Nigeria Faces Questions Over a Reported Secret Ceasefire With Boko Haram

Nigeria's government has quietly observed a ceasefire with Boko Haram since June, according to people with contacts inside the armed group, in an arrangement reportedly linked to the release of 360 villagers abducted in Borno State earlier this year. The government has denied paying a ransom to secure their freedom.

Three people with links to Boko Haram members, including senior figures, separately described the truce, which was first reported on 7 September. They said it had been agreed for three months and was likely to be extended by a further 40 days. Two of them said attacks had stopped in the communities around Ngoshe, the village from which the captives were taken.

The kidnapping behind the talks

The villagers were seized in March during a Boko Haram assault on an army base near Ngoshe, which lies in the foothills of the Mandara Mountains close to Nigeria's border with Cameroon. The area has been attacked repeatedly over the course of the insurgency.

Negotiations for their release reportedly involved a payment of five billion naira, roughly $3.7 million. That allegation has become a flashpoint in Nigeria, where paying armed groups is politically toxic and is widely seen as financing further abductions. The government maintains that no ransom was paid.

A gap between rhetoric and practice

In public, President Bola Tinubu's government has emphasised force. In July it announced plans to recruit 30,000 new soldiers and create four new army divisions to take on armed groups. A negotiated pause with Boko Haram sits awkwardly alongside that message, which may help explain why it was never announced.

The reported truce does not extend to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the faction that broke away from Boko Haram in 2016 and has since become a formidable force in parts of the north-east. Fighting between the two rival groups has continued throughout the period of the reported ceasefire.

Nigerian authorities have negotiated with Boko Haram before. Indirect talks helped secure the release of some of the schoolgirls abducted from Chibok in 2014, although those deals were also dogged by questions about what was given in return.

Why it matters

For civilians, even a temporary halt to attacks around Ngoshe allows farming, travel and trade to resume in areas that have lived under constant threat.
For transparency, the arrangement raises questions about who authorised the talks and what was offered, since none of it was disclosed publicly.
For the battlefield, a pause could give Boko Haram room to regroup while ISWAP remains active, complicating military planning.
For hostage policy, any confirmation that money changed hands would strengthen the incentive for kidnapping as a business model.

Conflict researcher Malik Samuel cautioned against reading too much into the arrangement, describing it as possibly "a temporary, tactical ceasefire that benefits both sides" without altering the trajectory of the war.

Outlook

If the reported extension goes ahead, the truce would run into the autumn, and the key test will be whether attacks around Ngoshe resume when it lapses. A pattern of short, renewable pauses tied to hostage releases would suggest a local bargain rather than the beginning of a wider peace process.

The government is also likely to face continued pressure to explain how the 360 villagers were freed. The insurgency, which began in 2009, has outlasted repeated military offensives and several attempts at dialogue. Without a broader political strategy for the north-east, even a successful local ceasefire risks becoming one more interlude in a conflict that has already displaced millions of people.

Image: Ifeatu Nnaobi via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0