President Muhammadu Buhari has assured U.S. President Donald Trump that
his administration is stabilising the attacks by herdsmen across the
country.
Buhari, who gave the assurance during his meeting with Trump at the White
House, said Nigerians were concerned about the resort to arms by some
herdsmen.
The Nigerian president described the situation as alien to the age-long
peaceful coexistence between herders and farmers across the country.
Buhari said: “The problem of cattle herders is a very long historical
problem. What is of a concern is that before now the Nigerian herders are
known to carry sticks and machetes and cut follies for their animals but
these ones are carrying AK 47.
“So, I don’t think we should underrate Libya, 43 years of Gaddafi people
were being recruited from the Sahel and people were being killed.
“With the demise, they moved from their country and their region with
their training and their weapons and that is what aggravated the
situation.
“We are doing our best to make ensure we stop the cross border movement
and so on. It will take time. We are Stabilising the situation in
Nigeria.”
He explained that Nigeria was happy with the U.S. trying to see the end of
ISIS, saying this has helped Nigeria a lot because the Boko Haram in
Nigeria had one time made a statement that they belonged to ISIS.
“Now that ISIS has been virtually dealt with, we are very happy with
that,” he said.
On security, Buhari said he was very grateful to the U.S. for “agreeing to
sell to us the aircraft we asked for and the spare parts”.
“We are even more grateful for the physical presence of the United States
military who are training in our institutions and who also go to the front
in the northeast to see how they are doing.
“The commitment of the United States to get rid of terrorism across the
world, we have first hand experience of that and we are very grateful for
it,” he said.
“Chibok girls’ kidnap was before we came. We rescue some of them. The
Dapchi girls were 106, we rescued 100 back, four died, one is still in
captivity.
“We are very grateful to the United Nations organisation that is acting as
go-between and is helping out. We have not given up on the Dapchi girl,”
Buhari said.
Earlier, Trump had said he had met Buhari before and they had a great
relationship.
“We have had very serious problems with Christians who are being murdered
in Nigeria, we are going to be working on that problem very, very hard
because we cannot allow that to happen,” Trump said.
The U.S. leader said his country had very much decimated ISIS over the
last 12 months.
“But Boko Haram has been terrible. How did you do with the young women
that have been kidnapped? It’s a terrible problem,” Trump had said.(NAN)