The President, who is on a three-day visit to France, said this during an interview with Agence France Presse on Wednesday.
Buhari told AFP that the Federal Government was talking to Boko Haram’s prisoners and could offer them amnesty if the extremist group hands over more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from their hostel at the Chibok Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State on April 14, 2014.
He added that he was confident that conventional attacks by the terrorists would be rooted out by November but cautioned that deadly suicide attacks, some of them waged by children, were likely to continue.
He said, “We are trying to see whether we can negotiate with the Boko Haram prisoners in our custody for the release of the Chibok girls.
“If the Boko Haram leadership eventually agrees to turn over the Chibok girls to us, the complete number, then we may decide to give them (the prisoners) amnesty.”
Buhari, who has promised to stamp out the group’s bloody six-year insurgency, said the government would not release any prisoners unless it was convinced it could “get the girls in reasonably healthy condition.”
But he cautioned that negotiating with Boko Haram militants was fraught with difficulties.
“We are trying to establish if they are bona fide, how useful they are in Boko Haram, have they reached a position of leadership where their absence is of relevance to the operation of Boko Haram?” he said.
Buhari said he was confident that the military would defeat Boko Haram before the end of the year but expressed pessimism over the possibility of stopping the terrorists from attacking ‘soft’ targets.
He added, “The main conventional attacks, where Boko Haram use armoured cars they took from the Nigerian troops, or mounted machine-guns on pick-up vehicles and so on, we believe by the end of the three months, we will see the end of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment