Release Our Man With IED Experience To Get Back Chibok Girls, Say Boko Haram

by Benson Agoha | War Against Terror

BOKO HARAM GIVES TERMS OF NEGOTIATION FOR RELEASE OF CHIBOK GIRLS

* Parents and support protest out statehouse Abuja

Boko Haram has reportedly given the Nigerian government new conditions for the release of some 360 school girls abducted by the terror group in April 2014.

Militants stormed the Secondary school at night and abducted the girls, claiming later to have solved them into slavery and married off some.

But with sustained degradation of their stronghold of Sambissa forest, the group which has already chanaged leadership gave the new conditions for exchange of the girls, majority of whom have already lost their jihadi husands in the fight back.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), this new condition has been made public by President Muhammadu Buhari.

President Buhari who is currently visiting Paris disclosed it while answering questions from members of the Nigerian community in France. But the President said his government will not accept their demand.

“They wanted us to release one of their leaders who is a strategic person in developing and making Improvised IEDs that is causing a lot of havoc in the country by blowing people in Churches, Mosques, market places, motor parks and other places,” President Buhari said, adding “The issue of Chibok girls has occupied our minds and because of the international attention it drew and the sympathy throughout the country and the world. The government is (looking into possibility of) negotiating with some of the Boko Haram leadership”.

Mr. Buhari, however, stated that government must first establish genuine members of the sect so that it would not make the mistake of engaging the wrong persons.

“It is a very sensitive development in the sense that first we have to establish if the persons we are dealing with the genuine leaders of the Boko Haram. That is number one. Number two, what are their terms, the first impression we had was not very encouraging,’’ the president said.

Boko Haram caused international outcry which started an online campaign with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, after two months of the capture and nothing appeared to be happening as plans to bring them back.