Nigeria willing to swap detained Boko Haram members for Chibok girls – Buhari

Faced with intense criticism of his government’s inability to free scores of teenage girls held captive by the Boko Haram, President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his government’s willingness to negotiate with the terrorists to free the girls.

Speaking a few days after the families of the over 200 girls, kidnapped from their school in Chibok, Borno State in 2014, asked him to resign if he could not secure their release, the president also indicated that he was willing to do a prisoner swap with the Boko Haram.

The terror group recently released a video showing some of the kidnapped girls. A masked Boko Haram member in the video asked that the group’s members held in various prisons by the Nigerian government be released before the girls could be freed.

In an interview with journalists in Nairobi, Kenya at the weekend, Mr. Buhari said the Nigerian government is ready to dialogue with bonafide leaders of the terror group who know the whereabouts of the girls.

‘‘If they do not want to talk to us directly, let them pick an internationally recognised Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), convince them that they are holding the girls and that they want Nigeria to release a number of Boko Haram leaders in detention, which they are supposed to know,” he was quoted as saying in a statement by his spokesperson Garba Shehu.

-Premium Times