Nigeria’s offer to militants over girls

ABUJA: Nigeria will let Boko Haram choose a non-profit organisation as an intermediary in any talks on the release of about 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the village of Chibok in 2014, President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday.

Buhari first said last year that his government was ready to negotiate with Islamist militants Boko Haram over the girls, but the group has not commented on the proposal.

Nigeria’s failure to find the kidnapped children prompted an outcry at home and abroad.

Critics of Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, said his government was too slow to act.

Any negotiations would be the first publicly known talks between the government and Boko Haram, whose seven-year insurgency to create an Islamic state in the north-east has killed 15 000 people.

“The government which I preside over is prepared to talk to bona fide leaders of Boko Haram,” Buhari said at a conference on African development in Nairobi, Kenya.

“If they do not want to talk to us directly, let them pick an internationally recognised non-governmental organisation ,” he said.

Buhari said Boko Haram could begin negotiations on a prisoner swop if they could provide evidence to the NGO that they had the girls.

Nearly 270 girls were taken from their school in the village of Chibok in north-eastern Nigeria in April 2014.

Dozens escaped in the initial melee, but more than 200 are still missing.

Earlier this month, Boko Haram published a video apparently showing recent footage of dozens of the girls and saying some were killed in air strikes.

Authorities said in May that one of the missing girls had been found and Buhari vowed to rescue the others.

Nigeria is fighting the group on the ground and with air strikes. A multi-national joint task force – comprising troops from Nigeria and neighbouring Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin – is also battling the militants.

Last Tuesday, Nigeria’s air force said it had killed some senior Boko Haram militants in raids. Boko Haram pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year, but there are signs of a rift emerging.

This month Islamic State announced a new leader for what it described as its West African operations, but Boko Haram’s hitherto leader Abubakar Shekau appeared to later contradict this in a video message.

Buhari said if the Nigerian jihadists moved to start discussions and they talked with an internationally recognised NGO, Nigeria would be prepared to discuss the release of militants.

“We want those girls out and safe. The faster we can recover them and hand them over to their parents, the better for us,” he said. – Reuters