Buhari's CNN Interview With Amanpour

Jaiyeorie May 17, 2016

Muhammadu Buhari inLondon for anti-corruption summit, has given an interview to the CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour. The Nigerian president has defended the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments, caught on video this week, about Nigeria being “fantastically corrupt.”

The president restated that Cameron had nothing to apologize for, as he was just talking about what he knows. “I think he’s being honest about it.. I don’t think you can fault him,” he said.

H President Buhari said he was more worried about the war against corruption than talking about it. He said his government was making inroads with clearing a backlog of “ghost workers” who are demanding salaries deceitfully and by arresting those who misused government funds during the previous government.

Buhari told CNN that billions of dollars meant for the fight against the deadly Boko Haram sect were distributed among officials who gathered “as if they were going to have lunch and dinner and put the money into their accounts.”

Buhari told CNN that billions of dollars meant for the fight against the deadly Boko Haram sect were distributed among officials who gathered “as if they were going to have lunch and dinner and put the money into their accounts.”

Amanpour also asked the Nigerian leader about a video of the Chibok girls obtained last month that showed 12 of the schoolgirls alive. But President Buhari said he had not seen the recording and restated that he would not have shown it to the families even if he had seen it.

He said: “How can we show it to them when we don’t know where they are? If we know where they are then we can organize to secure them. If they are divided into 5, 10 groups all over the region, there’s no way we can spontaneously and simultaneously attack all those locations. The important thing is to get them alive.”

The president said that his government is still trying to identify Boko Haram leaders before entering into talks with them. “When we identify it, we are prepared to talk to them. We can’t just talk to whoever gets a video clip,” he said.

The Nigerian leader added that he has met twice with the families of the Chibok schoolgirls but said he tries to limit his meetings with them for his own “emotional balance.” “I try to imagine my 14-year-old daughter missing for one to two years… a lot of parents would rather see them in their graves than the condition they are in now. It’s tragic,” he said.