FG blasts PDP over comments on freed Chibok girls

THE Federal Government has described as indecent, inhuman and ill-timed, the statement credited to a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) criticising the process that led to the release of the 82 Chibok girls at the weekend.

In a statement issued in Abuja, on Monday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said it was patently insensitive for any individual or organisation to seek to douse, on the altar of politics, the universal joy that had greeted the release of the 82 girls – the highest number so far freed since their abduction under the watch of the PDP over three years ago.

He said the statement from the opposition party, it was clear that the PDP, which was steering the affairs of the country when the girls were kidnapped, was not praying for the safe return of the girls.

“In his inaugural address, President Muhammadu Buhari said the administration could not claim to have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls,” he said.

He also said this government would do all it could to rescue them alive.

“If that includes swapping some Boko Haram elements for the girls, so what? Will the PDP rather have the girls stay in perpetual captivity just to prove a ludicrous point? Didn’t superpower United States engage in negotiations with the Taliban, leading to the exchange of five Taliban fighters for United States soldier, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, in 2014? Didn’t Israel release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011?

“A lot of factors come into play when a nation has to decide whether or not to engage in prisoner/hostage swap. None, however, trounces the sanctity attached to human life and the consideration for the pains of the loved ones of those involved,’’ Alhaji Mohammed said.

The Information Minister further said it was clear that the kind of statement the PDP made was the same reason the girls were kidnapped in the first instance, and for which then PDP-controlled Federal Government delayed in acknowledging the abduction, thus losing critical time for their rescue.

‘’Since the PDP failed – as it did in everything – to rescue even one of the Chibok girls, the party should hold its peace while this administration continues to seek release of all the abducted girls, using every means at its disposal, in addition to working assiduously to end all Boko Haram hostilities,’’ the minister said.