducted by the Boko Haram sect since 2014.
On efforts made to mount pressure on the Federal Government to find and rescue the abducted girls, the leader of the Bring Back Our Girls Group, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, said the group had met with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.
“Hope makes not ashamed and so we stand on. We demand on,” she wrote on Twitter.
In a similar vein, Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, said on Friday that the African Leadership Foundation, led by Machel, will establish the African Leadership University in Lagos in 2016.
Ambode said this at the Lagos House, Ikeja when he received a delegation of the ALF, according to a statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. Habib Aruna.
The governor said he would do everything possible to ensure that the university begins operation in 2016.
The governor said he was delighted to welcome Machel, who is the inaugural chancellor of the university to Lagos, adding that he would immediately engage with the leadership of the foundation to take the partnership to greater heights.
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