Former President Olusegun Obasanjo
has met with people close to the dreaded Islamist sect, Boko Haram, in an
attempt to broker the release of more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls, a source
close to the talks told AFP.
The meeting took
place last weekend at Obasanjo’s farm in Ogun State and included relatives of
some senior Boko Haram fighters as well as intermediaries and the former
president, the source said.
“The meeting was
focused on how to free the girls through negotiation,” said the source who
requested anonymity, referring to the girls seized on April 14 from the remote
northeastern town of Chibok, Borno State.
Reports of the
talks emerged as Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex
Badeh, said the girls had been located while casting doubt on the prospect of
rescuing them by force.
Obasanjo, who
left office in 2007, has previously sought to negotiate with the insurgents,
including in September 2011 after Boko Haram bombed the United Nations headquarters
in Abuja.
Then, he flew to
the Islamists’ base in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, to meet relatives of
former Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf, who was killed in police custody in
2009.
The 2011 talks
did not help stem the violence and some at the time doubted if Obasanjo was
dealing with people who were legitimately capable of negotiating a ceasefire.
Spokesmen for
the former head of state, who remains an influential figure in Nigerian
politics, could not be reached to comment on the latest reported Boko Haram
talks.
But the source
told AFP that Obasanjo had voiced concern about Nigeria’s acceptance of foreign
military personnel to help rescue the girls.
Obasanjo is said
to be worried that Nigeria’s prestige in Africa as a major continental
power had been diminished by President Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to bring in
Western military help, including from the United States.
Mustapha Zanna,
the lawyer who helped organise Obasanjo’s 2011 talks with Boko Haram, said he
was at the former president’s home on Saturday.
But he declined
to discuss whether the Chibok abductions were on the agenda.
“I was there,”
he told AFP, adding that Obasanjo was interested in helping orphans and
vulnerable children in Nigeria’s embattled northeast and that possible charitable
work was on the agenda.
Zanna had
represented Yusuf’s family in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the
government following his death in police custody.
It was not clear
if Obasanjo’s weekend meeting had been sanctioned by the government. Obasanjo, who
backed Jonathan’s 2011 presidential campaign, fiercely criticised him and his
record as president in a letter released to the public last December and the
two are widely thought to have fallen out.
According to the
source, Obasanjo supported a prisoner-for-hostage swap that would see some of
the girls released in exchange for a group of Boko Haram fighters held in
Nigerian custody.
As a private
citizen whose ties to the presidency have been damaged, Obasanjo likely does
not have the authority to negotiate any deal on the government’s behalf.
The government,
which has officially ruled out a prisoner swap, sent intermediaries to meet
Boko Haram in the northeast to negotiate for the girls’ release.
The source
identified one of the envoys as Ahmad Salkida, a journalist with ties to Boko
Haram who had been close to Yusuf before his death.
“There was
contact but it was bungled by the government,” according to the source, saying
Jonathan backed away from the deal after returning from a security conference in
Paris earlier this month.
The conference
saw Nigeria and its neighbours vow greater co-operation to tackle Boko Haram
because of the potential threat to regional stability.
The chief of
defence staff on Monday said that despite having located the girls, the risks
of storming the area with troops in a rescue mission were too great and could
prove fatal for the hostages.
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