Jonathan’s Secret Negotiator: Chibok Girls Very Ill

Some of the 219 schoolgirls still in the custody of Boko Haram insurgents have taken ill, according to a prominent Australian cleric, Dr. Stephen Davis. Davis, a hostage negotiator, said the online publication of a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, was hired by President Goodluck Jonathan to broker the release of the girls. According to the newspaper, the clergyman who was once the Canon Emeritus at the Coventry Cathedral in London and a friend of The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, has been in Nigeria working secretly on the release of the girls for almost a month now. It added that he was asked by the President to come to Nigeria after previously brokering a truce between the Federal Government and Niger Delta militants in 2004. Along with Welby, he was frequently blindfolded and held at gunpoint during his peace work in the Niger Delta. In the email, Davis revealed he had had ‘‘ongoing contacts’’ with the groups involved in the kidnapping in the North-East for seven years.