Lai Mohammed, the minister
of information and culture, has said that the federal government did not pay
€2m ransom to secure the release of 82 Chibok girls.
A
BBC report had recently quoted a source as saying that €2m was paid to the Boko
Haram insurgent group during the course of negotiation.
“Paying
a ransom as well as swapping prisoners was a sticking point that almost
unravelled the whole deal,” said the source. “It should have happened sooner,
but the president was hesitating about freeing the five – and especially about
the money.”
But
Mohammed told PUNCH on Saturday that only five Boko Haram
commanders were exchanged for the Chibok girls.
His
denial came on a day when 82 Chibok girls were reunited with their parents and 21 of their colleagues who
were freed in October 2016.
The
minister said: “I emphatically deny on behalf of the Federal Government that
any form of ransom was paid in exchange for the release of the 82 Chibok girls.
“Apart
from the five Boko Haram commanders, the exchange of which we had already made
public, no other concession was made. Any other thing to the contrary is
absolutely false.”
Out
of the 276 girls abducted in April 2014 from their school in Chibok, Borno
state, 113 girls are yet to be released.
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