The Presidency yesterday faulted criticism that it has not done enough to secure the release of the passengers abducted by terrorists during the March 28th attack on the Abuja/Kaduna train.
Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, told the Hausa Service of the BBC that the federal government actually negotiated with the gunmen and met all their demands only for the other side to default in keeping its own side of the bargain: releasing the hostages.
Government, according to him, “has been working very hard” on getting the hostages freed.
He said while some of the efforts were visible, others were not.
He said: “It is to the advantage of the relatives and to the country at large to see all the victims are rescued.
“Whoever says the government isn’t doing anything or isn’t making any effort to rescue them perhaps doesn’t know the effort the government is putting in order to rescue the abductees.
“Don’t forget that right from the start of it, the leader of the terrorists demanded that his pregnant wife should be released from captivity.
“The federal government took the woman to the hospital where she gave birth to twins, and after she gave birth, he was shown that both his wife and children were in a good health condition and then they were handed over to his parents.
“After handing them over, they came up with a different issue that there are about six or seven of their children in Yola, Adamawa, who the government sent a plane to pick up.
“We expected that if we gave them the children, they would release all the victims in their custody. Then they demanded money.
“So, people should not say the government is doing nothing.”
President Muhammadu Buhari during a meeting with representatives of the hostages’ families in Abuja on Thursday said he rejected the use of ‘lethal force’ to rescue the victims because it could defeat the primary objective of rescuing them.
But he pledged that their loved ones would soon be freed.