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One-time Boko Haram negotiator, Comrade Shehu Sani, has warned that it could be dangerous to try to use force to free the over 200 teenage girls the group abducted from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, in the night of April 14.

“A military action towards rescuing them is most likely to turn very tragic,” Sani said.

The Kaduna-based rights activist recommended negotiation as a solution and went ahead to make an insightful advice on the composition of government’s negotiating team. He told Britain’s Telegraph: “My personal belief is that if we can get clerics from northern Nigeria and members of the insurgent group who have already been imprisoned together in dialogue, then some channels for negotiation could be opened. Having military chiefs running everything is not going to help.”

Comrade Sani in 2011 brokered peace talks with the group in the city of Maiduguri in northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram first started up around a decade ago.

The talks, attended by the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, involved face-to-face dialogue with senior militants in the city. The militants insisted that the parties met in the ruins of their former mosque, which had been demolished in an operation by the Nigerian military.

However, the talks failed to win the backing of the Nigerian government, which favoured a “military” solution to the crisis, according to Sani.

Less than a week after Sani last Thursday suggested that Boko Haram might be interested in exchanging the abducted girls for its imprisoned members, the group proved him right today by making the request in a video. The Nigerian Government, which has already sought the help of the international community to rescue the girls, has, however, rejected the condition.

•Photo shows Boko Haram’s former negotiator, Comrade Shehu Sani.

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