Schoolgirls: How FG-Boko Haram Swap Deal Was Stalled

 
Hope for the release of abducted schoolgirls, in a swap deal, was dashed recently at the eleventh hour, a London newspaper has revealed. According to a report in the London-based The Mail on Sunday, the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants came close to freedom before the Federal Government officials called off a deal to swap them for family members of the militant group in custody.
The swap deal, the newspaper reported, was agreed in tortuous negotiations, in response to worldwide outrage over the continued detention of the schoolgirls snatched from their hostel, in Chibok, more than one moth ago.
According to the British newspaper, a Nigerian journalist trusted by both the Federal Government and Boko Haram acted as go-between, risking his life on a one-man mission to enter the gunmen’s camp to broker an agreement.
At the 11th hour, on May 17, 2014, the newspaper stated, Federal Government officials called off the exchange, in a telephone call from a crisis summit in Paris, France, where President Goodluck Jonathan met foreign ministers, including those from Britain, the United States, France and Israel.
The decision of the Federal Government to break the deal, the newspaper stated, followed an agreement by summit participants that no deals should be struck with terrorists and that force should instead be used against them.
President Jonathan’s U-turn is said to have enraged Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, The Mail reported.
The newspaper said insiders believe that the cancellation of the deal and the ensuing standoff now put the girls’ lives in even greater danger.
The Mail on Sunday quoted an intelligence source as saying: “The next video we see from the terrorists could show the girls being killed one by one.”
Further quoting sources in Abuja, The Mail on Sunday described how Shekau had agreed to bring the girls out of their forest camps in Sambisa in the early morning of May 18, 2014 and take them to a safe location for the prisoner swap.
“They would have been dropped off in a village, one group at a time, and left there, while their kidnappers disappeared. There was to be a signal to a mediator at another location to bring in the prisoners,” the newspaper quoted sources.
About 2,000 Boko Haram members are currently detained. One hundred non-combatants, low-level sympathisers were to be freed and the two groups brought together in a convoy of buses accompanied by a hand-picked go-between, Ahmad Salkida, who The Mail on Sunday described as a “respected Nigerian journalist.”
Salkida, the newspaper stated, was born in the North-eastern state of Borno, the home of Boko Haram. He has known its leaders all his life and has unprecedented access, it reported, adding: “He has been arrested on several occasions accused of being a Boko Haram sympathiser, and he fled with his family to Dubai two years ago.”
Two weeks ago, The Mail reported, President Jonathan’s aides summoned him out of exile. He initially feared he might face arrest, but was then given a letter of indemnity signed by the president when he flew to Nigeria, according to the London-based newspaper.
The Mail reported that Salkida was able to travel by taxi to the group’s forest camp to talk to Shekau two weeks ago.
“His mission was secretive and dangerous,” it stated, adding: “He is probably the only civilian with access to Shekau. There is trust between them and Salkida had only one aim to get the schoolgirls out.
“He reported afterwards that the group of girls he saw were alive and well, and being adequately fed and sheltered. They told him all they wanted was to go home.” Salkida’s mission was complicated by the chaos surrounding the Nigerian government’s
Though there was no detailed response to queries on the report, The Mail on Sunday quoted Presidential Spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati as saying: “I am not aware of an attempted rescue plan taking place last week.”
Source:sunnewsonline.com