Boko Haram, who kidnapped more than 200 Secondary School girls are seeking a prisoner swap for jailed comrades, The Daily Telegraph has been told. Shehu Sani, who has previously brokered face-to-face peace talks with Boko Haram, said he believed that the video in which its leader threatened to sell the girls as “slaves” was proof that it planned to use them as bargaining chips rather than kill them. The video released earlier this week showed Abubakar Shekau gloating that he would sell the captives “in the market” to anyone wishing to take them as wives. But while the broadcast appalled the captives’ families and provoked worldwide outrage, Mr Sani saw it as a veiled attempt to reach out for a trade with the Nigerian government. “If you look at the fact that these girls have already been in captivity for some three weeks, then it is possible to detect a conciliatory tone in this statement from Shekau – he is not saying he is going to kill the girls,” Mr Sani said. “The group is most likely to want to attach some kind of conditions to the girls being released, such as the freeing of some of their own prisoners.” Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, pledged the safe return of the girls, who were taken more than three weeks ago from their boarding school in the lawless Borno region in the north of the country. It is thought that some of them have already died, and there are fears that scores of others have been trafficked into Cameroon!
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