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A chief of the All Progressives Congress, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has apologised to the leadership of the BringBackOurGirls movement, over a statement he made in which he said the group consisted of APC members.

Ogbeh was speaking during the declaration of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) for the Presidency in Abuja last week, when he made a slip that the BBOG was made up of APC members, a claim that riled the group and which the members found offensive.

Presidential aides who frowned at the activities of the BBOG had, earlier alleged that the group was being sponsored by the APC, until the party chief committed what amounted to a Freudian slip.

But Ogbeh in a letter of apology dated October 20, 2014, and addressed to the BBOG leadership, said his remarks were not meant to paint the coalition as an APC subgroup.

The letter reads, Dear patriots, I feel obliged to let you know that my statement at our function last week was not intended to paint your group as an APC subgroup. This is because from what we know, less than 2 per cent of the group are our party members, but members we value highly.

The rest of you are not and may not even belong to any political association whatsoever. This is not to say you have no right to be if you choose to. If my statement caused you discomfort, I do apologise, but reiterate that I have nothing but respect and admiration for you for keeping a six-month vigil and telling the world that the Nigerian conscience is not entirely dead. The world is watching and making judgement.

Meanwhile, a co-coordinator, BBOG, Hadiza Usman, has flayed statements credited to some government officials that her group was an affiliate of the APC, stressing that her campaign for the release of the 219 Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, was motivated by her status as a mother and a Nigerian.

Usman in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja, stated that she had never hidden the fact that she was an APC member, stressing that her activism in the BBOG, had nothing to do with party politics.

She said, I have watched, with keen interest, recent attempts by some principal officers of the Federal Government to discredit me and the #BringBackOurGirls group. This is not new. It has been the case since we commenced our citizens-driven advocacy movement, which explains why my initial reaction was to ignore the chatter and concentrate on the noble work of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

I am a member of the APC, and there has been no time I have hidden this fact or tried to mask it. But lets be clear, when I worked to mobilise women, men, and Nigerians at large to come out on April 30th to protest that the Government should intensify efforts to #BringBackOurGirls, I did so not as an APC member, but first as a human being, as a woman, a mother, a Nigerian and an African. It was never about politics and/or my political affiliations; it was rather about our shared humanity as human beings.

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Ogbeh apologises to BBOG over party affiliation remarks