• Declares he “will not resign” if he doesn’t fulfill his promise to defeat Boko Haram by December. “I will…stay and fight it out.”
• Says he’s willing to do a deal with Boko Haram to free the kidnapped Chibok girls: “We said it and we meant it.”
• Denies any support for “sharia” law: “Nigerian law does not allow for that.”
• Claims he has never seen Amnesty International’s June report highlighting abuses by the Nigerian military: “I haven’t received that report personally.”
In a wide-ranging
and exclusive interview with Al Jazeera English’s flagship current
affairs show, UpFront, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari pledged to
defeat Boko Haram by December but 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 Buhari told UpFront host Mehdi
Hasan. “We said it and we meant it. If we are satisfied that the girls
are alive.”
When asked 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.”
The
president has pledged to defeat Boko Haram by the end of 2015 and told
Hasan: “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.”
If Boko Haram isn’t defeated by December, however, Buhari said he “will not resign.”
“I will be determined to stay and fight it out.”
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,” said 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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