ABUJA: The Nigerian government has declined to release Boko Haram militants for the release of dozens of kidnapped schoolgirls.
In a statement, the Nigerian Interior Minister Abba Moro said that Boko Haram has in no moral position to make the offer.
The statement came after the Nigerian Islamist rebel group expressed its willingness to release the abducted school girls in exchange for prisoners.
“We will never release them until after you release our… members,” the leader of Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau said in a video released on Monday and obtained by some media outlets.
The group militants, who are fighting for an Islamist state, abducted more than 200 girls from their school on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok and threatened to sell them as slaves in the market.
