Buhari Prepared to Negotiate With Boko Haram for Chibok Women

The BringBackOurGirls advocacy group campaigning for the rescue of 219 abducted Chibok secondary schoolgirls by the Boko Haram in 2014 has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to set up a search and rescue team to find the missing girls.

It was in April 2014, however, that the worldwide community began to take notice when 279 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok, a town in Boko Haram’s stronghold of north-eastern Nigeria.

But, at this point, President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t seem sure about what happened to the Chibok girls, who were reportedly taken from their school dorms in April by the group.

Further, that the president gave the impression of a reactive approach of ‘waiting for credible Boko Haram leadership to tell us whether our girls are alive or not, falls disappointingly short of the proactive feedback we expected.

“We are working with Niger, with Chad, with Cameroun, but there is no firm intelligence on where those girls physically are or how many divisions they made of them or where they are. That is the honest truth”, Buhari said during the first two-way news conference of his seven-month presidency.

Over 17,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram’s six-year quest to create an independent Islamic state in Nigeria.

President Buhari said he was careful not to choose anyone that would embarrass his government on account of corruption as minister.

The readiness of the federal government to open negotiation with Boko Haram will not stop the military in its fight against the insurgents, defence headquarters spokesperson Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar has said.

Almost 100 people died in suicide attacks in Borno and neighboring Adamawa state over the weekend, with militants making a botched bid to enter Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno and the region’s commercial hub. The sharp fall in oil prices over the past year has hit those revenues hard.

While welcoming Nigerians to the New Year, Mr. Buhari said he would continue with the change already began by his administration. We are all brothers and sisters born from the womb of one Nigeria and as I have said previously, we would not be Nigerians if God did not will it.