The Nigerian Air Force on Tuesday said it killed about 300 Boko Haram members during a recent aerial bombardments of terrorist locations in the North-East of Nigeria.
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Kerry is due to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari later on Tuesday in the Nigerian capital of Abuja as part of a three-nation tour focussed on counterterrorism. It said lack of adequate information stopped either sides from addressing the issue.
The announcement, which coincides with the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Sokoto, northern Nigeria, was met with suspicion by experts who pointed out that the Nigerian authorities had previously declared the death of Boko Haram’s leader.
Nigeria’s military said 300 insurgents in total were killed including several senior fighters in a raid on north-eastern Borno state.
Shekau has led Boko Haram since 2009, although his grip was recently loosened after Islamic State leaders named an alternative leader for a Boko Haram splinter group.
The Nigerian government has expressed a desire for the United States to sell it military aircraft to assist in the fight against the terrorist group. “Extremism can’t be defeated through repression or fear”, Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.
Boko Haram, which means “Western education is forbidden”, resurfaced as a deadly force under Shekau, who took over after a military raid on the group’s compound in Maiduguri killed some 700 people and leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed in police custody. We know that the Chibok girls are held at the Shekau camp.
The Nigerian government has so far rebuffed such proposals, and denies their airstrikes killed any of the girls. “Nigeria is already a regional leader in many ways – economically and culturally – but you can also become a model in fighting corruption and the organized crime that so often goes along with it”, he said.
On Wednesday Kerry is scheduled to meet representatives of local NGOs helping to fight corruption – a priority of the Buhari administration – before flying to Saudi Arabia where he will discuss the Yemen crisis, the war in Syria and the global fight against the Islamic State group.
The US had blocked sales of aircraft to Nigeria during the tenure of former President Goodluck Jonathan over his administration’s poor human rights record.
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The Nigerian Army needs to note that it is not very important that Nigerians are fed with the news of Shekau’s death, when it can not accurately confirm if truly he is dead or not.
