President Muhammadu Buhari says Nigerian authorities are
talking to Boko Haram prisoners in their custody and could offer them amnesty
if the extremist group hands over more than 200 schoolgirls abducted last year.
The Nigerian leader told AFP
on Wednesday (local time) he was confident "conventional" attacks by
the group would be rooted out by November, but cautioned that deadly suicide
attacks, some of them waged by children, were likely to continue.
"The few (prisoners) we
are holding, we are trying to see whether we can negotiate with them for the
release of the Chibok girls," Buhari said in an interview in Paris during
a three-day visit to France.
"If the Boko Haram leadership eventually agrees to turn
over the Chibok girls to us - the complete number - then we may decide to give
them (the prisoners) amnesty."
Boko Haram fighters stormed a school in the remote
northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok on April 14 last year, seizing 276 girls
who were preparing for end-of-year exams in an abduction that shocked the
world.
Fifty-seven escaped, but nothing had been heard of the 219 others since May last year, when about
100 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video, dressed in Muslim attire and
reciting the Koran.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has since said they have
all converted to Islam and been "married off".
Buhari said the government would not release any prisoners
unless it were convinced it could
"get the girls in reasonably healthy condition", but cautioned that
negotiating with Boko Haram militants was fraught with difficulties.
"We are trying to
establish if they are bona fide, how useful they are in Boko Haram, have they
reached a position of leadership where their absence is of relevance to the
operation of Boko Haram?" he said.
AFP
No comments
Post a Comment