Nigerian President Cancels Trip to "Missing Girls" Town, Still Hasn't Visited.

Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan canceled a scheduled visit today to Chibok, the town from which more than 200 girls were kidnapped from a school by terrorist group Boko Haram, the BBC reports.

Sources had told the BBC he would stop in Chibok, in the north-east, on his way to a conference in France on the threat from Boko Haram militants.

But the visit was called off for security reasons, the officials said.

The president - under pressure over his government's failure to rescue the girls - will fly direct to Paris.

Jonathan has not visited Chibok since the kidnapping. Meanwhile, a United States Department of Defense official criticized the Nigerian government publicly yesterday even as various American personnel (estimated to total around 30 people, per the Los Angeles Times) are assisting in the rescue effort. From Reuters:

"In general Nigeria has failed to mount an effective campaign against Boko Haram," said Alice Friend, the Pentagon's principal director for African Affairs, in testimony provided to the Senate's Africa subcommittee ahead of a hearing on Thursday and obtained by Reuters...

Friend added that Nigerian security forces have been slow to adapt to the threat from the Islamist militant group. "More troubling," she said, was that atrocities have been perpetrated by some security forces during operations against the group, which means U.S. human rights law would bar providing assistance to them.

This Wednesday marked one month since the kidnapping.