Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, on Monday, made some clarifications on the 82 schoolgirls released on Saturday even as he said that the Federal Government would do whatever it would take to secure the release of the remaining abducted Chibok school girls.
Adesina made this known when he featured on Channels Television’s breakfast show, Sunrise Daily, after the release of girls.
He said the release of the 82 girls would have come earlier, if not for some hitches in the negotiation process. He, however, refused to give details, as they were security-related.
“When the first set came back in October last year, it was disclosed that it was a show of goodwill from their captors and a lot more would follow immediately, but some issues came up and over the months, those issues were resolved and that has led to the return of the 82 that we have now.”
Meanwhile, there have been questions about whether or not the girls were kept in any boarding facility while negotiations were ongoing.
Some have said this set of girls look a lot better than the last set of 21 girls released in October 2016.
In reaction, Adesina said the girls had been spruced up before they arrived at the Villa.
He, however, explained that their welfare while in captivity also depended largely on the faction of the Boko Haram sect that was holding them.
“Don’t forget that all the girls are not held by one faction of Boko Haram; so it depends on the faction holding them, and how well or how badly they treated them.”
According to him, although the number of Boko Haram factions cannot be categorically stated, there are definitely more than one faction of the terrorist group.
Adesina spoke in reaction to a comment by BBOG group member, Bukky Sonibare, who said it was expected that the government would put in place a system to ensure the immediate rehabilitation of the 82 Chibok school girls after their freedom.
The DEFENDER reports that It is however not clear what Sonibare meant as government that freed the girls had always included the rehabilitation process of any of the girls freed from the insurgents’ captivity.
But she continued, saying also, that Nigerians needed to be adequately informed on what is being done through out the entire process. “We are not asking that you tell us the address, but people want to know what is going on.”
Facebook reactions
In the meantime, Nigerians, excited by the latest achievement of release of 82 of the remaining schoolgirls at a go, took to the Facebook on Monday after Bukky Sonibare’s appearance on the Sunrise show with one of them asking what she meant by “people want to know what is going on,” asking, “If you don’t want to be told the address, then how do you know what is going on? Since you have been told what was going on under Jonathan government whose nonchalance allowed the girls to stay for this long as Boko Haram captives, what success did you see?” One of them asked repeatedly.
One of the reliable social media comments said, “Can somebody help us tell these BBOG people to leave this government alone to do its job? Jonathan’s government that hoodwinked you into believing that Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction was a scam, you didn’t give it the kind of trouble you have given to the Buhari’s government that only inherited the need to search and rescue the girls one year after their kidnap.
“What should matter to you people is whether the government of Buhari delivers or not. You will be tagged as ingrates if you fail to appreciate the good things that this President has done and is doing simply because you must be heard to be talking on the television. We don’t however know whether Bukky Sonibare is talking for BBOG group on behalf of which the convener, Oby Ezekwesili, had already praised the President and other security agencies for the release of the 82 girls or not,” said the social media activist.
Also speaking through her post, Mrs Moyosore Oyetunji, a retired school teacher took on other critics of the swapping done to secure the girls’ release. She said, “Hey, what is the problem of PDP with who the Chibock girls were swapped with, did they make any arrest in their regime talk less of using them as a form of negotiation? Why don’t people just gba fun oga won (accept fate that Buhari is their master)? Abeg oga na master jor.”
Responding to Oyetunji, another Facebook activist, Nurudeen Toba Tiamiyu, a successful Nigerian farmer said, “When the kidnap case now becomes an issue of technicalities then humanity is lost. It has nothing to do with intimidation. That it took 23 days for the government of GEJ to even admit it and even 3 years after, some folks still doubt, such is the lowest any human can go down to in 2017.
“The fact that the government of GEJ put too much doubt and inconsistency allowed to reign in such news then is the height of wickedness his supporters cherish to date. They were kidnapped on the day they were doing physics doesn’t mean they were all writing exams that day. I never left school premises till others finished their last papers. This was the same set of people that denied the death of several students in the federal government College then all because of politics. They are not dissenters; they are just inhuman callous people that have lost their humanity. It’s as simple as that for me,” Tiamiyu said.
Yet another respondent, Murtadha Baba Yakubu gave it as, “What else do you want them to do Alhaja? We cannot be beating someone and ask them not to cry. They are crying because PMB performance is beating them hands down,” he said.
