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.
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