The Federal Government has justified the release of the 82 Chibok girls over the weekend in a swap deal with Boko Haram leaders while condemning a statement credited to a faction of the PDP criticizing the process as indecent, inhuman and ill-timed.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, in a statement issued by his media assistant, Segun Adeyemi on Monday condemned the comments by the PDP.
The Ahmed Makarfi faction of the PDP had on Sunday, condemned the decision by the Nigerian government to swap Boko Haram prisoners with some of the abducted Chibok Schoolgirls.
However, Mohammed said it was insensitive for any individual or organization 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”.
The minister who recalled how President Buhari pledged that his administration could not be said to have defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the girls added that ”If that includes swapping some Boko Haram elements for the girls, so what?”
Mohammed further queried: “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?”
He said it was clear that the kind of disdain for human life which the PDP exhibited in its incautious statement was the same reason the girls were kidnapped in the first instance.
”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,” the Minister said.