Chibok girls negotiator recognised with UN award
A NIGERIAN lawyer who helped secure the release of more than 100 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram was awarded one of the United Nations’ top prizes yesterday.
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said Zannah Mustapha was given the annual Nansen award for his crucial mediating role as well as his work helping children affected by the long-running conflict.
Last year’s recipients of the award were more than 2 000 volunteers who saved the lives of thousands of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Mustapha, who is in his late 50s, said the award was unexpected but he was very happy to have been chosen.
“I look forward to being a worthy ambassador for such a noble award,” he said in an interview in the capital, Abuja.
Mustapha set up The Future Prowess Islamic Foundation School 10 years ago, which has since proved a lifeline for children in conflict-riven and impoverished northeast Nigeria.
The primary school has grown from just 36 children and a single classroom to 540 pupils – more than half of them girls – and four times as many on the waiting list.
Last year, a second school was opened near the first in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, providing free education to 88 pupils displaced from their homes by the violence.
Pupils also include the children of Boko Haram fighters and Nigerian soldiers.
Mustapha is well known in northeast Nigeria, having previously represented the family of Mohammed Yusuf, the Boko Haram founder who died in police custody in 2009.
The lawyer has previously been involved in peace talks with the group, whose insurgency has left at least 20 000 people dead and displaced more than 2.6 million in the last eight years.
He refused to disclose exact details about his involvement in talks for the release of 219 schoolgirls who were seized by the group from the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.
Of them, 106 have been released, found or escaped.
He confirmed talks were ongoing for the release of the others.