The Federal Government is in talks with Boko Haram about a possible ceasefire, Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed has revealed. Accordin
The Federal Government is in talks with Boko Haram about a possible ceasefire, Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed has revealed. According to him, the talks have been going on for some time. “Unknown to many, we have been in wider cessation-of-hostility talks with the insurgents for some time now. The talks helped to secure the release of the police officers’ wives and the University of Maiduguri lecturers recently. The talks did not stop thereafter. Therefore, we were able to leverage the wider talks when the Dapchi girls were abducted,” Mohammed said.
The minister said the FG would reinvigorate national security to prevent further abduction of school girls in the Northeast and generally, negotiations for a permanent ceasefire with the insurgents. The minister also lampooned the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for allegedly politicising the release of the girls and called for new provisions to deregister political parties like the PDP, which, according to him, fall short of patriotic fervour.
“What called for non-partisan celebrations was rather thoughtlessly turned into politics, bad, despicable politics that has no place in any democracy. At times of national tragedies, countries unite. This is the norm everywhere. Indeed, there should be a new criterion for withdrawing the registration of a party like the PDP which has failed both as a ruling and an opposition party! If a party cannot rule and cannot be in opposition, what else can it do?”
He reiterated his claim that no money was paid for the release of the Dapchi schoolgirls, adding that a total of 111 students were captured and two others, including a boy selling sachet water in the school and another primary schoolgirl. In all, he said a total of 113 persons were taken away. The minister said the insurgents were compelled to release the students and others because their capture offended long running negotiations with them for a settlement of the crisis. He said the recent release of the police officers’ wives and the University of Maiduguri lecturers earlier captured by the insurgents were part of the broader talks.
“As I said earlier, the insurgents decided to return the girls to where they picked them from as a goodwill gesture. All they demanded was a ceasefire that will grant them a safe corridor to drop the girls. Consequently, a week-long ceasefire was declared, starting from Monday, 19 March. That is why the insurgents were able to drop the girls. This counters the conspiracy theories being propounded in some quarters concerning why it was so easy for the insurgents to drop off the girls without being attacked by the military”, the minister said.
Meanwhile the governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose has reacted to the minister of information’s claim of a long ceasefire talk with the Boko Haram insurgents. The governor wondered why the government is discussing ceasefire with the Islamic sect they claim to have defeated. Posting on Twitter, he said, “How can you discuss ceasefire with the same Boko Haram you claimed to have defeated and decimated? Someone is obviously lying to Nigerians”.
