Nigeria, EU, U.S to halt extreme ideologies in Africa

• Security summit agree on Chibok girls’ rescue
• ‘No credible evidence linking B’ Haram’s weaponry to IS’
The second regional security summit ended at the weekend in Abuja with a resolve to summarily end insurgency in Africa through aggressive funding of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) and prevention of the spread of fundamentalist ideologies in the Lake Chad Basin area, West Africa and the Sahel states.

The meeting also resolved to utilize the United Nations Interpol strategy to enhance the fight against terrorism, as well as intensify efforts to locate and ensure the release and safe return of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls and all other captives.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that there was no credible intelligence linking Boko Haram’s source of weaponry to the Islamic State (IS), even as the former had pledged allegiance to the latter.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Buhari said this while fielding questions from newsmen at the closing of the regional summit in Abuja. The president said the claim that the Boko Haram group was getting its arms and ammunition from IS remained unsubstantiated.

He said a major source of the group’s sophisticated weaponry was from the various military and police bases attacked at the peak of the insurgency in the affected countries.

On internally displaced persons and refugees, the second regional security summit also resolved to encourage Nigeria and affected countries to appoint national coordinators for the North-East, to serve as focal points for humanitarian response and reconstruction of the region and affected areas, develop an action plan for urgent humanitarian response in coordinating recovery and resettlement of IDPs and refugees through the support of government and other stakeholders.

The security summit was a follow-up to the first-ever regional security summit on Nigeria which held in Paris, France on May 17, 2014 as a result of the escalation of terrorist activities by the Boko Haram group which went beyond the borders of Nigeria into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Governments of the sub-region, with the active support of the French government, had convened the first summit aimed at strengthening cooperation between member states of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) and Benin Republic, and to ensure the safe release of the abducted Chibok school girls and combat the Boko Haram terrorist activities in the Lake Chad Basin area and protect its victims.

Since the first summit, member states of the Lake Chad Basin and Benin Republic with the active support of development partners, among whom are France, United Kingdom, United States of America, China and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have counted their achievements to include the recovery of territories formerly occupied by terrorists in Nigeria, re-activation of the MNJTF with 8,500 officers and men drawn from member states to strengthen the security of their border regions.

Heads of Governments of members of the Lake Chad Basin — Chad, Niger and Cameroon — stormed Nigeria at the weekend for the summit. Others were presidents of France, Francois Hollande, Gabon, Senegal, Togo, Benin Republic, Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea, United State’s Deputy Secretary of State and representatives of the Chinese government and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The military/security group focused on the battlefield successes and the areas in need of improvement.