Boko Haram offers to swap 200 kidnapped girls for detained leaders

Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram is offering to hand over more than 200 girls kidnapped last year in exchange for the release of a number of militant leaders. The latest offer reopens one made last year when former president Goodluck Jonathan was in power. Negotiator Fred Eno, who was involved in last year’s talks when Boko Haram offered to exchange 219 girls in exchange for 16 of its own detainees, said “another window of opportunity” had opened within the past few days. He added that the recent killings of about 350 people over the past nine days by Boko Haram fitted with the pattern of increased violence as the Islamists looked for a stronger negotiating position.

Most wars, however furious or vicious, often end around the negotiation table.

Presidential adviser Femi Adesina

The abduction in April last year of the 274 mostly Christian girls from their boarding school in the town of Chibok in north-eastern Nigeria caused outrage around the world, with a Bring Back Our Girls campaign reaching as far as the White House. However, the five-week-old administration of president Muhammadu Buhari offers “a clean slate” to bring the militants back to negotiations, said Mr Eno. It is not known how many Boko Haram suspects are detained by Nigeria’s intelligence agency, whose chief Mr Buhari sacked last week. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s defence ministry has said that troops have arrested the mastermind of bombings in the central cities of Jos and Zaria this week that killed at least 69 people.

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