President Muhammadu Buhari will this week make his first foreign trip since taking office, travelling to Chad and Niger for talks on Boko Haram, his spokesman said Monday.
Shehu
Garba said the two-day trip starting on Wednesday will focus on
"matters of security," with the cooperation of Nigeria's neighbors seen
as crucial to ending the Islamist uprising which has claimed more than
15,000 lives since 2009.
Buhari was sworn in last Friday and vowed
in his inaugural speech to crush the insurgent group he described as
"mindless" and "godless". But Boko Haram attacked some 12 hours after the new president took the oath of office, hitting homes in the key northeast city of Maiduguri with rocket-propelled grenades overnight Saturday.
Later,
a suicide attack at a mosque in the city, which is the Borno state
capital, killed at least 26 people. Suspicion immediately fell on the
insurgents. The militants then raided two towns in Borno's
neighboring state of Yobe on Sunday, torching public buildings and
looting food and fuel stores.
Niger shares a border with both Borno and Yobe while Chad borders just Borno in Nigeria's extreme northeast.
Former
president Goodluck Jonathan's administration had long complained that
Nigeria's neighbours were not doing enough to contain Boko Haram as
they fled military pursuit by crossing porous borders.
A four-nation offensive that also includes Cameroon has won significant victories since February but there are fears of Boko Haram regrouping, especially in remote border areas. Buhari
said little regarding his specific plans for regional security
cooperation other than to thank the three nations for their efforts to
date.
Chadian President Idriss Deby has publicly mocked Nigeria's counter-insurgency efforts under Jonathan and called for greater cooperation.
Buhari,
a former army general who headed a military regime in the 1980s, is
seen by most observers as a more robust commander-in-chief than
Jonathan.
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