More details emerge on Dapchi girls release

The negotiation processes that led to the release of the Dapchi school girls have opened a “wider window” of opportunity that would lead to the end of the 10-year protracted Boko Haram crisis, sources in the centre of the talks told Daily Trust.

“Different conflicts have different ways of ending. The Boko Haram crisis had suffered deficit of mediation capacity,” one of the sources said last night. 

“In the last four, five years, you could say absolutely that there was no avenue to ending the crisis; perhaps the country itself was not prepared to deal with it. But once the process was in place, it worked, with a lot of frustrations and a lot of setbacks,” the source said.

He said: “One of these was to gain the confidence of the Nigerian state that some elements of this conflict can be negotiated.  

“For example, the kidnap of the Chibok girls and other people; another one is that it can succeed without necessarily invoking huge hostility from interests that see it as compromise or a defeat; and number three was political will.

Another source said those who actively participated in the release of the Chibok girls and the oil explorers from the University of Maiduguri as well as the women that were abducted while conveying the corpse of a police woman to her village in Borno state for burial were the same people that played key role in the release of the Dapchi girls.

The girls are expected to meet the president today.

How it may work

Daily Trust gathered that the Buhari administration is trying to explore the already established contacts with the Boko Haram to put an end to the crisis.

“For now, the Al-Barnawy faction is more amenable to the truce; it is still a long way to go but if all things go well, they would drop their arms. It is still tricky with the Abubakar Shekau faction as far as ending the crisis is concerned but hope is not lost,” a source said.

“Remember, it is the Shekau faction that released the Chibok girls and the women escorting the corpse of the police woman and   on the other hand, it was the Al-Barnawy faction that released the Unimaid staff and the Dapchi girls, so the approach is nearly the same,” he said.

He said government was planning to achieve this by calling for a ceasefire especially by the Al-Barnawy faction.

He said in the interim, a lot would need to be done to put a stop to attacks on soft targets, bombings and the use of young girls for suicide mission.

On the other hand, Nigerian security forces would also reduce offensives through aerial reconnaissance.

“It is a difficult situation but we would get there; you have seen how it worked out when the Dapchi girls were brought back and how the military and other security agents acted. 

“There is nowhere in the world that terrorism was ended at the battle front; no matter how, you must sit on the table and Nigeria cannot be an exception; the Boko Haram debacle should not be allowed to be a war of attrition. Remember. The Nigerian Civil War lasted for three years but here we are, fighting endlessly for nearly ten years,” he added.

No ransom paid

No ransom was paid to the Mus’ab Al-Barnawy faction to secure the release of the 104 Dapchi girls on Wednesday, multiple sources close to the negotiations confirmed to Daily Trust yesterday.

The sources, however, said the process of the release was nearly frustrated by powerful forces from within the government, the opposition and certain elements outside the country, all in an effort to make the Dapchi girls’ abduction a campaign issue in the coming months.

The source said the Al-Barnawy faction was fully aware that they could not continue to hold the girls as human shield because President Muhammadu Buhari had given two options - negotiation within certain time frame or in the alternative, the abductors and the abductees would all be bombed out.

“The international committee is helping the government with intelligence report; the Al-Barnawy Boko Haram knows this very well; they know they are being monitored and to greater extent they know there is limit to indiscretion,” one of the sources said.

Another source said though Al-Barnawy opted for the negotiation but the process was nearly aborted.

“The unfortunate thing is that in the last few weeks, there was an attempt to kill this process; some people were maligning the process, saying billions of naira was being siphoned, it was clearly an attempt to kill the process.

“I suspect that perhaps some people were unhappy about the success; some people were thinking that if they kill it they would open their own channel for mediation; I think Nigeria is very fortunate because they didn’t succeed,” he said.

He said approach mattered in tackling complicated issues.

“I understand that it is very difficult for Nigerians to believe that you can actually free 104 girls without giving the insurgents money or exchanging these girls with other things. But the reality is this is what happened.

“What the mediation process did was to appeal to their sense of propriety if there is such a word that you can apply to it. And it was a very intense pressure that was brought to bear on the righteousness of those particular insurgents in terms of justifying their action by kidnapping small girls from a secondary school. The process appealed to the sense of their piety, their indignation and their commitment to their ideology and it worked pretty much,” he said.

He said another element that led to the release of the girls was that there was total involvement of everybody that mattered from the Nigerian side.  “You had the military, the SSS and there was excellent intelligence on what needed to be done and you have complete unanimity on how to free the girls without compromising national security or the interest of the Nigerian state; and also the process itself should not be damaged more than it can be salvaged. But as I said, it is difficult for Nigerians to believe but this is exactly what happened- no money was exchanged at all in the case of the Dapchi girls,” he added.

Another source close to the negotiation, said, “The (Nigerian) government narrative of unconditional release is 100 per cent correct; the narrative and headlines around this latest release are just depressing,” he said.

“There are many reasons why ISWAP (Islamic State) agreed to do what they did and admittedly, it is quite unprecedented, but I guarantee you it is true,” he said.

On the issue of going to negotiation table with the Boko Haram, another source said, “The Dapchi girls instance is one of the success stories behind this insistence that you cannot just limit the process to an unending circle of abducting girls and persons run after them and get the hostages,” he said.

He added that there are still Chibok girls with the insurgents and talks were ongoing to bring them back.

“This process is rooted on confidence; it is painstaking and sometimes frustrating process. Just when you think you won’t get results you get them. So long as the process continues to enjoy the confidence of the Nigerian state, we are hoping that window will become a door and we would convince the insurgents that it is better to talk than to continue fighting,” he said.