Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said
on Thursday that he could reach out to the more than 200 schoolgirls
abducted by Boko Haram insurgents, but regretted that the Federal
Government had yet to give him the green light to act.
Obasanjo, in an interview on the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation monitored in Kaduna, however, did not say if he had made formal request to the government to intervene.
“I have ways of reaching them(Boko Haram) but I have not been given the go ahead,” he added.
The former President however expressed
fear that some of the schoolgirls may never return home but added that
the insurgents might free those found to be pregnant or have given
birth.
“I believe that some of them will never
return. We will still be hearing about them many years from now, some
will give birth to children of the Boko Haram members, but if they
cannot take care of them in the forest, they may release them.”
Obasanjo had previously tried to
negotiate with the insurgents, especially in September 2011 after
members of the sect bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja.
He flew to Maiduguri, Borno State
where he met with relatives of the Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf,
who the police had illegally killed in their custody in 2009.
Obasanjo spoke on the heels of a Ministerial Meeting on Security in Northern Nigeria holding in London.
