The All Progressives Congress, APC, has described as callous, morbid and insensitive, the comments credited to President Goodluck Jonathan that the Chibok girls are still alive because if they had been killed, the Boko Haram sect would have displayed their bodies.
In a statement issued in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, on Saturday, APC said it found the comment deeply offensive to human sensibilities rather than providing hope and succour for the traumatised parents of the girls.
The opposition party pointed out that a key role of a president in times of tribulations and tragedies is, “to offer hope and be the Consoler-in-Chief, not to make statements that will deepen the suffering and sorrow of victims”.
APC said President Jonathan should have spoken on the basis of actionable intelligence, “not some twisted, melancholic and offensive logic”.
The opposition party said the statement confirmed the fears of parents of the girls and Nigerians concerning the girls’ fate, who had now been held in captivity for over 300 days, without the government rescuing them.
APC stated that all the parents of the girls as well as all concerned people around the world wanted to know was what the Jonathan-led administration was doing to bring the girls home safely and as soon as possible.
The party urged the Nigerian president to borrow a leaf from his Chadian counterpart, Idriss Deby, “who came across as being very presidential in his comments on Shekau by saying, ‘It is in Abubakar Shekau’s interest to surrender; we know where he is. If he refuses to give himself up, he will suffer the same fate as his comrades’”.
APC said the Chadian President’s statement also contradicted the earlier claim by the Nigerian authorities that Shekau had been killed at least twice, the last of which was backed up with a ‘pictorial evidence’.
The statement added, “The Shekau that President Deby was referring to is the same Shekau that the Jonathan-led administration claimed to have killed at least twice, and the same Shekau the same administration is now seeking to capture alive”.