Opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) on Sunday, said the presidency could salvage its battered integrity over the botched Chibok trip by arranging a surprise one, which would not leak before the trip.

A statement by its spokesperson, Lai Mohammed, also knocked the presidency for manhandling what could be a belated but redeeming trip.

It described the aborted trip to Chibok as symptomatic of President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration’s flip-flop policy in the fight against the terror group, Boko Haram.

The party said just as the Jonathan-led administration had allegedly bungled the fight against the sect, it had allegedly exhibited sheer cluelessness in handling the abduction of the school girls.

“With his utterances and actions or inaction, President Jonathan has deepened the pains of the parents and guardians of the girls, and indeed, that of the whole nation, when he should have been the consoler-in-chief at such a difficult time for a nation he leads,” it said.

APC said to worsen matters, the administration had allegedly resorted to lying to Nigerians that the president never planned to visit Chibok in the first instance, even when it had been widely reported in the local and international media that the president’s advance team had landed in Borno State before the presidential volte face.

The party said the president himself made his lying aides to look squeaky clean, when he told the world’s media that he did not go to Chibok, because the girls were not being held there and also because the trip would not lead to their release.

“This statement shows that President Jonathan does not understand the demands of his office and that in good or bad times, he is to be seen and heard as the lead celebrant/lead consoler for his compatriots. His statement is the most pedestrian justification of a presidential faux pas ever.

“As usual, a trip, though belated as it were, that could have gone a long way in redeeming the battered global image of the Jonathan-led administration in the handling of the abduction issue had turned out to be another albatross for the president. Again, a president who is demonstrably averse to success has snatched defeat just when he was on the cusp of victory!” It said.

APC said a president, who was allegedly so in denial that critical time had lapsed before world attention forced him to act on the abducted girls, had again allegedly dropped the ball at another critical moment – just the same way he allegedly waffled and wavered on the overall Boko Haram crisis before the terror group gained enough strength to become a runaway monster that could now strike at a time and place of its own choosing, killing 12,000 people and injuring 8,000 others.

“President and Commander-in-Chief, who is afraid to visit any part of his country has betrayed the very people, who voted him into office. In the case of  Chibok, he has shown that the residents of the town should not expect to be seen as compatriots by their own president, hence, they are on their own.”

“This definitely explains why, increasingly, Nigerians are resorting to self help, why ordinary citizens are taking up cudgels, machetes and dane guns to battle the Boko Haram. It is nothing, but the clearest indication of state failure and presidential ineffectiveness,” the party said.

It said even in the seemingly hopeless situation in which the administration had allegedly found itself, it could still begin to make amends by immediately packaging a presidential visit to Chibok that would only be announced after the president must have gone and come back, instead of one in which the president’s men leaked the trip to the world in the hope of gaining mileage, only to reap opprobrium when the trip was cancelled…..and then blame everyone, but themselves.

-Tribune