Nigeria’s President has offered to hold talks with Boko Haram over the fate of more than 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped by the Islamist group nearly two years ago.
Muhammadu Buhari was elected last May after promising to eradicate the group, but now says he would offer unconditional talks, if the group could identify a leader.
“If a credible leader of Boko Haram can be established and they tell us where those girls are, we are prepared to negotiate with them, without any precondition,” Mr Buhari said.
The offer will surprise some who have backed the Nigerian President’s hitherto hardline stance against the group, which has waged a bloody insurgency across Nigeria and in neighbouring states. Thousands have been killed and kidnapped since the jihadists launched waves of armed attack and suicide bombings in 2009.
It was in April 2014, however, that the international community began to take notice when 279 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok, a town in Boko Haram’s stronghold of north-eastern Nigeria. To date 219 of them are still missing.
Despite recent military successes against the group, which prompted Mr Buhari to claim in an interview last week that Nigeria had “technically beaten” Boko Haram, last weekend a number of deadly attacks left up to 80 people dead in the north-east.
There was “no firm intelligence” on the girls’ whereabouts, Mr Buhari said as he announced the offer of talks. He added: “I assure you that the cause of the Chibok girls is on our minds.”
