Special Duties Minister Taminu Turaki, on Tuesday, said that Nigeria is willing to talk to Boko Haram about securing the release of 223 schoolgirls still held hostage by the Islamists.
Turaki, who last year headed a committee tasked with pursuing an amnesty pact with some Boko Haram fighters, said: “Nigeria has always been willing to dialogue with the insurgents…
“We are willing to carry that dialogue on any issue, including the girls kidnapped in Chibok, because certainly we are not going to say that (the abduction) is not an issue.”
Also Governor Kashim Shettima. Shettima has identified the female hostages shown in a video released by Boko Haram as students of the secondary school attacked by the Islamists on April 14.
A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. Boko Haram released a new video on claiming to show the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had
converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed. A total of 276 girls were abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state, which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing.
A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. Boko Haram released a new video on claiming to show the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed. A total of 276 girls were abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state, which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing.
“All the girls in that video were identified to be students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok,” said northeastern Borno state’s Governor Kashim Shettima.
Shettima, who spoke in Abuja, had organised a viewing of the video for the Chibok community.
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