He has also vowed that he would not resign if by December his government is unable to defeat Boko Haram.
Buhari told the Doha-based Aljazeera television in an interview aired on Friday evening that he would negotiate with Boko Haram to bring back the Chibok girls.
It has been 18 months since more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram from the remote town of Chibok in Borno State. President Buhari has pledged to defeat the armed group by December and is willing to negotiate to secure the girls’ release.
“[Boko Haram has] 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,” the president adds.
On what the Nigerian government is willing to offer the armed group, Buhari says “it will depend on the leadership of Boko Haram”.
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 pledged to defeat Boko Haram by the end of 2015 and told Aljazeera: “As soon as the rainy season ends, 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 Aljazeera 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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