Abducted girls not in Cameroon —US envoy

Gregory D. Thome
| credits: yaounde.usembassy.gov

The Chargé d’Affaires in the Embassy of the United States of America to Cameroon, Gregory D. Thome, has ruled out the possibility of Boko Haram hiding the abducted schoolgirls anywhere in Cameroon.

The US envoy said this while addressing journalists in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon after holding a meeting with the Minister of External Relations, Pierre Moukoko Mbonjo.

One of the leading newspapers in Cameroon, Cameroon Tribune, posted this on its website on Sunday.

The report stated that the US envoy was at the ministry to thank Cameroon for supporting efforts being made to find the abducted girls.

Thome said, “I conveyed to the Minister that President Barack Obama is personally very interested and deeply offended by this terrible act that Boko Haram had done.

“We discussed the fact that there is really no evidence that the girls are in Cameroon.”

He assured Mbonjo that the US government and its counterpart in Cameroon would  collaborate in helping Nigeria to come out of the throes of the Islamic militant group.

Earlier, a former United Kingdom Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had said the search for the abducted girls should be shifted to Nigeria’s neighbouring countries including Cameroon.

The former UK Prime Minister, who is the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Global Education, told the Cable News Network.

Brown said, “The search must be in Niger, Cameroon and Chad, to see if we can find information.”

The Pentagon had on Friday said the girls had been split into groups without giving out detail of how they arrived at the conclusion.