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Nigeria panel seeks talks with Boko Haram
President Goodluck Jonathan tasks committee to carry out negotiations with Islamist group and report back by mid-August.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, has set up a committee to negotiate with a radical Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for a string of almost daily shootings and bomb attacks in northeastern Nigeria, the government has announced.
The committee was set up on Saturday after a meeting between Jonathan and local leaders in Borno state, which concluded that the military’s strategy against Boko Haram, the group in question, has done more harm than good.
The committee will hold talks with Boko Haram and report back to the federal government on, or before, August 16, a statement from the office of the federal government’s secretary said.
Jonathan, who began his first full term in office in late May this year, has previously supported dialogue with the group, but Boko Haram has said that it will only come to table if all of its demands are met.
Among those demands is the resignation of the Borno state government.
Security forces criticised
Boko Haram has carried out attacks in around Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, with strikes mainly targeting police posts, churches and outdoor drinking areas such as beer gardens.
Rights groups say that more than 250 people have been killed by the group, whose name means “western education is sinful”, since July 2010.
Jonathan has named the seven members of the panel, which includes the ministers of defence, labour and the federal capital territory of Abuja, the statement said.
It said that the panel would act “as a liaison between the federal government, and Boko Haram and to initiate negotiations with the sect”.
The panel will work with the national security adviser to ensure that the country’s security forces were acting with “professionalism”, the statement said.
