Boko Haram demands $50m for Chibok girls

April 10, 2016

THE Islamic sect, Boko Haram, has demanded for $50 million (about N16 billion) ransom from the Fedewral Government so as to release the over 200 schoolgirls abducted in Chibok, Borno State, exactly two years after the kidnap.
A dollar currently exchanges for N320 at the parallel market, making the total ransom demand to be N16 billion.
According to the Telegraph of the United Kingdom, the group is said to have made the demand through a secret contact it made with the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who had repeatedly said he was ready to negotiate with the freedom of the girls who were kidnapped in April 2014.
The group’s leader, Abubakr Shekau, had previously demanded the release of his jailed comrades in exchange for the girls.
However, a deal along those lines - brokered by the Red Cross - fell through after Nigerian prison officials said that commanders on a list given to them by Boko Haram were not in their custody.
Details of the new ransom request emerged ahead of the second anniversary of the girls kidnapping on the night of April 14, 2014, when they were abducted by Boko Haram gunmen posing as soldiers.
Despite their case receiving global attention because of the celebrity-backed #bringbackourgirls campaign on social media, diplomats and sources close to the negotiations say they are no closer to knowing the girls’ whereabouts.
The Nigerian military has made significant gains against Boko Haram in the last 18 months, raiding a number of the sect’s camps in Nigeria’s vast Sambisa forest, and freeing at least 1,000 women and children taken in other mass abductions.
Yet in none of the raids have rescued prisoners or captured fighters been able to give any convincing accounts of meeting or seeing any of the Chibok girls.
That indicates they are still being kept well away from other captives, and that their kidnappers see them as having huge symbolic value as hostages - thanks partly the publicity given to them by the social media campaign.
“I think they are probably in clusters rather than all in one place, but probably not far from each other,” said Shehu Sani, a senator and civil rights activist involved in peace attempts with Boko Haram, adding: “Boko Haram knows they are a prized catch.”
One source close to Boko Haram said that around three months ago, the group sent a message saying it would exchange the girls for a ransom of N16 billion, the equivalent of around $50 million.
“The ransom demand has split the government,” said the source: “Some think it would be worth it just to resolve the Chibok situation, but others say it will simply allow Boko Haram to hire yet more insurgent recruits.”
The same source also said that a month after the ransom demand, Boko Haram had secretly passed the government a new video tape showing 15 of the kidnapped girls.
“The girls are asked what their Christian names are and what their new Muslim names are,” he said, referring to the “conversion” that Boko Haram forces Christian prisoners to undergo.
In another development, the Department of Security Service (DSS) has arrested  Mohammed Usman, widely known as Khalid Al-Barnawi, who has been linked with terrorist attacks in Nigeria
 Khalid Al-Barnawi was apprehended on April 1 in Lokoja, Kogi State, while hiding under a false cover and will soon be charged to court after investigation is completed. The arrest has been desrcibed by DSS as a major milestone in its counter-terrorism fight.
“This arrest has strengthened the Service’s resolve that no matter how long and far perpetrators of crime and their sponsors may run, the Service, in collaboration with other sister security agencies, will bring them to justice,” it stated.
Khalid Al-Barnawi was involved in many terrorist attacks in the country, including places like Bauchi, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Sokoto and FCT-Abuja, resulting in the killing and maiming of innocent citizens.
Al-Barnawi is also responsible for the bombing of the United Nations building in Abuja on August 26, 2011; the kidnapping of two European engineers in Kebbi State in May, 2011, and their subsequent murder in Sokoto State; the kidnap of a German engineer, Edgar Raupach in January, 2012, the kidnap and murder of seven expatriate staff of Setraco Construction Company at Jama’are, in Bauchi State in February, 2013 and the attack on Nigerian troops at Okene in Kogi State, while on transit to Abuja for an official assignment.
Al-Barnawi was a founding member of Boko Haram and later the Amir of the break-away faction, Jama’at Ansarul Muslimim Fi Biladi Sudan (JAMBS) and has been coordinating terrorist activities in Nigeria, while talent-spotting and recruiting vulnerable young and able Nigerians for terrorist training by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in North African States and the Middle-East.