Buhari says negotiations has commenced with Boko Haram

President Muhammadu Buhari, says Boko Haram’s release of the abducted Chibok girls, would make the federal government willing enough, to negotiate with them.

The President said on Tuesday, that his government has began talks with Boko Haram to secure the release of over 200 Chibok girls.

Buhari said this in France, while speaking with members of the Nigerian community in France under the auspices of Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation.

He said: “The issue of Chibok girls has occupied our minds and because of the international attention it drew and the sympathy through out the country and the world, the government is negotiating with some of the Boko Haram leadership.”

“It is a very sensitive development in the sense that first we have to establish, are they genuine leaders of the Boko Haram. That is number one. Number two, what are their terms, the first impression we had was not very encouraging.

“They wanted us to release one of their leaders who is a strategic person in developing and making Improvised IEDs that is causing a lot of havoc in the country by blowing people in Churches, Mosque, market places, motor parks and other places. But is very important that if we are going to talk to any body, we have to know how much he is worth.

“Let them bring all the girls and then, we will be prepared to negotiate, I will allow them to come back to Nigeria or to be absolved in the community. We have to be very careful, the concern we have for the Chibok girls, one only imagine if they got a daughter there between 14 and 18 and for more than one and a half year, a lot of the parents who have died would rather see the graves of their daughters rather the condition they imagine they are in.”

“This has drawn a lot of sympathy though out the world, that is why this government is getting very hard in negotiating and getting the balance of those who are alive.”