The Federal Government negotiating team has headed for the Chadian capital, N’djamena in continuation of its negotiation with representatives of Boko Haram insurgents.
According to sources, the team’s priority is the release of the abducted Chibok school girls and cessation of hostilities.
The Tide recalls that the Federal Government last Friday announced that it had entered into a ceasefire agreement with the sect; an agreement it said will facilitate the release of the over 200 school girls abducted from their hostels in Chibok since April 14, this year.
Shortly after this announcement, the Principal Private Secretary to the President, Ambassador Hassan Tukur and the Coordinator of the National Information Centre, Mr. Mike Omeri said negotiations with the sect will continue this week.
The negotiation was brokered by the Chadian President, Idriss Derby, with Cameroonian official present.
Though the ceasefire has been violated with attacks on towns and villages in Borno and Adamawa states, the Federal Government seems determined to continue with the talks.
“The Federal Government is sticking to the ceasefire agreement despite the efforts of some mischievous elements to derail the plan. We can only determine if there is need to cancel the agreement or go on with the negotiations when we meet the sect. But we cannot just take a hasty decision based on sporadic attacks whose sources or actors have not been verified,” sources in the Presidency said.
The sources further confirmed that a team from the Federal Government had left for Chad to hold negotiations with the sect, but declined to disclose the names of the government officials or the government’s representatives on the team.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister, Aminu Wali, said yesterday that Abuja hopes to end the conflict with Islamist militant group, Boko Haram soon, and win the release of more than 200 kidnapped school girls.
“I can say with some optimism, cautious optimism, that were are moving towards a situation where we’d be able to, in the very near future, to be able to get back our girls,” Aminu Wali said in Berlin.
“There is a tremendous amount of improvement in terms of the discussions that are going on now and also the possibility of having total cessation of hostilities and at the same time bringing back the girls and also normalcy in that part of northern Nigeria.”
Wali was speaking at press conference with German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, following government discussions on the conflict in Nigeria as well as areas of cooperation between the two countries.
In a surprise announcement on Friday, the Federal Government had said it had brokered a ceasefire deal with Boko Haram that would end their five-year uprising and bring home the 219 girls seized from Chibok in April.
However, there have been signs that the deal will prove hollow as violence raged through the weekend and the credentials of the so-called Boko Haram negotiator have been widely questioned.
Wali’s position was not as categorical as the presidency, which said Friday that a deal had been reached both to end hostilities and release the girls.
But it is in keeping with national security that spokesman, Mike Omeri, told newsmen that no agreement had been reached to release the teenagers but that the government was “inching closer and closer”.
Steinmeier said he hoped that the ceasefire would lead to the release of the girls.
He said he and French counterpart, Laurent Fabius will at the weekend visit Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, where Germany is planning to build four solar power plants in the north.
Steinmeier also said the fact that Nigeria was this week declared free of Ebola, the deadly disease raging in parts of West Africa, had been “one of the few rays of light in the fight against Ebola”.