Boko Haram may resume talks with FG

Sources close to the leadership of the Boko Haram insurgents have told Vanguard that the group might have agreed to hold talks with the new leadership in Nigeria with the aim of ending the six-year-old insurgency in the country.

One of the sources which had been involved in previous attempts to broker peace between the Federal Government and the terrorists group confirmed to Vanguard last night that there were some level of discussions between the group and the government but that the “government does not want to be seen to be negotiating with the terrorists.”

The source, who works with an international agency with some presence in Nigeria, said: “I can tell you that there is some behind-the-scene informal discussion with certain segments of the Buhari administration, going on in Nigeria.

“But the truth is that the government does not want to be seen to be talking with the group apparently because of the failure of all previous efforts to dialogue with the Boko Haram men in and outside Nigeria under the previous administration.

“The aim of the renewed effort is to resuscitate the discussions from where we ended abruptly under the Jonathan administration and take it forward from there since there is a new government in place in Nigeria.

“The true position is that some of those with contacts with the leadership of the Boko Haram have gone back to assure them that there is a new government in place and that things can be done differently from what it was in the past when they were dribbled over and over again by top government officials who wanted to make quick gains under the guise of negotiating with the militants.”

The source said the militant leaders had been assured that the Buhari government was more open and ready to negotiate with them.

“Indeed, we have begun the peace process from the Boko Haram side and that may signal a new hope for the release of the missing Chibok girls,” the source said.

It will be recalled that the Presidency had hinted last week that it might negotiate with the dreaded Boko Haram leadership in order to end the cycle of violence that has wreaked havoc in Nigeria in the last six years.

Presidential spokesman, Mr Femi Adesina, who gave the hint, did not, however, give a timeline when the negotiation would start and who the government intended to deal with in carrying out the assignment.

Boko Haram is said to be offering to free more than 200 young women and girls kidnapped from a boarding school in the town of Chibok in exchange for the release of militant leaders held by the government.

An Associated Press quoted an unnamed activist as saying that Boko Haram’s current offer is limited to the Chibok girls who were taken in April 2014.

“The new initiative reopens an offer made last year to the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan to release the 219 students in exchange for 16 Boko Haram detainees,” the activist said.

He 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.