Boko Haram offers to free kidnapped girls in prisoner exchange

LAGOS, NIGERIA— Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists are offering to free more than 200 young women and girls kidnapped last year from a boarding school in the town of Chibok in exchange for the release of militant leaders held by the government, a human-rights activist says.

The activist told The Associated Press that Boko Haram’s current offer is limited to the girls from the school in northeastern Nigeria whose mass abduction in April 2014 ignited worldwide outrage and a campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls” that stretched to the White House.

The new initiative reopens an offer made last year to the government of former president Goodluck Jonathan to release the 219 students in exchange for 16 Boko Haram detainees, the activist said.

The man, who was involved in negotiations with Boko Haram last year and is close to current negotiators, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters on this sensitive issue.

Fred Eno, an apolitical Nigerian who has been negotiating with Boko Haram for more than a year, told The Associated Press that “another window of opportunity opened” in the last few days, though he could not discuss details.

He said the recent slew of Boko Haram bloodletting — some 350 people killed in the past nine days — is consistent with past ratcheting up of violence as the militants seek a stronger negotiating position.

Presidential adviser Femi Adesina said on Saturday that Nigeria’s government “will not be averse” to talks with Boko Haram.

Eno said the five-week-old administration of President Muhammadu Buhari offers “a clean slate” to bring the militants back to negotiations that had become poisoned by the different security agencies and their advice to Jonathan.