Metro Nigerian Lawyer, Zannah Mustapha Reveals How He Negotiated Chibok Girls' Release

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Nigerian Federal Government recently secured, through a swap deal, the release of 82 of the abducted school girls kidnapped in Chibok, a community in Borno state by Boko Haram.

57-year-old Lawyer from Borno state, Zannah Mustapha brokered the deal to the release the girls.

A special profile-report of Mustapha by BBC says that when he arrived for the handover of the-now-freed 82 Chibok girls from Boko Haram, after three years in captivity, a militant read out the girls' names from a list.

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One by one, the abducted schoolgirls, now women, lined up along the outskirts of a forest near Kumshe town, on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. Each of them was covered from head to ankle in a dark-coloured hijab.

Mustapha said: "I went ahead of the Red Cross. They [the militants] brought the girls to me,".

For the past 3 years, Mustapha been mediating between the government and militants for the release of the over 200 Chibok girls and for an end to the Boko Haram insurgency. His role as a mediator dates back to his founding the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation School in 2007, to provide free Islamic-based education to orphans and the poor.

READ MORE on BBC
 
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