President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday stated he will not resign even If Boko Haram is not defeated by December but rather be determined to stay and fight it out.
The president made the disclosure in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera English’s flagship current affairs show, UpFront.
He pledged to defeat Boko Haram 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 adding that attacks by Boko Haram on townships, on military installations, will certainly stop.”
Buhari also acknowledged he would be willing to negotiate with the group to secure the release of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls.
“They have to prove to us that they are alive, they are well, and then we can negotiate with them,” President Muhammadu Buhari told UpFront host Mehdi Hasan. “We stated it and we meant it, if we are satisfied that the girls are alive.”
On whether he would offer financial payments, or a prisoner release, to Boko Haram in return for the girls, Buhari did not rule out either option. “Well it depends on the negotiations with the leadership of Boko Haram,” he stated.
The president claimed not to have 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,” stated Buhari. “If I get those documents, i assure you that I will take action as Commander in Chief.”
In the past, Buhari has been quoted as saying he supports “the total implementation of the sharia in the country” but he told ‘UpFront’ that “Nigerian law does not allow for” so-called sharia punishments, such as stonings and amputations, adding: “I cannot change it. I haven’t been voted by [a] majority of Nigerians to change Nigerian constitution.”
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.”
The president refused, however, to concede that his now-notorious ‘war against indiscipline’ in the 1980s featured any such “injustice.”
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