Nigeria – Paris summit of West African and world leaders adopt strategy for Boko Haram

Global strategy against Boko Haram adopted at Paris security summit

French President Francois Hollande (C) poses for a familly photo with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, African leaders and EU representatives, May 17, 2014.
 

African and Western leaders agreed on Saturday to combine their intelligence information and defence mechanisms in a bid to reduce the security risk posed by Boko Haram. French President, François Hollande, called the islamist group a ‘global’ threat that warrants a ‘global’ response.’

It accomplished what it set out to do. Saturday’s security summit saw leaders from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin agree to share their technical know-how with Western allies France, the U.S and Britain to defeat Boko Haram.

The plan adopted incorporates the following:

• Co-ordinated, regional strategy to boost intelligence-sharing
• Creation of surveillance and border-controls
• Centralizing technical means and capability
• Military presence around Lake Chad
• Security-defence mechanism in danger situations

The eight countries are already sharing intelligence information to retrieve more than 200 missing school girls, kidnapped by Boko Haram. This new plan now goes a step further to prevent more attacks by the religious sect, after fresh violence in a Boko Haram strong-hold on Friday.
French President François Hollande, who hosted the meeting, said the islamist group wasn’t just “Nigeria’s problem, but the whole world’s.”

“They have links to terrorist organizations throughout Africa and could destabilize the entire continent,” he said during a press conference following the summit. “The aim was to identify the threat posed by Boko Haram and to deal with it”, Hollande stated, but ruled out putting French boots on the ground.

“This organization is capable of endangering the lives of innocent civilians, of abducting young girls and reducing them to bondage, to sell them,” he added. His Nigerian counterpart, Goodluck Jonathan, who called for the summit, has been strongly criticized for his handling of the girls’ abduction.
I am “completely committed to getting our girls back”, he declared, more than one month after their abduction.

France hosts security summit to tackle Boko Haram
17 May 2014

African leaders and representatives from the US and Britain attended a security summit in Paris on Saturday to elaborate a global strategy to combat Boko Haram. The religious sect kidnapped nearly 300 school girls in Nigeria last month, provoking international outrage.

The request for Saturday’s summit came from the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, but it’s Paris that’s been left in charge of hosting it. French President François Hollande thus welcomed leaders from Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, to discuss how to stop Boko Haram’s terror campaign, which has extended to the whole of the Sahel region.

Last month, the islamist group provoked world wide condemnation after it kidnapped more than 200 school girls from Chibok in the north east of Nigeria. The leader of the hardline Islamist group Abubaker Shekau issued a video last week claiming responsibility for the abduction.

The failure of Nigerian authorities to rescue the school girls has forced other countries like the US and Britian to join in the search. Representatives from the two countries also attended Saturday’s summit.The French Defence ministry estimates that more than 1000 people have been killed by Boko Haram between January and March alone.

So far, France has ruled out putting boots on the ground, but says it expects a regional plan to take shape during the summit aimed at countering the islamist group.