Nigerian leader ready to engage Boko Haram on abducted girls

“In the morning, terrorists tried to attack Fotokol, Kerawa, Dabaga localities but we managed to repel their assaults”, the security sources said. When they left, the militants took nearly 276 of the students with them.

“We have got the money from the TY Danjuma-led committee, which has raised N25 billion and with the assistance of the G-7 countries, progress is being made”, he said.

“Monies have been recovered; the courts have discovered some looted monies in terms of submissions made to them and documentations including bank statements, where the monies are lodged and how much”.

Buhari, who was sworn in as president in May, told reporters that there is “no firm intelligence on where those girls are physically located and what condition they are in”.

What does the president mean when he says no credible leader of ISWAP has come forward with evidence of the 219 girls abducted in their dormitories in April 2014 before he will consider negotiation?

He, however, maintained that the war against Boko Haram is not over yet until the insurgents are completely routed out and normalcy returned to the north east.

Young girls carry placards bearing the names of the girls kidnapped from a school in Chibok in April 2014 during a demonstration in Abuja, Nigeria, April 14, 2015.

In his two-hour televised comments to a small panel of journalists, the 73-year-old president said he had struck an alliance with Nigeria’s neighbors to defeat the extremists.

He was also blamed for a renewed series of attacks by the sect on Maiduguri and Adamawa.

Welcoming the citizens to the beginning of a new year of “the continuation of CHANGE” in the country, he said: “I am aware that Nigerians have experienced a number of significant hardships over the past months”.

Turning to the economy, Buhari said he was unconvinced of the need to devalue the naira, which has plummeted against the USA dollar over the past year, and insisted it would harm Nigeria’s import-reliant economy.

While speaking on the fight against corruption, the president said his government was doing everything possible to ensure that those who looted the treasury are brought to justice. “We have some documents where Nigerian crude oil was lifted illegally and the proceeds were put into some personal accounts instead of the federal government accounts”, he said.

Speaking on the activities of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Buhari said the leader of the group, Nnamdi Kanu, has both Nigerian and British passports, saying that he never used any of the passports to enter into the country.

He denied claims that his government has marginalised the Igbo people, listing about four Igbo speaking members of his government.