Chibok Girls: President Buhari's Speech in France

Buhari explained, during a meeting with the Nigerian community in France, that his administration was in negotiation with the terrorists to secure the girls’ release

Here are five important things Buhari said about the Chibok girls during the meeting:

1. “The issue of Chibok girls has occupied our minds and because of the international attention it drew and the sympathy throughout the country and the world. The government is (looking into possibility of) negotiating with some of the Boko Haram leadership.”
2. “Let them bring all the girls and then, we will be prepared to negotiate; I will allow them to come back to Nigeria or to be absorbed in the community.
3. “We have to be very careful; the concern we have for the Chibok girls, one only imagines if they got a daughter there between 14 and 18 and for more than one and a half year, a lot of the parents who have died would rather see the graves of their daughters rather than the condition they imagine they are in.
4. “This has drawn a lot of sympathy throughout the world; that is why this government is working very hard in negotiating and getting the balance of those who are alive.”
5. “It is a very sensitive development in the sense that first we have to establish, are they genuine leaders of the Boko Haram. That is number one. Number two, what are their terms, the first impression we had was not very encouraging.”

Boko Haram: No Freedom of Movement for Insurgents to Slaughter Our Citizens or Capture Our Military Units. - NAF

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) on Wednesday said.

The Chief of Air Staff (CAS), AVM Sadique Abubakar, has given an assurance that Boko Haram terrorists would no longer be allowed to move freely to slaughter citizens or capture military units in the North-East. This was contained speech at a 2-day seminar on Standards and Evaluation tagged "The Imperative of Standards and Evaluation in the Nigerian Air Force’’. The seminar was organised by NAF.
In his words, "So far, the air operations in the North-East are creating the enabling environment for the army to move unhindered in the conduct of their operation.
"We have substantially degraded the capacity of the terrorists to move freely in Toyota Hilux vehicles ravaging villages and murdering innocent citizens.
"God willing, they will never move freely again to slaughter our citizens or capture our military units.
"We will continue to do our best to meet our statutory responsibility of defending the territorial integrity of the nation, acting singly or in concert with other security agencies, " he said.
Abubakar said that NAF regarded safety as a core function and as such it would strive to develop, implement, maintain and constantly review its safety strategies to ensure that operations were conducted with acceptable risk level.
He said that the Standard and Evaluation Branch was one of the most important branches in the NAF.
"Because once you have a sound standard and evaluation branch, people would operate according to standard.
"This will prevent us from running into problems of safety, because people will be operating according to the laid down regulations of safety, especially at times such as now when you have scarcity of resources.
"We cannot afford to lose anything, whether our pilot or equipment," he said.
The CAS, however, urged the standard and evaluation branch to sensitise all stakeholders on how to properly maintain the equipment, personnel and assets entrusted to them in order to derive maximum value from them.

Buhari, Osinbajo Make Assets Public

President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo have made known their assets, with the President declaring less than N30 million and his deputy a cash balance of N94 million and US$900,000 in his bank accounts. The assets, which were still being verified by the Code of Conduct Bureau, it was learned, also showed the President to have shareholdings in Berger Paints, Union Bank and Skye Bank with a total of seven houses including two mud houses. The President has two houses in Kaduna and one each in Kano, Daura and in Abuja. The two mud houses are in his native Daura. One was inherited from his late elder sister, another from his late father. He reportedly borrowed money from the old Barclays Bank to build two of his homes. President Buhari, according to the documents, has two undeveloped plots of land, one in Kano and the other in Port Harcourt. He is believed to be still trying to trace the location of the land in Port-Harcourt. The President also has farms, an orchard and a ranch. The total number of his holdings in the farm, according to sources privy to the declaration, include 270 heads of cattle, 25 sheep, five horses, a variety of birds and a number of economic trees. The President is also reported to have a number of cars, two of which he bought from his savings and the others supplied to him by the Federal Government in his capacity as a former Head of State. The rest were donated to him by well-wishers after his SUV was damaged in a Boko Haram bomb attack on his convoy in July 2014. Vice-President Osinbajo, according to the assets declaration has a 4-bedroom residence at Victoria Garden City, Lagos;  a 3-bedroom flat at  2 Mosley Road, Ikoyi and a 2-bedroom flat in the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. The Vice-president also has a 2-bedroom mortgaged property in Bedford, England. The Vice-President also has shareholdings in his law firm, SimmonsCooper and in six private companies based in Lagos, including Octogenerium Ltd., Windsor Grant Ltd., Tarapolsa, Vistorion Ltd., Aviva Ltd. and MTN Nigeria. The Vice-President’s bank balance, at inauguration showed him to have about N94 million, US$900,000 and £19,000 in Nigerian banks. The foreign currencies are in domiciliary accounts in Nigerian banks. His vehicles, according to the declared assets include one Infinity 4-Wheel Drive SUV, one Mercedes Benz and a Prado SUV. 

Source: Vanguard (online)