LAGOS: The Nigerian Islamist rebel group Boko Haram on Monday expressed its willingness to release the abducted school girls in exchange for prisoners.
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.
“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 video shows girls wearing hijab and reciting the Holy Quran.
The Nigerian government has been under intense pressure by many people around the globe, especially the girls’ families to secure their release.
The Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement on Friday that he believed the girls remained in the country and had not been transferred into neighboring Cameroon.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian army has dispatched two divisions to find schoolgirls kidnapped last month. To cooperate with other security agencies, the divisions are positioned in the border regions close to Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
