The All Progressives Congress (APC)
has described as a compound embarrassment the fact that it took 17-year-old
girl-child education campaigner, Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, to visit and
convince President Goodluck Jonathan to agree to a meeting with representatives
of the parents of the kidnapped school girls.
”President Jonathan, who has
already embarrassed himself and the entire people of Nigeria by his
inexplicable failure to visit Chibok since the girls were abducted over 90 days
ago, has compounded the embarrassment and insulted Nigerians by waiting for
Malala to goad him to meet with the girls’ parents, not in Chibok but in
Abuja,” the party said in a statement in Lagos, Thursday, by its National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
It said after the meeting failed,
because the parents were not properly informed and invited, a shameless
presidency turned around to blame the opposition and the patriotic and selfless
Nigerians who have been campaigning daily, under the #Bringbackourgirls group.
”Fortunately, and to the eternal
discomfiture of the presidency, the Chibok community has said the decision not
to meet with President Jonathan in Abuja was theirs and theirs alone, and that
they took that decision because their sole reason for coming to Abuja was to
meet with Malala, and not the President who did not invite them anyway.
”With this explanation, one would
have expected a presidency that has regard for the truth to immediately retract
its earlier panic statement, which it issued to save face after what was
nothing but a PR gimmick blew up in their face, and apologize to the opposition
and the #Bringbackourgirls group that were unjustly pilloried by them.
”Instead, the presidency has
persisted in its distortion of the truth, for which they have now become
infamous, even as a new date has been agreed for the meeting. This is
unfortunate, condemnable and irresponsible,” APC said. ”If indeed, as the
presidency claimed earlier, that the opposition was behind the earlier refusal
by the parents and escaped girls not to see the President, what has then
happened to make them change their minds? Has the opposition now asked them to
meet with the President?”
The party alerted Nigerians that
the reason President Jonathan, whose wife bullied and harangued the girls’
parents on the grounds that they were lying and that no girl was missing,
agreed to meet with the parents is so that he could use the meeting as a
photo-op, after Malala pushed for it and the President’s US-based image
laundering firm acceded to it.
”Mr. President, your frantic effort
to meet with the Chibok parents now is too little too late, and no amount of
photo-op will change that. If your handlers had been sincere, Mr. President,
they would have told you that the best venue of the meeting is Chibok, not
Abuja where your people tried, but failed, to waylay the parents who came for a
meeting with Malala.
”Mr. President, you have ceaselessly
compared yourself to the great leaders of our time, including US President
Barack Obama. But do you think Obama would have refused to visit the parents of
these abducted school girls if the abduction had occurred in the US? Do you
think Obama, as Commander-in-Chief, would have refused to visit his troops in
the front line of the anti-terror fight as you have done?
”Do you think, Mr. President, that
a band of rogue elements like Boko Haram would have restricted Obama’s movement
within his own country as they have done to you? No true and caring President
will ever fail to visit the sites of disasters and offer solace to his compatriots,”
it said.
APC reminded President Jonathan
that neither in Nigeria’s culture nor in any other culture are those hit by
tragedy invited to be offered solace, adding that the practice is to visit
those to be offered solace ‘in situ’.
The party reiterated its earlier
call on the President to shake off his lethargy and bring the abducted school
girls home safely, instead of playing politics with the lives of over 200 human
beings.
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