Abducted girls still within Nigeria —Jonathan
President
Goodluck Jonathan believes the 276 secondary school girls abducted in
Chibok, Borno State are still within the country and possibly in the
Sambisa Forest.
He is not persuaded by speculations that they may have been moved out of the country.
Fielding questions from reporters at
the end of the World Economic Forum on Africa in Abuja yesterday,
President Jonathan also dismissed suggestions that his government was
slow in responding to the abduction crisis.
He said: ”The attackers are in a part
of Borno State described as Sambisa Forest. It is a forest area and we
are working with the experts that will use remote sensor to see that
wherever they are we will see,” he said.
“So, the best we can say is that they
are within the Sambisa forest area. Of course, I agree that there are
stories that they have been moved outside the country. But if they move
that number of girls to Cameroon, people will see. So I believe that
they are still within Nigeria.”
He thanked all the countries assisting Nigeria in searching for the girls.
He said that with the massive support
the country is receiving from the international community, Boko Haram
will have no choice but to “bring back our girls; and there is no where
they will take these girls to.
“They have no hiding place. We must work
with the global community that is quite keen to make sure that we bring
back these girls.”
He pleaded with the parents of the girls
to continue to exercise patience and that he himself as a father and
the President of Nigeria feels pained and doesn’t sleep ”with my two
eyes closed and will not sleep” until the girls rejoin their families.
Defending government’s handling of the
situation, especially what is generally criticised as government’s slow
response, he declared: “There is no slow response at all.”
“ No, no, it is a misconception. The
response is not slow. I have explained this. Borno State can be
described as the headquarters of the terrorists, Boko Haram.
“They are more in Borno State, then
followed by Yobe and then Adamawa. These are the three states in which
we have declared state of emergency already.”
“So they have military personnel in
those states. Immediately this happened, they have been following it,
both the army and the airforce, they have been combing everywhere. The
only thing we did not do, because we felt it was not necessary then, was
to video the aircraft moving, the military people moving and the
fighter helicopters.
“We did not do the video to show because
the people were on ground because of the state of emergency because of
these terrorists. That is why people thought it was slow, no it was not.
We started work immediately. It was not slow, the Nigerian government
responded immediately. If somebody gives you the impression that
government is slow, that is not correct.”
On whether there could be a political
solution to Boko Haram, President Jonathan maintained that there is an
element of politics in terror but that it is complex and beyond poverty.
He said: “Yes, political solution is
there, some elements of politics is there. But terror all over the world
is beyond economic.”
He likened Boko Haram to other
terrorists group, saying: “Boko Haram is a terror group. As a journalist
you know much more on terror than I do. When Al-Qeada started, most
people did not know the dimension until the 9/11 in the US. That was
when the whole world knew that terror could be very very devastating.”
He also said that a lot of the suspected brains behind the recent bomb explosions at Nyanya, near Abuja have been arrested.
Jonathan also thanked the participants who defied the terror threats to attend the World Economic Forum on Africa.