We Will Not Pay Ransom For Kidnapped Chibok Girls..Doyin Okupe

The   Presidency has insisted   that it will   not pay ransom to Boko Haram to secure the release of the over 200 schoolgirls abducted from the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, on April 14.

The Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs   to the President, Dr. Doyin Okupe,   in an interview posted online on Monday by Aljazeera, also said that President Goodluck Jonathan would soon visit Chibok.

While emphasising the fact that the Presidency will not engage in any ransom deal with the insurgents, he argued that since Boko Haram insurgency was a Nigerian problem, it   would be solved in the “Nigerian” way.

Okupe said, “It is very clear that we’re not doing that (paying ransom to secure the release of the Chibok girls). The President said this several times. We’re not going to pay a ransom.

“This is a Nigerian problem; we’re going to find a Nigerian solution to it. We’ve always been able to find Nigerian solutions to Nigerian problems. We’ve seen this problem. We’re on top of it and we’re going to solve it.”

On why the President had yet to visit Chibok, Okupe explained that even though Jonathan, as a person, had not done so, the Presidency had been there.

He said, “The President as a person has not visited Chibok. But the Presidential team –the Chief of Army Staff, the Chief of Naval Staff, and the Chief of Defence Staff –has been to Chibok.

“It is something that is coming. But, what we consider the most important thing is not giving consideration to things that are theatrical; things that are just palliative at the moment.

“The President will go there. He’s been to Borno State before and he slept there. No President goes to a war zone and sleeps there; not even Gordon Brown or Barack Obama. President Jonathan has done that. We’ll get to that point.”

The presidential aide also stated that the   state of emergency in three states in the North-East was   to get soldiers   to combat the insurgents.

“The state of emergency is not to prevent death. The state of emergency is to allow the military to act unchecked and is to prevent them from being sued in the law court. This is so that they can do things that will facilitate their combat-readiness against the insurgency,” he added.

He, however, claimed that there were “powerful people” who were not happy with the military presence in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

Okupe said, “Powerful people in Borno State and other states in the North-East are against the presence of the military in those areas. They have made this very clear. They even said this in their presentation to the President. At the beginning, they said, ‘move away your army we don’t want them’.”

He, however, agreed that the soldiers in those areas had committed some human rights violations.

“There are human issues; it is not peculiar to Nigeria; you have it in Syria, you have it in Iraq. These are human lapses. Sometimes soldiers do go into excesses for which they are punished for. And that’s why they have court-martials. But overall, our soldiers are disciplined; they’re highly motivated and they’re very well catered for,” Okupe explained.

Asked why the   soldiers had not been able to defeat the Boko Haram militants, he replied, “Just the same reason why one of the most powerful armies in the world (the United States among)   couldn’t cope with Iraq.

“Insurgency is the most difficult thing for a regular military set-up to cope with. It is difficult as we have seen in Britain, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, in the Maghreb and so on. It’s even worse when you have them as nationals; when the insurgents are part of the country. They’re not differentiated easily. It’s been a difficult war.

“The Nigerian government has been doing extremely well. In fact, we’ve done better when compared historically with others.”

Okupe also said that   Nigeria did not need foreign troops to aid its     fight against Boko Haram .

“We have excess of foot soldiers in the country; presently about 20,000 to 30,000 in Borno State. We can quadrupled that number. We don’t need foreign intervention (foreign troops),” he said.