President Muhammadu Buhari said Monday federal government will negotiate, rather than adopting military option to secure the release of the 110 students of Government Girls Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State, abducted by Boko Haram insurgents about three weeks ago.
Buhari told Rex Tillerson, visiting US Secretary of State at a closed-door meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja that the government was doing everything possible to secure their release.
The President said Nigeria was working in concert with international organizations and negotiators to ensure that the girls were released unharmed by their captors.
Buhari said: “We are trying to be careful. It is better to get our daughters back alive.”
President Buhari thanked America for assistance rendered in the fight against insurgency, noting that Nigerian forces were good, “but need assistance in the areas of training and equipment.”
He promised that his administration would continue to do its best to secure the country, adding that he would be in Yobe State, from where Dapchi schoolgirls were abducted, later this week “as part of my condolence and sympathy visits to areas where we have had unfortunate events.”
The President also pledged free and fair polls in 2019, recalling that the then American Secretary of State, John Kerry, had visited before the 2015 polls, “and he told the party in government then, and those of us in opposition, to behave ourselves, and we did.”
Speaking to state House correspondents at a joint media briefing with Geoffery Onyema, Foreign Affairs Minister, after a closed-door meeting with Buhari, Tillerson called on the President to ensure the release of the girls, describing Boko Haram as a threat to countries within the African continent.
The visiting Secretary of State commended President Buhari on his strides in the anti-corruption war, to which the Nigerian leader responded that moneys recovered were being invested on development of infrastructure.
Tillerson, who said Nigeria was a very important country to the U.S, stressed: “You have our support in your challenges. We will also support opportunities to expand the economy, commercial investments, and peaceful polls in 2019.”
The US secretary said that the American government was collaborating with Nigeria in terms of intelligence gathering, training of military operatives and the release of equipment to fight insurgency.
He added that the equipment will help to fight Boko Haram insurgents and the release of abducted people including the Chibok girls.
Tillerson said “First, we respect the responsibilities of the government of Nigeria and the territorial integrity of Nigeria. But the way we support is in providing them capability, capacity with equipment and also training of the personnel of special operations and sharing intelligence to ensure that they have all the information available to carry out the recovery effort.
“But I think it is also important to put this in a broad regional context as well, Boko Haram is a threat to other region and this has been the subject of my meetings elsewhere and in Africa as well.
“In my discussion with President Derby in Chad earlier Monday, we spoke about the threat of Boko Haram and I think it is important and it’s really been powerful, the collaboration between the joint task force which Nigeria is a part and Chad is a part, to respond to this threat of terrorism which Boko Haram is one of the organizations, there are other threats that the leadership of this country has to deal with.
“So, the United States is ready to engage and coordinate efforts as well. But we have been supporting, equipping, training and when we can provide information. I think that is the best way we have been helping the government of Nigeria secure the release of the girls, which we hope, will be done in a peaceful manner. We hope that something can be worked out and they can secure the release of these girls quickly.”
Tillerson commended President Buhari for leading the sub-region in the fight against terrorism as well as his fight against corruption which he noted had earned the president recognition at the African Union.
He also said that the American government will support Nigeria in the 2019 general elections, and commended the collaboration between Nigeria and her neighbouring states with the formation of Joint Task Force.
On the recent warning by the United States Government to be careful with loans from China, Tillerson said that the US was developing alternatives to Chinese Loans.
He said that the United States President Donald Trump was developing alternatives to Chinese loans that will make it easier for African countries to access funds for infrastructural development.
He explained that although the United States was not against taking loans from China, America was more concerned with the aftermath of the loans as he stated that experience had shown that such countries with Chinese loans ended up forfeiting their sovereignty.
He said: “I think it is important to clarify that we do not seek to stop Chinese investments from flowing to countries that need those investments. But what we are cautioning countries is to look carefully, that the implications of the level of debts, the terms of the debts, and whether the arrangements around the local financing are intact creating jobs, local capacity or the projects being carried out by foreign labour being brought to your country.
“It is the structure of the financing such that you will always be in control of your infrastructure? Are there mechanisms to deal with the faults so that you do not lose ownership of your own assets? These are national assets whether they are ports, railways, or major highways.
“We have seen this occurred in other countries that were not so careful and the result they got themselves in situation where they awfully lost control of their infrastructure lost the ownership, the operations of it.
“That is the precaution that we talking about. That there are international rules and norms and financial structure to deal with unforeseen circumstances and I think we are just cautioning countries to look carefully.
There are other alternative financing mechanisms that are available and I think in particular, of government create the right conditions around those infrastructures investments, there are also great potentials for public-private sector co-investing in the infrastructure. And we are developing mechanism that will also create alternative opportunities financing offer.”
