More international pressure is being ramped up on Boko Haram, as Central African leaders joined President Goodluck Jonathan to explore ways to bring the menace of the Islamic terrorist group to an end.
President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou N’Guesso and his Equatorial Guinea counterpart, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, were in Abuja, on Monday, to confer with President Jonathan on how to proceed with the war against the insurgents.
The meeting took place at the Presidential wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.
The leaders were planning to put up security architecture to tame the Boko Haram terrorists through the utilisation of political, military and diplomatic actions.
In a remark to State House correspondents after the meeting, President N’Guesso said their visit to Abuja was in pursuance of the African Union (AU) recent resolution to tackle the insurgents, who are active in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad.
He said they also deliberated on the ongoing efforts to curtail Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, which along with terrorism, he said, were challenges confronting the continent.
“As we know, Africa is confronting two challenges. Significantly, Ebola is affecting basically countries in West Africa. These countries are Liberia, Guinea and Serra Leone.
“Also, the operations of the terrorists generally affecting countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa and in northern Africa, particularly Boko Haram, which has been affecting Nigeria, Chad and Cameroun,” he said.
He recalled that at the last meeting of the AU, the heads of state took important decisions principally to check the Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.
N’Guesso noted that following the meeting, the Economic Community of Central African Countries also met in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to address the Boko Haram challenge in Africa and to see the possibility of ameliorating the grave situation.
According to him, it was on that platform that the two presidents met with President Jonathan in Abuja.
“We are here because we have been mandated by the heads of state of the Central African community to bring here, and show our solidarity to the people of Nigeria and the government of Nigeria, and to our brother and friend, President Jonathan.
“And after here, we are on a mission to Accra, Ghana, to meet with President John Mahama, who is the chairman of ECOWAS.
“We will study the situation together and put in place a security architecture to see how we can coordinate all our actions to put out and eradicate Boko Haram, which has been spreading in a very grave manner.
“We look forward to peace, security and development in Africa. We have no doubt that we have arrived at a mechanism for coordinating all our actions for effectiveness,” he said.
N’Guesso thanked President Jonathan for “the peace we have seen here and for his listening, and the exchange we have had,” adding that “we want to congratulate the government and the people of Nigeria and all the security forces for the recent success that they recorded in overcoming attacks by Boko Haram.”
The Congolese president hoped that the framework that the leaders were going to put in place “will give us a better and more effective result against Boko Haram.”
In a document later released after the meeting, the leaders condemned insurgency, its destructive activities such as indiscriminate killing of peoples and the wanton destruction of properties, the abduction of innocent women and children, especially young schoolgirls, who had been turned to sex slaves.
They underscored the imperative of a multi-prolonged approach to fighting the terrorist group and, in particular, commended the initiative of the member states of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) to for a multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) to combat the Boko Haram insurgents.
President Jonathan promised to contact the ECOWAS chairman on the proposal while the visiting presidents undertook to relay the positive outcome of the meeting to the other heads of states and government of the ECCAS.
Source: TRIBUNE
