ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo holds talks to free abducted Chibok schoolgirls

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.

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.