ABUJA • Nigeria has appointed a general to lead a new multinational task force created to fight Boko Haram Islamists, in the face of increasingly bloody attacks.
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President Muhammadu Buhari and President Paul Biya on Thursday reached an agreement to work hard towards ensuring the completion of the land border demarcation between Nigeria and Cameroon before the end of the year.
The Nigerian Air Force has announced that its patrol and surveillance activities have succeeded in blocking routes through which petroleum products and other materials are supplied to the extremist Boko Haram sect.
The Leadership newspaper said President Muhammadu Buhari declared on Wednesday in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, that as a law abiding nation, Nigeria would have to live with the verdict of the worldwide Court of Justice (ICJ), which ceded the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.
The Vanguard newspaper and many other newspapers said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) stated that the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries are expected to contribute about 8.5 million litres of petrol per day to the country’s fuel supply in the next couple of days.
Asked when the new regional force would go into action, Buhari said: “It should ready today or tomorrow, by the end of this month”.
Boko Haram has stepped up its attacks since Buhari took office in May, unleashing a wave of violence that has claimed more than 800 lives in just two months.
The joint task force, once operational, would have that right, officials say.
Abbah, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, served as the army’s military secretary, Olukolade said. He had also been part of a contingent involved in peacekeeping operations in Sudan’s West Darfur region, said one of his close friends.
The name loosely translates as “Western education is forbidden”.
President Buhari and President Biya agreed to strengthen security collaboration along their common border under the auspices of the Nigeria-Cameroon Trans-Border Security Committee and within the framework of the implementation of the concept of strategic operations approved at the Abuja Summit.
On Tuesday, Nigeria’s army said it had liberated 21 children, seven women and two men held hostage by the militants, during ongoing offensives in the north-east. Non-Muslims are forcibly converted to Islam.
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The movement also forces women and teenage girls to become suicide bombers.
