#DapchiGirls: PDP’s Comment ‘Insensitive’ – FG

The Federal Government has lashed out at the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for saying the events surrounding the kidnap and the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls by the Boko Haram insurgents were all a ‘scam’.

Federal Government had on Wednesday confirmed the release of 101 out of 110 schoolgirls kidnapped from the Government Girls Science Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe state.

But PDP in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, accused the All Progressives Congress APC-led government of staging the abduction of the schoolgirls in other to draw sympathy from Nigerians ahead of 2019 elections.

“The main aim of this devilish act was to delude the public, set the stage for an orchestrated rescue, create a heroic myth and false sense of achievement around the APC administration and serve as a spur for President Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration to contest the 2019 presidential election, perhaps in the coming weeks,” PDP said immediately after government announced the release of the school girls.

However, in a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said such claim “portrays the PDP as an inhuman, insensitive, unpatriotic and unworthy party.”

He said friendly countries and international organisations negotiated the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls and it would have taken a conspiracy of global proportion to have stage-managed the adoption and subsequent release of the girls.

The Minister also said they way APC-led government handled the matter led to the successful return of the girls.

“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 All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government acted promptly and responsively when the Dapchi schoolgirls were abducted 19 Feb. 2018, hence their quick release.”

“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 said.