ABUJA – Nigeria‘s President, Goodluck Jonathan accused activists of playing politics, saying they cancelled a meeting between him and family members of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April.

Jonathan had been scheduled to meet some parents of the victims, as well as five girls who escaped captivity hours after the attack in the remote town of Chibok in the northeast.

A statement from the presidency on Tuesday  accused the activists, who started the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, of using the plight of the hostages “to play politics”.

Some of the president’s allies have claimed that the group is working with Jonathan‘s political opponents and exploiting the kidnapping to embarrass the government.

Jonathan has faced heavy criticism for his handling of the hostage crisis, which many say has lacked both compassion and urgency.

He is not known to have met with any of the girls’ families.

“Despite the shameful and disgusting games being played by the Nigerian chapter of Bring Back Our Girls, as a father of girls, I stand ready to meet with the parents of our abducted children,” Jonathan said in the statement.

But campaign leader Hadiza Bala Usman told AFP that activists had simply asked to reschedule the meeting so that more parents could attend.

They “requested that the meeting with the president be shifted untill next week to allow for a larger representation”, she said.

The meet was hastily organised following talks between Jonathan and Pakistani education rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who urged the president to comfort victims of the mass kidnapping.

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 the Islamist rebels abducted more than 276 girls from a secondary school in Chibok.

At least 219 of the girls taken are still missing.

The Bring Back Our Girls campaign has drawn support from some of the world’s most prominent personalities, including US First Lady Michelle Obama and actress Angelina Jolie.

Nigeria’s former minister, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has also been persistent in lending her voice to the plight of Chibok  missing girls and their families, using the social media platform, though she has been accused of drawing negative attention to the effort of of President Jonathan’s government since the abduction of the girls more than 3 months ago.

On Tuesday, Dr. Ezekwesili on twitter, decried the continuous harassment of the “Abuja Family of #BringBackOurGirls” who were scheduled to have two separate meetings with the Senate and House of Representatives.

She said they were “locked out in the rain for over an hour, we persisted until the Nigeria Police was prevailed on by Office of Senate President to let us in.

“What has the FG not done against us? They directed Commissioner of Police Mbu to tyrannically ban us. Hired internet thugs to defame us.

“Police took over Unity Fountain and physically assault us. They recruited thugs to assault us,” she stated.

Some Nigerians have indeed berated President Jonathan’s seemingly ‘slackness’ over the rescue efforts of the missing girls, but Presidential Spokesperson, Dr. Reuben Abati, insists the government is aggressively confronting the Boko Haram threat.

Reacting to a publication in Washington Post, which he entitled “Karen Attiah’s July 3 op-ed, #BringBackMyEasyDays,” Dr. Abati said the writer was incorrect on the facts surrounding Ni­ger­ian President Goodluck Jonathan’s efforts to rescue the more than 200 young girls abducted in April by the terrorist group Boko Haram .

“The claim that the president has a ’do-nothing’ attitude toward rescuing the girls is no different than what was written about President Obama’s decision not to disclose his efforts to seize and arrest the alleged ringleader of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans — until he did just that. Mr. Jonathan won’t put the lives of these girls at risk by publicly revealing details of the recovery operation for the sake of satisfying his critics.

“Despite Ms. Attiah’s claims to the contrary, even before the abductions, the president was engaged in international intelligence-sharing involving West Africa, Europe and the United States, and he had also launched the Counter-Terrorism Centre in Nigeria.

“He has been working intensely on the very challenging situation posed by Boko Haram since assuming office, includingdeclaring a state of emergency in May 2013 in the three most affected northern states,” the Presidential Media Spokesperson said on his official website.