Stick To Advocacy, Stop Attacking Buhari, Lai Tells #BBOG

The Federal Government has called on the Bring Back Our Girls Group (#BBOG) to ensure that in its quest to secure the release of the Chibok girls, it sticks to the role of advocacy and not on attacks on President Muhammadu Buhari like an opposition party.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated this in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Monday by his Special Assistant, Segun Adeyemi.

According to Mohammed, BBOG’s continued portrayal of the government as an adversary and the needless firing of darts at the President, who is doing his utmost best to bring the girls back home safely, are ultimately counter-productive.

He said, ”The Federal Government has bent over backwards to carry the BBOG along and to show transparency in the conduct of the search for the girls. The recent invitation extended to the group to witness first-hand the search for the girls by the Nigerian Air Force is a clear indication of this.

”However, it came to us as a surprise that in spite of its initial positive report on the tour, the BBOG has too quickly reverted to its adversarial role. BBOG should stick to its role as an advocacy group rather than pretending to be an opposition party. The synonyms of the word ‘advocacy’ do not include ‘antagonism’, ‘opposition’ or ‘attack’. In fact, those words are the antonyms of ‘advocacy’,” he said.

Alhaji Mohammed said it amounts to needless grandstanding for the BBOG to say it will no longer tolerate ”delays” and ”excuses” from the President on the release of the girls, adding that such “impudent language should have been reserved for those who did nothing in the first 500 days of the girls’ abduction, not for a President who has presided over the liberation of all captured territory, the opening of shut schools and roads, the safe release of some of the abducted girls and the decimation of Boko Haram.”

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The minister assured Nigerians that the efforts to bring the girls back safely are ongoing.

”Let me say unequivocally that the people involved in the negotiations are working 24/7. The negotiations are complicated, tortuous and delicate. Any wrong signal is capable of derailing things. That’s why the less we say about the talks the better it is for all.

”We need a huge amount of confidence-building, the kind of which led to the release of the 21 of the girls. This has been lacking for years, but right now we are confident that we are on the right track. We won’t do anything to jeopardize these talks, irrespective of the pressure or provocation from any quarter,” he said.

BBOG had in a fresh demand, after returning from Sambisa Forest search with some government officials and media, called for the rescue of the remaining 195 Chibok girls who are still in captivity, saying it will no longer tolerate delays in their release and excuses from President Buhari.