Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will be in Nigeria between Thursday and Friday to highlight the growing threat Boko Haram poses to the country.
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“The cutting off of fuel supplies has badly crippled Boko Haram and that has been made possible by blocking all identified supply routes and the crackdown on the suppliers”, he told AFP. In Boko Haram’s case, it is that they are said to make a habit of kidnapping young girls.
It stated that this included a more coordinated military campaign, improved humanitarian access and response, a well-resourced stabilization and governance strategy.
Power is travelling through Cameroon in an attempt to win over the hearts and minds of the Cameroonian people.
Power said she later visited the boy’s family with UN, US and Cameroonian officials “to offer our profound condolences and to express our grief and heartbreak over what the family is going through”. It was the sixth vehicle in Power’s convoy, driven by a Cameroonian, that hit the child.
“They confiscate the groundnuts (that) farmers in villages in and around Sambisa cultivated all-year-round from their farms and irrigation fields”, she said from Maiduguri.
Samantha Power is in Cameroon with officials from USAID, the Pentagon and the United Nations as part of Washington’s effort to support local authorities in their fight against the extremist group Boko Haram.
Babakura Kolo, a civilian vigilante in Maiduguri assisting the Nigerian army to fight Boko Haram, said the militants were willing to pay any amount for fuel.
She said the money was to help about seven million people affected by the insurgent group that has killed around 15,000 people. Those who aren’t raped and killed on the spot are abducted, then either sold as sex slaves, forced to marry Boko Haram fighters, or forced to return to their homeland to carry out suicide bombing attacks.
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According to a statement from Power’s office last week, she is visiting Cameroon ahead of stops in Chad and Nigeria to visit with government officials, civil society organizations, Cameroonian troops, and displaced people. Kolo was apparently involved in the crackdown on Boko Haram suppliers in the Borno state capital.
