President
Muhammadu Buhari says he “will not resign” if he is unable to fulfill his
promise of defeating Boko Haram by December. Buhari, who was speaking in
an exclusive interview with Mehdi Hasan on Al Jazeera English’s
‘Upfront’, said he would instead be “determined to stay on and
fight it out”.
In the interview, which won’t be aired until Friday night, the
president also reiterated his willingness to do a deal with Boko
Haram to free the kidnapped Chibok girls on the condition that the true leaders
of the sect are the ones to be dialogued with.
“We said it and we meant it,” he
said. “They have to prove to us that they are alive, they are well, and then we
can…negotiate with them. We said it and we meant it. If we are satisfied that
the girls are alive.” Asked whether he would offer financial payments, or a
prisoner release, to Boko Haram in return for the girls, he refrained from
ruling out either option, saying: “Well, it depends on the negotiations with
the leadership of Boko Haram.” Still, he expressed assurance that Boko
Haram will be defeated by the end of 2015, saying:
“As soon as the rainy season
comes, which is by the end of the year… Boko Haram will virtually be out of
their main stronghold and that will be the end of it…. Attacks by Boko Haram on
townships, on military installations, will certainly stop.”
He also said
he had not seen the Amnesty International report from June 2015, ‘Nigeria:
Stars on their shoulders: Blood on their hands’, in which the human-rights
group documented abuses, torture and unlawful killings by the Nigerian armed forces
and urged the government to prosecute a group of officers and senior
commanders. “I haven’t received that report personally,”
he said. “If I get
those documents… I assure you that I will take action as Commander in Chief.”
Asked about his record as a military dictator in the mid-1980s, and the alleged
human-rights abuses which occurred on his watch, Buhari said: “If there is any
injustice that can be proved against me when I was there, I will gladly
apologize.” However, he refused to concede that his ‘war against
indiscipline’ in the 1980s featured any such “injustice”.
Via The Cable
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