NIGERIA-VIOLENCE/TALKS ARRIVALS-FILE Nigeria's Buhari meets peers to hammer out Boko Haram force

Record ID: 150881

  • Title: NIGERIA-VIOLENCE/TALKS ARRIVALS-FILE Nigeria's Buhari meets peers to hammer out Boko Haram force
  • Date: 11th June 2015
  • Summary: ABUJA, NIGERIA (JUNE 11, 2015) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** PLANE TAXIING ON TARMAC AT ABUJA AIRPORT PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA, MUHAMMADU BUHARI GREETS THE PRESIDENT OF NIGER REPUBLIC, MAHAMADOU ISSOUFOU AS HE STEPS OFF PLANE OFFICIALS WALKING DOWN STEPS OF CHADIAN PLANE PRESIDENT OF CHAD, IDRISS DEBY WALKING AND GREETING PEOPLE ON THE RED CARPET BUHARI W
  • Embargoed: 26th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA50QLRNEF8QA6D2YR5M78VTVDH
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    New Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari met his regional counterparts in Abuja on Thursday (June 11) to set up a joint military force against Boko Haram, the latest sign of his intent to crush the Islamist militant group early in his tenure.
    The 72-year-old former military ruler, who was inaugurated just two weeks ago, welcomed the leaders of neighbouring Chad, Niger and Benin for the impromptu one-day summit at Abuja airport. Cameroon sent its defence minister.
    Entering the meeting, Buhari told reporters Abuja had pledged $100 million to setting up the force, which will be based in the Chad capital Ndjamena but headed by a Nigerian.
    However, in a sign of potential diplomatic tensions, he criticised joint proposals discussed among the different countries that would have force commanders rotating every six months.
    A rotation would hamper "the military capacity to sustain the push against the insurgents, who also have the uncanny ability to adapt and rejig their operational strategies," he said.
    Boko Haram has killed thousands and displaced 1.5 million people during a six-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic state in Nigeria's impoverished northeast.
    Until the launch this year of offensives by Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria, the group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, occupied an area the size of Belgium.
    Squashing the insurgency was one of Buhari's main campaign promises, in contrast to his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, who was accused of dithering and incompetence, particularly after the kidnapping of more than 200 girls from a school in the town of Chibok in April last year.
    In his two weeks since assuming office, Buhari has focused on little else, travelling to Niger and Chad and shifting the military command centre from Abuja to Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Borno state and birthplace of the insurgency.
    In his absence, cracks have started to emerge in his All Progressives Congress (APC), a loose alliance of powerful Nigerians with little binding them together apart from a shared desire to eject Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP) from power.
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