Nigeria's
President Muhammadu Buhari is planning to visit Cameroon to cement a regional fighting force
against Boko Haram, he told AFP on Monday.
Buhari
met his counterparts from Niger, Chad
and Benin at a summit in Abuja last week but Cameroon's leader Paul Biya was noticeably absent and
represented by his defense minister.
The two
countries have long had strained ties, in part over a bitter territorial
dispute but also after Boko Haram mounted
cross-border raids into northeast Nigeria
from Cameroon's far north.
Buhari
visited Niger and Chad in his first week in
office and said he would have gone to Cameroon's capital Yaounde for talks with
Biya had he not been invited to attend the G7 summit in Germany.
"But
on my return to Nigeria now, I will try to go to Cameroon," he said on the
sidelines of the African Union summit in
Johannesburg.
Last
week's Abuja summit rubber-stamped an 8,700-strong regional force involving the
five countries to replace an ad hoc coalition of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and
Cameroon.
The
current force came into being after Chad's President Idriss Deby
sent troops to assist their Cameroonian counteparts against a wave of attacks
by the Islamist militants.
Troops
from Niger and Chad have crossed into Nigerian territory but those from
Cameroon have not in an indication of the strained relations between the
neighbors.
But
Buhari indicated last Thursday that soldiers from the new Multi-National Joint
Task Force (MNJTF) would not be restricted in terms of movement.
The MNJTF
will be headed by a Nigerian officer for the duration of the mission, with his
deputy from Cameroon for an initial 12 months once troops are deployed from
July 30.
Buhari
has made crushing Boko Haram his immediate priority since coming to power on
May 29 and he said in the interview that foreign support was vital.
"The
most important support is intelligence. What we are looking for from the G7...
is intelligence. We want help in terms of logistics," he said.
"Boko
Haram declared that they are in alliance with ISIS, so terrorism has gone
international. They are in Mali, they are in Nigeria, they are in Syria, they
are in Iraq, they are in Yemen.
"It's
an international problem now," he said.
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