MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - The leader of the Nigerian Islamist rebel group Boko Haram has offered to release more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by his fighters last month in exchange for its prisoners, according to a video posted on YouTube on Monday.
About 100 girls wearing full veils and praying are shown in an undisclosed location in a part of the 17-minute video in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau speaks.
Boko Haram militants, who are fighting for an Islamist state, stormed a secondary school in the northeastern village of Chibok on April 14 and seized 276 girls who were taking exams. Some have since managed to escape, but about 200 remain missing.
A government official said "all options" were being considered to secure the girls' release.
Nigeria has deployed two army divisions to hunt for the girls while several countries, including the United States, Britain, Israel and France, have offered help or sent experts.
Nigerian authorities met with some of the experts on Monday and plan further meetings with the West African country's defense and security agencies, a government statement said.
In a 1.25-minute segment of the YouTube video, scores of girls in black and grey veils sit on the ground, chant and sing. Then Shekau, wearing military fatigues and holding an AK-47, addresses the camera. He appears confident and at one point even laughs.
"All I am saying is that if you want us to release the girls that we have kidnapped, those who have not accepted Islam will be treated as the Prophet (Mohammed) treated infidels and they will stay with us," he said, according to a translation of his words originally spoken in a Nigerian language.
"We will not release them while you detain our brothers," he said, before naming a series of Nigerian cities. It was not clear if he was in the same location as the girls, though the release of the video appeared to signal a willingness on his part to negotiate.
Mike Omeri, a senior Ministry of Information official, told a news conference that the government has seen the latest video.
"The government of Nigeria is considering all options towards freeing the girls and reuniting them with their parents," he said.
The governor of Borno state, where the girls were abducted, said in a statement the video had been distributed to families and local schools in a bid to identify the girls shown.
Security officials said on Monday five militants suspected in two car bombs that killed at least 90 people on April 14 and May 1 in the same suburb of the capital, Abuja, have been arrested. Nigeria has arrested hundreds of suspected Boko Haram militants.
There have also been several jail break attempts. Suspected militants overpowered guards at a prison near the presidential villa in Abuja in March, triggering a gun battle that killed 21 people.
In another incident the same month, insurgents attempting to free captured comrades fought a two-hour battle at Giwa barracks in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.
Human rights groups have said previously that Giwa barracks has been used to illegally detain and torture suspects, something the military denies.
SUMMIT IN FRANCE
The Nigerian government has been criticized for its response to the abductions, but President Goodluck Jonathan said on Sunday international military and intelligence assistance made him optimistic about finding the girls.
A Nigerian military source told Reuters on Monday that two foreign counter-terrorism units were already on the ground.
"They have visited Chibok on Sunday for preliminary investigation with our troops and experts before fully kickstarting the rescue mission," the source said.
Jonathan will attend a summit in Paris on Saturday to discuss security in the region. On Monday, he visited the Republic of Congo for talks on the meeting with his opposite number.
"The objective is to deepen the cooperation and partnership between Nigeria and her neighbors," said Jonathan's spokesman Reuben Abati.
Leaders from Chad, Benin, Cameroon and Niger are also due to attend along with representatives of the European Union, Britain and the United States.
The abductions have touched a chord worldwide and triggered a social media campaign using the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Boko Haram has killed thousands since 2009 and destabilized parts of northeast Nigeria, the country with Africa's largest population and biggest economy.
(Additional reporting by Isaac Abrak, Felix Onuah and Camillus Eboh in Abuja and John Irish in Paris; writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, editing by G Crosse)
What gives Boko Haram its strength
(CNN) -- The Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram has been active as a violent group since 2009 and in recent months has killed Nigerians, both Christian and Muslim, at rates frequently exceeding a hundred people weekly.
It is puzzling how little attention this has received in world media, especially in comparison to, say, the attack of Islamist militants on the mall in Kenya in September, resulting in 67 dead.
