Red Cross personnel on Wednesday search for remains at the site of one of Tuesday's car bomb that killed at least 118 people in Jos, Nigeria.

Nigerian special forces closing in on abducted schoolgirls, military claims

ABUJA, NIGERIA—As the Nigerian military reportedly zeroed in on the country’s missing schoolgirls, a man who previously negotiated with Boko Haram said the government is quietly considering talks with the group to ensure the girls’ release.

Nigerian special forces spotted the abducted schoolgirls and narrowed their search to three Boko Haram camps in the country’s northeast hinterlands, according to a report in the Premium Times citing unnamed military commanders.

Government and military officials did not respond to repeated calls from the Star Wednesday evening.

Troops first located the girls on April 26 and have been tracking them for weeks, a source told the news outlet.

The report says the militants split the girls into groups and have held them at camps near Lake Chad — well north of the sprawling Sambisa Forest where many believed the girls are. The strategic location provides the extremist sect with multiple escape routes through Nigeria’s porous borders, which Boko Haram has historically exploited to dip in and out of neighbouring countries.

“(The) government is working hard to free the girls in less than one week, possibly before the end of this week,” a source told the Premium Times.

The tracking of the girls was done without assistance from several international countries, including Canada and the United States, who sent to Nigeria surveillance equipment and experts to operate it, the Premium Times report said.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said 80 soldiers were being deployed to Chad to further help the mission to locate the girls, a significant expansion of the just over two dozen experts and officials currently assigned in the country’s capital.

“The force will stay in Chad until its support in resolving the kidnapping situation is no longer needed,” Obama said in a letter to Congress.

The unconfirmed discovery would be a significant coup for a Nigerian military that has faced heavy criticism over its inability and unwillingness to combat the well-armed militants in its pursuit of the missing girls.

Despite publicly rejecting Boko Haram’s proposal to exchange the group’s prisoners for the girls, the government is now working back channels in an attempt to start a dialogue with the insurgents, said a prominent Nigerian human rights activist who previously negotiated with the group.

“The government now wants to present an outward appearance of defiance against terror while in the background they are seeking ways — I know they are making consultations here and there — for how they can talk to the group to release these girls,” Shehu Sani told the Star Wednesday.

The government must be willing to release imprisoned Boko Haram members, likely wives and relatives of its militants, if it wants the girls released safely, he said.

Sani warned that trying to rescue the girls through sheer military might will likely end in tragedy. In 2012, Boko Haram executed two foreign hostages during a botched rescue attempt by special forces.

“The girls are not only hostages, but they exist as human shields,” he said. “Right now, the girls are with the insurgents in the crosshairs and you cannot shoot.”

Instead, he suggested the government tap a group of Muslim clerics from the north to facilitate the negotiations, saying the militants likely won’t talk to anyone else. Last week, Sani sent a letter to Nigeria’s Sultan of Sokoto — the spiritual leader of the country’s 88 million Muslims — pleading with him to intervene in the girls’ captivity.

“The group has always justified their actions based on Islamic teachings, even if they’ve chosen to distort it,” Sani said.

Boko Haram formed in the northeast state of Borno, which has been the setting of many of its attacks in recent years. The group has destroyed churches, mosques, schools and government buildings all in the purported quest to turn Nigeria into a strict Islamic state.

Sani helped negotiate a potential ceasefire with the group in 2011, but the deal fell apart after the government refused to the conditions of freeing imprisoned Boko Haram members, he said. A second round of negotiations collapsed after details of the talks were leaked to the press, he said.

In Chibok, the town where the girls were kidnapped, the news of the military’s supposed discovery was met with guarded optimism and suspicion.

“If this is true, it is very big news and we must celebrate it,” said one of the town’s pastors, who asked that his name not be used for security reasons.

However, Galang Pogu, whose 14-year-old daughter Riftaku was kidnapped, is convinced it’s another lie from a military trying to save face in its fruitless fight against Boko Haram. In the days following the kidnapping, the military announced it had rescued all but eight girls, but retracted the statement after parents and the principal said it was untrue.

“Whatever they say about the Nigerian army, we don’t believe that,” Pogu told the Star.

Further damaging the military’s credibility among residents like Pogu is its seeming inability to protect villages from new assaults, despite Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan stating there are more than 20,000 soldiers deployed in the area.

Pogu said the people of Chibok caught wind late Tuesday night that a horde of militants on motorbikes had returned to the area. His family fled their home and joined others in a nearby cave, where they slept the night.

They soon learned the insurgents had attacked the nearby town of Alagarno, killing at least 17 and burning much of the village.

“We told the army, they refused to go. How can we believe they can do something for us?” Pogu said.

On Monday, militants slaughtered another 10 people in the town of Shawa, roughly 25 kilometres from the Chibok school.

Boko Haram’s attacks have become increasingly relentless in recent weeks and they are expanding deeper south, where many of the country’s Christians live.

In the central city of Jos, at least 118 were killed Tuesday in twin bomb attacks at a teeming market and bus terminal.