Nigeria, Boko Haram Reach Cease-Fire, Agree to Free Schoolgirls
by VOA News October 17, 2014
The Nigerian government says militant group Boko Haram has agreed to a cease-fire and the release of 219 schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants in April from the town of Chibok.
Top Nigerian presidential aide Hassan Tukur told VOA's Hausa service the militants have agreed in principle to free the schoolgirls. Tukur said the details still need to be worked out, but said he has no reason to doubt Boko Haram's sincerity.
Tukur added that Boko Haram has assured the government the girls are in good condition and that overall, he is cautiously optimistic that a peace process with Boko Haram will succeed.
The two sides reached the cease-fire deal Friday, after talks in Saudi Arabia that involved President Idriss Deby of Chad and high-level officials from Cameroon.
Nigeria's highest-ranking military official, General Alex Badeh, announced the the truce Friday, referring to Boko Haram by its formal Arabic-language name. He ordered all of the country's military chiefs to abide by the deal.
"I wish to inform this audience that a cease-fire agreement has been concluded between the federal government of Nigeria and al-Sunna lil-Daʿawah wa al-Jihad," said Badeh.
Boko Haram leaders "have announced a unilateral cease-fire," said Tukur. "The Nigerian government has responded accordingly, and we are now monitoring to see if the cease-fire is holding and I hope it will hold."
Tukur said the negotiations in the past had not yet "yielded any positive results, but I am cautiously optimistic that this time around ... we will be able to achieve some success."
Negotiated release
Tukur and Danladi Ahmadu, who calls himself the secretary-general of Boko Haram, told VOA's Hausa-language service the schoolgirls will be released Monday in Chad.
The girls are alive and "in good condition and unharmed," Ahmadu said.
The sources said the girls will be handed over to Deby for transfer to Nigerian authorities. They also said Nigerian and Boko Haram delegates will meet in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, to discuss Boko Haram's demands, such as the release of imprisoned militants.
The cease-fire marks a possible end to the five-year insurgency in which several thousand Nigerians have been killed.
Nigerian leader criticized
Jonathan has been criticized at home and abroad for Nigerian troops' inability to quell violence by the militants, seen as the biggest security threat to Africa's top economy and leading energy producer.
Criticism intensified in mid-April, when dozens of Boko Haram fighters stormed a secondary school in the remote northeastern village of Chibok, kidnapping around 270 girls. Fifty-seven managed to escape.
In a video, the Boko Haram leader known as Abubakar Shekau threatened to sell the other girls as slave brides, vowing they would not be released until militant prisoners were freed from jail.
Boko Haram has said it is fighting to establish an Islamic state in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria.
The group has launched scores of attacks in the past five years, targeting markets, bus stations, government facilities, churches and even mosques. Militants recently took over some towns in the northeast for what Shekau said in another video would be an Islamic caliphate.
The Nigerian military says that Shekau was actually an impostor and that the real Shekau was killed several years ago. It says the impostor was killed last month during a battle in the town of Konduga.
VOA's Hausa service, correspondent Anne Look, and reporters Yusuf Aliyu Harande and Umar Farouk contributed to this report.
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