Boko Haram offers to free 200 girls for detainees

Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists have offered to free more than 200 young women and girls kidnapped from a Chibok boarding school in exchange for the release of militants held by the government. Media from England have quoted a human right activist who said that Boko Haram’s current offer is limited to the girls from the school in north eastern Nigeria, whose mass abduction in April 2014 ignited a campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls“ that stretched to the White House.

The new initiative reopens an offer made last year to former President Goodluck Jonathan to release the 219 students in exchange for 16 Boko Haram detainees, the activist said. Presidential adviser Femi Adesina said that the government “will not be averse“ to talks with Boko Haram. “Most wars, however furious or vicious, often end around the negotiation table,“ he said. Fred Eno, who has been negotiating with the militant group for the past one year, 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.