That is, until now. The abduction of a reported 276 schoolgirls from Chibok village in the northeastern Borno state has shocked people around the world. A deeper examination of Boko Haram provides a revealing prism of the conflict in Nigeria.
Boko Haram translates as "Western education is sin." Rarely has the name of a terrorist organization revealed so much, but it does in ways beyond the surface interpretations sometimes portrayed in the media.
In Boko Haram, we see a total storm coming together: Globalization has brought Western ideas and imagery, especially around issues of women and sexuality, into the most patriarchal corners of the world. Globalization, through Internet and broader interconnectedness, has facilitated and favored global ideologies, including globalized versions of Islam, some of which are extremist.
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New media have shined a light on poor governance, including that of the corrupt Nigerian government. The impact of Wahhabi Islam, actively promoted by Saudis and Gulf Arabs, has had such an impact that in northern Nigeria, even Arabic street signs and Middle Eastern dress are seen together with Saudi-funded mosques.
But Boko Haram's rise is not only driven by global trends in themselves but by how globalization has melded with the internal dynamics of Nigerian education. The Christian South in Nigeria is much more prosperous than the Muslim North, and that economic gap is growing rapidly. The roots go back to the British colonial period from the late 19th century to independence in 1960. The British ruled the South directly, which was also being rapidly Christianized by missionaries. Missionaries ran many of the schools.
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In the Muslim North, the British practiced "indirect rule," governing through the clerical and traditional elites and allowing local religious institutions to operate autonomously (with some limitations, for example, banning slavery).
The impact of missionary schooling was to bring Western education into Nigeria, and this has had direct bearing on economic development for the regions where such schools predominated -- and this legacy is with us to this day. Access to Western-style education has been key for enabling people to adapt to a modern economy.
In the north, some missionary schools were established, but traditional elites always resisted them for obvious religious reasons and because those schools threatened to generate an alternative elite.
Instead, the schooling that predominates in the north of Nigeria consists of religious schools, or the al-Majiri education system -- often informal, with students congregating under a tree. These students are completely unequipped to work in a changing economy (and overall, Nigeria is economically growing rapidly). Some of these schools have dubious teachers who exploit the usually impoverished students by getting them to beg in the streets for the teachers' own gain.
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In the wake of September 11, there was extensive discussion of Muslim schools and the extent to which some were inculcating extremism, for example madrassas in Pakistan. Some have claimed that Muslim education, properly taught, would provide an inoculation against extremism. But that debate lost sight of a larger issue, whatever the theology of such schools. The graduates of those schools are often adrift in globalized economies without marketable skills and modern education, and more vulnerable to at least tolerating extremism.
Which brings us back to the language of Boko Haram. The leadership has ranted against any form of secular education. It teaches that European colonists introduced modern secular education into Islamic societies in a conspiracy to maintain colonialist hegemony over Muslim societies: The West aims to corrupt pure Islamic morals with liberal norms.
Likewise, the leaders believe that the West wants to replace proper gender roles with sexual permissiveness. Secular subjects like chemistry, physics, engineering, meteorological explanations of rain, the theory of evolution are all denounced as contrary to the Quran.
In our research in the area, and in other surveys, it is evident that students coming out of the religious schools are more likely to sympathize with Boko Haram, significantly even those who are not particularly religious in practice. Equally significantly, religiosity as such does not necessarily bring with it a tendency to back Boko Haram. The issue is the education system, not religious belief.
In the eyes of Boko Haram, the abduction of schoolgirls is a triple strike against what they view as Western depravity: against Western schools, against "the obscenity" of having girls in school at all and against Christianity, to the degree the schoolgirls are Christian.
If northern Nigeria is to have a more stable and prosperous long-term future, it is essential to develop an education system that prepares students for a modern, globalized economy. This is especially the case in the northeast, where Boko Haram is most active.
Nigerians in northeastern Nigeria, who in part may sympathize with Boko Haram's fight against corruption, are however alienated by Boko Haram's bloodlust. And most will support developing an education system that provides the foundation to make a living.
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