Nigerian President promises Malala that all missing girls will be home soon

The president said these girls are his daughters and he is pained by their sufferings, says Malala

Education activist Malala Yousafzai on Monday urged Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, to meet with parents of the schoolgirls kidnapped three months ago by Boko Haram.

Jonathan though promised the teenage education activist that the 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants would soon return home, Malala said after meeting him.

"The president promised me ... that the abducted girls will return to their homes soon," Malala, who has called the 219 missing students her "sisters", told a news conference after a 45-minute meeting with Jonathan at the presidential villa.

"I asked the president, is it possible for him to go and see the parents, to see these girls, to encourage them and to tell them that yes, their daughters will return home?" Malala told journalists after the meeting, adding that Jonathan had agreed to meet some parents.

Pressed by journalists, Malala said Jonathan described the girls' situation as "complicated" and that their lives could be put at risk by a military rescue attempt.

"But the president said these girls are his daughters and he is pained by their sufferings and that he has his own daughters and he can feel what they are feeling," she said.

The Nigerian presidency said Jonathan assured Malala that his government "was very actively pursuing all feasible options to achieve the safe return of the abducted girls".

"The great challenge in rescuing the Chibok girls is the need to ensure that they are rescued alive," Jonathan said, according to the presidency statement.

Malala, who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012 and has become a champion for access to schooling, was in Abuja on her 17th birthday to mark three months since Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from a secondary school in Chibok, in the northeast.

At least 219 of the girls taken on April 14 are still missing.

Malala, on Sunday, met with several girls who escaped Boko Haram captivity and parents of some of the hostages before her talks with Jonathan.

The parents she met with appeared "hopeless," she said, and "need the president's support".

Jonathan has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the hostage crisis, which many say has lacked both compassion and urgency, and is not known to have met with any of the girls' families before now.

The rescue operation was slow to launch and the military was forced to retract a statement issued days after the kidnapping claiming that all the girls had been freed.

The president had planned to go to Chibok in May to commiserate with the targeted community, but cancelled the visit at the last minute without any explanation.

Malala urged Nigeria to do everything possible to secure the release of the hostages, who were snatched from their school under the cover of darkness and carted away in trucks.

Nigeria is receiving intelligence and surveillance assistance from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and other allies but has so far shown little progress in getting the Chibok girls back or in halting almost daily militant raids.

"My birthday wish this year is... to see them returning to their homes," she said.

"I will from now be counting days and will be looking. I can't stop this campaign until I see these girls return back to their families and continue their education," she said.