By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, (AA): World leaders on Saturday pledged to stand with Nigeria and her neighbors against Boko Haram, a “murderous” group which requires a “sustained and comprehensive approach” to combat.
They spoke in the Nigerian capital Abuja at a second regional security summit on how to tackle the Boko Haram threat.
Speakers from the United Nations, the U.S., EU and Lake Chad countries acknowledged that Boko Haram has been substantially degraded but added that issues such as poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and corruption which led to the insurgency needed to be tackled.
“We must address the underlying grievances that helped give rise to Boko Haram,” Britain’s foreign minister, Philip Hammond, said as he announced a sum worth $57 million in assistance to Nigeria to combat the militants.
He said police in areas “liberated” from Boko Haram must secure, stabilize those zones and address grievances which may have helped fuel the crisis.
Hammond said his country would also help train at least 1,000 Nigerian troops fighting the insurgents.
EU Foreign Affairs Representative Federica Mogherini also pledged 15 million euros [$17 million] for a regional multinational task force fighting the militants. French President Francois Hollande said his country would help with training and provide material equipment for the regional force.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington remained committed to helping Nigeria combat terrorism and resettle millions of people displaced in the crisis.
The summit debated the need to tackle the humanitarian crisis which has arisen from the Boko Haram crisis, with over two million people displaced and tens of thousands killed across the region.
The regional security summit is being attended by the presidents of Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, the Central African Republic, Gabon and Togo, among others. The first regional summit on Boko Haram was held in Paris on May 17, 2014 as the international community woke up to the threat posed by the group in the wake of its mass abduction of schoolchildren in Nigeria’s Chibok town on April 14 that year.
[Photo: Clashes with Boko Haram in Yola in Asamawa province last year. Photograph: Mohammed El-Shamy/AA]
