Negotiating with Boko Haram is likely to be a grave mistake. Boko Haram is a little more than a bloodthirsty group of disruptionists. Negotiating on what terms? To release their members from prison? To make Nigeria a Sharia state? To avoid legal prosecution for their murderous lives? I think its a grave mistake for the Nigerian President to call for negotiation with them. That suggests capitulation and selling the nation to hoodlums. Nothing about Boko Haram suggests they have any ideology or methodology that requires any kind of respect, talk less being treated like a sovereign state that one state can negotiate with as another state. I consider initiatives of negotiating with such murderous characters tragic at best. Are we not thus hearing the drum beats of Abukakar Atiku and other Northern politicians who swore to upend the polity, to render violence and make the nation ungovernable, if a Northern politicians was not made President? As far as I can see, negotiating with Boko Haram is selling the sovereignty of Nigeria and negotiating in another country further intensifies that. The threat of imperialist Islam has been growing in Northern Nigeria for decades, and in alliance with political tensions, has created Boko Haram and no negotiation that does not sell off Nigerian sovereignty will satisfy this blend of religious imperialism and political opportunism. The best such negotiations can do is erode or destroy the legitimacy of the elected government.