President Goodluck Jonathan's statements come amid mounting international outrage over the mass abduction and the government's largely ineffective effort to subdue Boko Haram.
"By God's grace, we will conquer the terrorists. I believe the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end for terror in Nigeria," Jonathan said at the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.
He also acknowledged the offers of help from the United States, Britain, China and France, all of which have offered help in the weeks-old search for the girls who were snatched in mid-April from their beds at an all-girls school in rural northeastern Nigeria.
But the task of recovering the girls appeared to grow more complicated with news that U.S. intelligence believe the 276 girls have been split up.
"We do think they have been broken up into smaller groups," U.S. Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said.
He declined to detail how U.S. officials came to the conclusion. It is a sentiment that has been echoed by a number of others, who believe the girls already have been moved out of Nigeria and into neighboring countries.
"The search must be in Niger, Cameroon and Chad, to see if we can find information," former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the U.N.'s special envoy for global education, told CNN.
"It's vital to use the information to find the girls before they are dispersed across Africa, which is a very real possibility."
The girls have not been seen since Boko Haram militants abducted them on April 14 from the Government Girls Secondary School in rural Chibok, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Maiduguri and some 600 miles from the capital of Abuja.
That was followed on Sunday night by another kidnapping, with villagers in Warabe accusing Boko Haram militants of taking at least eight girls between the ages of 12 and 15.
Source: CNN
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