The All Progressives Congress (APC) has decried the
melodramatic intervention of First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan in the
abduction of over 200 school girls as distracting, counter-productive
and calibrated to scapegoat others with the sole intention of
exculpating her husband rather than finding the girls.
“Make
no mistake about it, there is nothing wrong in the First Lady, as a
woman and the mother of the nation, playing a role in resolving the
unfortunate abduction of the girls, but that role must be within the
realms of social activism, not in policy making or conduct of state
affairs,” the party said in a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday by
its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
It
warned that melodrama, highlighted by the shedding of
made-for-television crocodile tears, cannot and will not bring the girls
back safely to their parents.
”What will bring them
back is a purposeful and sustained effort by the Federal
Government,
which has hitherto been tentative and lethargic. Therefore, enough of
the distracting, absurd and overbearing show that the First Lady has put
up in the past few days,” APC said.
The party advised
the First Lady to stop grand standing and to get real by leading a
protest of other First Ladies from all the 36 states of the Federation
from the Eagle Square to Aso Rock to pressure her husband, President
Goodluck Jonathan, on whose laps falls the responsibility of leading the
nation to find the girls, to act fast.
It also urged
the First Lady to stop apportioning blames at this time so that all
efforts can be geared towards finding the girls.
“Our
dear First Lady needs to be told clearly that her husband, the
President, is the nation’s Chief Security Officer. Our dear First Lady
needs to be informed that because Borno State, where the unfortunate
abduction took place, is under a state of emergency, her husband, the
President, has automatically assumed all security powers. It is
therefore wrong for our dear First Lady to be threatening to march on
Borno to ask the Governor to produce the girls. That march should be to
Aso Rock instead,” APC said.
The party wondered where
the First Lady derived the powers to summon elected and appointed
officials to Aso Rock to answer her queries over the missing girls,
saying by doing so, she is usurping the President’s constitutional role,
making him to look weak and ineffective in conducting the affairs of
state and also making Nigeria the butt of jokes in the international
community.
“The First Lady has summoned the Borno State
Police Commissioner; the Divisional Police Officer for Chibok; the
Borno State Commissioner for Education, the relevant Local Government
Chairman, the school principal and the school gate man, among others.
Where did she derive the authority or power to issue such summons? Does
she know the implication of forcing security officials to divulge, on
public television, sensitive information that could even hamper the
search for the girls? How can a Police Commissioner, who is not
accountable to the Governor of a state, be subject to the First Lady?
Where in the Constitution, or any law for that matter, is the role and
powers of the First Lady delineated or articulated?” it queried.
APC
said if the First Lady would not heed the advice to stop summoning
public officials to her executive chambers, then the officials should
stop honouring such illegal and unconstitutional summons.
The
party also took the First Lady to task over her comments that anytime
she comes out, like a masquerade, something happens, wondering why then
she did not deem it necessary to have come out in the first few days of
the girls’ abduction so that ”something would have happened”.
“Apparently,
the First Lady believed, as she revealed on public television and as it
has been insinuated in certain quarters, that the girls’ abduction was a
ruse aimed at embarrassing her husband, hence neither she nor her
husband took the whole tragedy seriously. That explained their delay in
acting.
”Now that the Boko Haram terrorists have
claimed responsibility for the abduction and even threatened to sell the
girls, the nation hopes that the First Lady and her husband now believe
this is no ‘politics’,” it said
Meanwhile, the APC has
condemned the clamour to release the names and pictures of the girls by
those who are apparently doubting their abduction, including PDP
National Women Leader Kema Chikwe.
The party said while
publishing the names and pictures of the girls would not in any way
facilitate their rescue, it would succeed in stigmatizing them for life
when eventually they are found and returned home safely.
“These
girls, who are mostly within the age-range of 16-18, are children, and
deserve to be protected. Any attempt to publish their names and
pictures, as being demanded in certain quarters, will stigmatize them
for life, against the backdrop of the sex slavery conditions which many
fear they may have been subjected to. Therefore, let us spare them any
more trauma than they may have been subjected to already,” it said
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