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President
Buhari with French President Francois Hollande (L) and President of
Benin Republic H.E. Patrice Talon (R) as President Buhari participates
at the Programme of 2nd Regional Security Summit (Abuja 2016) at
Transcorp Hilton Abuja on May 14th 2016. Credit:
Instagram.com/bayoomoboriowo
President Muhammadu Buhari
said on Saturday 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.
Buhari said this while fielding questions from newsmen at the closing of the second Regional Security 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.
Buhari was categorical in his submission
that no clear evidence had shown that Boko Haram sourced its
sophisticated weapons from IS.
“The type of weapons they are using, I believe were the ones taken from military bases they attacked at the peak of the insurgency especially in Nigeria. If you recall they attacked military bases and carted away weapons, they attacked police stations and broke into their armouries, that was how they got the kind of weapons they have been using to fight.Frankly, up till now we don’t have firm intelligence of what IS has been able to send to Boko Haram in terms of weapons or even money. But the fact that they said they are affiliated to IS has made many people to believe that they were getting weapons from ISIS,” he said.
Buhari allayed fears that members of the
Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) helping in the counter-insurgency
operation in the North East would constitute threat to security in their
various communities.
He said the Civilian JTF were carefully
constituted by the various state government, stressing that there was a
broad plan to rehabilitate them in government’s post insurgency
programme.
In a related development, some
representatives of foreign governments and international organisations
have pledged their continued support for the Lake Chad basin
counter-terrorism effort.
They stressed the need for the
international community to close ranks with countries of the Lake Chad
basin to tackle the root causes of terrorism and the general development
of the region.
The United Kingdom’s Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Philip Harmmon said his country had committed a lot of resources in tackling terrorism in the Chad Basin and Nigeria in particular.
Harmmon said UK would improve its
support for Nigeria’s counter-terrorism efforts through intelligence
sharing, training of members of the armed forces and supply of military
hardware.
On his part, the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said the United States had been supportive of Nigeria’s counter-terrorism war in the past two years.
He pledged the US’s commitment to improved support to the Nigerian military and to the government’s post insurgency plan.
Blinken said more military would be
supplied to Nigeria to counter Boko Haram and to help in sustaining the
gains that have been recorded in the war against insurgency.
He however warned that the battle
against terrorism was far from over as much would be required to win the
war as well as the peace.
The Vice President of the European Union, Federica Mogherini said the EU had committed 50 million Euros to support the Multi National Joint Task Force.
He said the EU remained committed to the
peace process in the Lake Chad region as well as the resuscitation of
economic and social activities in the region.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports
that Presidents of France, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Gabon, Cameroon as
well as representatives of other partners attended the summit.
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