African securityBoko Haram willing to release kidnapped girls for $56 million ransom

Boko Haram has said it was demanding a ransom of nearly $56 million for the release of the 219 schoolgirls it kidnapped from the Nigerian town of Chibok two years ago.

The Islamist militants conveyed their demand in secret contacts with the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who, during last year’s presidential campaign, said that if need be, he would negotiate with the militants for the girls’ release.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that Boko Haram had insisted on exchanging the kidnapped girls with jailed comrades, but a deal along these lines, negotiated by the Red Cross, could not be carried out because the list provided by Boko Haram did not match the group’s members in Nigerian jails.

The girls were kidnapping on 14 April 2014, and their case received global attention. The Nigerian government of then-President Goodluck Jonathan made several announcements about the Nigerian military being close to rescuing the girls, but the incompetence and corruption of the military doomed any rescue efforts.

The president’s wife also caused outrage when she publicly said that the girls were not kidnapped, and that it was all a plot by the girls’ families to get monetary compensation from her husband’s government.

After Nigeria’s neighbors – Chad, Niger, and Cameroon – in January 2015, brushed aside Nigerian objections and began to fight Boko Haram in Nigerian soil, and after Buhari replaced Jonathan as president, the Nigerian military has made significant gains against Boko Haram. In addition to forcing Boko Haram out of large area which were under the group’s control, the military has freed about 1,000 women and children abducted by the militants.

The Telegraph quotes one source close to Boko Haram saying: “The ransom demand has split the government.

“Some think it would be worth it just to resolve the Chibok situation, but others say it will simply allow Boko Haram to hire yet more insurgent recruits.”

Boko Haram had had also secretly passed the government a new video tape showing fifteen of the kidnapped girls.

“They are asked if they have been raped or mistreated, but they say no. They look relaxed,” s source close to Boko Haram told the Telegraph.

Stephen Davis, an Australian who served as an adviser to Nigerian government adviser, and who had many contacts with Boko Haram in 2014 while attempting to negotiate the girls’ freedom, said that the only way to get the girls back is to exploit the militants’ “combat fatigue.”

“If you offer Boko Haram fighters camps where they can get shelter, food, clothing and education, you can demobilize them quite quickly, as there are a lot of them who want to give up,” he told the Telegraph.

“Take away the foot soldiers, and you will also start getting information about where the girls are. Any other way is putting the cart before the horse.”