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Nigeria’s government says it is prepared to negotiate with Islamist extremists group Boko Haram to secure the release of around 200 schoolgirls kidnapped last year, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday.

Buhari said that his government is ready to negotiate with the militia group, but without any preconditions.

“We are prepared to negotiate with them without any preconditions,” Buhari told journalists in a televised interview.

He however said that there was no firm intelligence on the whereabouts of the girls, or whether they are still alive.

Boko Haram kidnapped the girls from their dormitories in the northeastern town of Chibok in April 2014.