DAPCHI GIRLS RELEASE: Congratulate us or keep quiet, Minister Lai tells PDP

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has called on the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to either congratulate the Federal Government over the release of about 104 abducted Dapchi schoolgirls or stop its criticism on the matter.

About 104 of the Dapchi schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists were brought home to their village along with a boy and a separate girl by the insurgents in the early hours of Wednesday.

But the PDP through its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, at a press conference on Wednesday, accused the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and certain officials in the presidency of staging the abduction of the schoolgirls for political purposes.

PDP had said, “Our party considers this act as wicked, callous and tormenting to use innocent schoolgirls as pawns in an ignoble script that was designed to hoodwink Nigerians and orchestrate a great rescue and security prowess of a conquering general, all to push a 2019 reelection bid, is an unpardonable gamble with human lives.”

Unhappy with the criticism by the opposition, Mohammed in a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday, frowned at the PDP, saying that its postulation portrays PDP as an “inhuman, insensitive, unpatriotic and unworthy party”.

According to the Information Minister, since the release of the Dapchi girls were negotiated by friendly countries and reputable international organisations, it would have taken a conspiracy of global proportion to have stage-managed the adoption and release of the girls.

Mohammed went further to avow that the reaction of the PDP amounts to an expression of sour grapes, mainly as the opposition party failed woefully when it was in power to hurriedly resolve a similar abduction by Boko Haram in 2014, when a school in Chibok, Borno State, was invaded and over 200 school girls, where taken away.

Over 100 of the abducted Chibok girls in 2014 have remained in the captivity of the terrorist group till date.

Mohammed said, “As we have said many times since the abduction of the Dapchi schoolgirls, no government is exempted from its own share of tragedies. What makes the difference is the way such tragedies are managed.

“Whereas it took the PDP all of 18 days to even acknowledge the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, the APC Federal Government acted promptly and responsively when the Dapchi schoolgirls were abducted 19 Feb. 2018, hence their quick release.”

READ ALSO: DAPCHI GIRLS: PDP accuses APC of war crime, calls on UN, ICC to probe release

“It is unfortunate that the PDP that failed woefully as a ruling party has also failed grievously as an opposition party, going by its insensitive and crude response to the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls – a development that calls for non-partisan celebration.

“In its 16 years in power, the PDP redefined governance as cluelessness, massive looting of the public treasury and crude exhibition of power. In its over three years in opposition, the PDP has again shown it does not understand the role of the opposition in a democracy. How then can the PDP convince Nigerians that it has learnt its lessons and that it is ready to rule the country again? Nigerians must say ‘never again’ to this primitive and soulless party.”

The minister added that Federal Government has been ignoring “amateurish and jejune” statements from the PDP precisely because the party has failed to learn the ropes of being an opposition party, “even when we have advised them to take a crash course on the role of the opposition in a democracy.”

He said the APC decided to broke its rules not to respond to PDP this time because the “PDP over-reached itself and scored an own goal at a time it could simply have congratulated the government and people of Nigeria on the release of the girls or just keep quiet”.

 

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