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Boko Haram offers to swap detainees for missing girls
Deadly group, Boko Haram is 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.
According to an activist, who pleaded anonymity with an international news agency because he was not authorized to talk to reporters on the sensitive issue, it was revealed that Boko Haram’s current offer is limited to the girls from the school in northeastern Nigeria whose mass abduction in April 2014.
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“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 5-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.
It will be recalled that Presidential adviser Femi Adesina on Saturday stated that the Buhari led government “will not be averse” to talks with Boko Haram