The All Progressives Congress (APC), on Thursday, chided President Goodluck Jonathan, over the botched meeting with parents of kidnapped Chibok girls.
It described as an embarrassment the fact that it took a 17-year-old girl-child education campaigner, Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, to visit and convince President Jonathan to agree to a meeting with representatives of the parents.
The party, in a statement issued in Lagos, on Thursday, by its national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said “President Jonathan, who has already embarrassed himself and Nigerians by his inexplicable failure to visit Chibok since the girls were abducted over 90 days ago, compounded the embarrassment and insulted Nigerians by waiting for Malala to goad him to meet with the girls’ parents, not even in Chibok, but in Abuja.’’
It added that after the meeting failed because the parents were not properly informed and invited, adding that it was disappointed that the presidency turned around to blame the opposition and the #Bringbackourgirls# group.
The party alerted Nigerians that the reason President Jonathan agreed to meet with the parents was 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,” the party added.
APC reminded President Jonathan that neither in Nigeria’s culture nor in any other culture were those hit by tragedy invited to be offered solace, adding that the practice was to visit those to be offered solace ‘in situ’.
The party reiterated its earlier call on the president to shake off his alleged lethargy and bring the abducted school- girls home safely, instead of playing politics with the lives of over 200 human beings.
