Boko Haram denies talks with FG, threatens media that publish reports it deems hostile

It would be recalled that some local and foreign news organisations have reported that talks are going on between the government and the murderous Islamic sect, citing unnamed sources.

Information minister Labaran Maku declined comment on Wednesday on the talks, citing government instructions not to discuss the issue. Since launching an insurgency against the government in 2009, Boko Haram has killed hundreds of people in near daily gun and bomb attacks. “We are telling the government to understand that if it is not ready to embrace sharia (Islamic law) and the Koran as the guiding book from which the laws of the land derive, there shall be no peace,” the sect’s spokesman Abu Qaqa said in a written statement in Maiduguri.

Qaqa also threatened media houses, recalling the sect’s dual bomb attack on local newspaper ThisDay in the capital Abuja and northern city of Kaduna in April that killed five people. “They should understand that for us there is no difference between those fighting with arms and with the pen,” he said.

The closest the sect have come to talks with the government was in March, when a former ally of Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf, who was killed in police custody in 2009, called Datti Ahmed attempted to establish links. The talks fell apart within days.

“Ever since that attempt at dialogue was aborted there has not been any move for dialogue that we agreed till date,” Abu Qaqa said in Thursday’s statement. The group has been weakened by recent arrests and the deaths of senior figures, analysts say, and has not managed to launch a massively deadly coordinated attack since the one that killed 186 people in Kano in January, though it remains a lethal force. The sect claimed responsibility for violence in Jos, that killed 63 people last month, although security forces blamed local ethnic rivalries.

Qaqa rejected a report in a US newspaper that government officials had met a Boko Haram commander called Abu Mohammed in Saudi Arabia, denying the man even existed. “We’ve heard about those who go about using our names in order to collect huge sums of money from the government. We are warning you,” he said.