Nigeria reports truce with Boko Haram

Nigeria claims Boko Haram truce, release of schoolgirls

Nigeria’s government claim to have reached a deal with Islamic militant group Boko Haram for a cease-fire, but there were conflicting reports as to the fate of 200 school girls kidnapped six months from a school in the northeast town of Chibok.

“I wish to inform this audience that a ceasefire agreement has been concluded,” Marshal Alex Badeh said in a statement after three days of talks with the militant group that has wreaked havoc in the northeast of Africa’s biggest oil producer.
While a presidency source maintained that the agreement stretched to the abducted schoolgirls, but Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Chris Olukolade said on Friday that the girls’ release was still being negotiated.
The girls have remained in captivity since April, although police and a parent of some of the missing students said last month one of the girls had been released.
Boko Haram negotiators, “assured that the schoolgirls and all other people in their captivity are all alive and well,” said the government’s spokesman on the insurgency, Mike Omeri, on Friday.

•                                                                                                     
•                                                                                                      

President Goodluck Jonathan has been pilloried at home and abroad for his slow response to the kidnapping and for his inability to quell the violence by the Islamist militants, seen as the biggest security threat to Africa’s biggest economy.
On Friday French President François Hollande welcomed the news and said the schoolgirls’ release was imminent.
“Boko Haram have said they will free these young girls and we have information that this will happen in the coming hours or days,” Hollande said during a meeting at the OECD in Paris.
Details of talks remain unclear
Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as ‘Western education is sinful’, has killed thousands of people in a five-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in the vast scrubland of Nigeria’s impoverished northeast.

A senior Nigerian security source confirmed the existence of talks, but said it remained unclear whether Abuja was negotiating with self-proclaimed movement leader Abubakar Shekau, or another faction within the group.
“Commitment among parts of Boko Haram and the military does appear to be genuine. It is worth taking seriously,” the security source told Reuters.
Several rounds of negotiations with Boko Haram have been attempted in recent years but they have never achieved a peace deal, partly because the group has several different factions.
“There are some talks but it depends on the buy-in of the whole group. I would be surprised if Shekau had suddenly changed his mind and is ready for a ceasefire,” the source added.
The government was negotiating with Danladi Ahmadu, a man calling himself the secretary-general of Boko Haram, the presidency source said. It was not clear if Ahmadu is part of the same faction as Shekau.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)