PDP statement on freed Chibok Girls indecent, inhuman – FG

The Federal Government has discredited the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) statement on the freed Chibok girls, describing it as indecent, inhuman and ill-timed in criticising the process that led to the release of the 82 girls over the weekend.

The Senator Ahmed Makarfi faction of the PDP had on Sunday criticised the release of Boko Haram suspects in exchange for the 82 Chibok girls.

“The release of the terrorists is a setback for the war on insurgency. Their release is tantamount to releasing them to resume their war against society,” Dayo Adeyeye, spokesperson of the faction said.

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

Mohammed noted that from the ill-advised PDP statement, it is clear that the party whose incompetence and carelessness precipitated the Chibok girl’s crisis in the first instance is not wishing and praying for it to end with the safe return of the abducted girls.

“President Muhammadu Buhari said in his inaugural address that his administration cannot claim to have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls saying, “He will do everything humanly possible 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 that led to the exchange of five Taliban fighters for US Army Sgt 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”, the Minister said.

He said it is clear that the kind of disdain for human life which the PDP exhibited in its incautious statement is the same reason the poor girls were kidnapped in the first instance and for which then PDP-controlled Federal Government took what seemed an eternity before even 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 the release of all the abducted girls, using every means at its disposal, in addition to working assiduously to end all Boko Haram hostilities”, Alhaji Mohammed added.