FG to BBOG: Stick to your advocacy role

THE Federal Government, on Monday, asked the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group to stick to its role as an advocacy group rather than pretending to be an opposition party in its push for the release of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.
The government said it came to it as a surprise that in spite of its initial positive report on the tour, the BBOG had too quickly reverted to its adversarial role.
In a statement in Abuja, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, urged the BBOG group to see the government as a partner rather than an adversary in its quest to secure the release of the Chibok girls.
He said the BBOG’s continued portrayal of the government as an adversary and the needless firing of darts at the president, who he said was doing his best to bring the girls back home safely, were counter-productive.
“The Federal Government has bent over backwards to carry the BBOG along and to show transparency in the conduct of the search for the girls,” he said.
According to him, the recent invitation extended to the group to witness first-hand, the search for the girls by the Nigerian Air  Force, was a clear indication of this.
Alhaji Mohammed said it amounted to needless grandstanding for the BBOG to say it would no longer tolerate “delays and excuses” from the president over the release of the girls, as reported by the media, noting that such impudent language should have been reserved for those who did nothing in the first 500 days of the girls’ abduction, not for a president, who has presided over the liberation of all captured territory, the opening of shuts schools and roads, safe release of some of the abducted girls and the decimation of the Boko Haram sect.
He assured Nigerians that the efforts to bring the girls back safely were ongoing, but sought their understanding for not divulging any further detail, so as not to jeopardise the intricate process.
He said: “‘Let me say unequivocally that the people involved in the negotiations are working 24/7. The negotiations are complicated, tortuous and delicate.
“Any wrong signal is capable of derailing things. That’s why the less we say about the talks, the better it is for all.
“We need a huge amount of confidence-building, the kind of which led to the release of the 21 of the girls. This had been lacking for years, but right now, we are confident that we are on the right track.
“We won’t do anything to jeopardise these talks, irrespective of the pressure or provocation from any quarter,” the minister said.