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Nigeria to discuss Chibok girls' release with Boko Haram: president

Xinhua, August 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

Nigeria has concluded plans to discuss the release of Chibok girls with Boko Haram insurgents, who abducted them in 2014, President Muhammadu Buhari has said.

The Nigerian leader said in a statement reaching Xinhua in Lagos on Sunday that his government had since expressed its readiness to dialogue with bonafide leaders of the terror group, who know the whereabouts of the girls.

"The government is prepared to talk to bonafide leaders of Boko Haram," Buhari said. "If they do not want to talk to us directly, let them pick an internationally recognized Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO)."

"They should convince the organization that they are holding the girls, and that they want Nigeria to release a number of Boko Haram leaders in detention, who they are supposed to know," he added.

The president warned that the government would not waste time and resources with doubtful sources claiming to know the whereabouts of the girls.

"We want those girls out and safe. The faster we can recover them and hand them over to their parents, the better for us," he said.

Buhari maintained that the terror group, which pledged allegiance to ISIS, had been largely decimated by Nigerian military with the support of immediate neighbors of Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin.

A faction of Boko Haram militants, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, recently released a new video showing the abducted Chibok girls.

The video showed a masked armed man standing in front of several girls, who, he claimed, were the over 200 girls abducted from their school hostel at Government Secondary School, Chibok, in 2014.

The man said the video was released to send a message to the parents of the girls to beg the Nigerian government to release Boko Haram members in various detention centers in exchange for the girls.

The man said about 40 of the girls were already married while some were dead.

Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths in Nigeria since 2009. Endit