Lai Mohammed - ''FG in talks with Boko Haram for possible ceasefire''

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, yesterday disclosed that the Federal government is in talks with members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect for a possible ceasefire.

Lai Mohammed at a press conference in Lagos yesterday where he gave an update on the Dapchi abduction, said the government had to declare a one-week ceasefire to enable the Dapchi girls to be returned safely by Boko Haram members last Wednesday. 

Unknown to many, we have been in wider cessation-of-hostility talks with the insurgents for some time now.  The talks helped to secure the release of the police officers’ wives and the University of Maiduguri lecturers recently. And the talks did not stop thereafter. Therefore, we were able to leverage on the wider talks when the Dapchi girls were abducted. 

As I said earlier, the insurgents decided to return the girls to where they picked them from as a goodwill gesture.  All they demanded was a ceasefire that will grant them a safe corridor to drop the girls. This is not new.  Even in larger war situations, safe corridors are usually created for humanitarian and other purposes.

Consequently, a week-long ceasefire was declared, starting from Monday, March 19. That is why the insurgents were able to drop the girls. This counters the conspiracy theories being propounded in some quarters concerning why it was so easy for the insurgents to drop off the girls without being attacked by the military’’.