Boko Haram: Cameroon is Nigeria’s ‘problem’
Nigeria’s inability to contain Boko Haram has been blamed on Cameroon.
In an interview with Reuters, Gen. Sarkin-Yaki Bello, coordinator-general of Nigeria’s Counter Terrorism Centre, praised Niger and Chad for their co-operation in the anti-terror war.
Bello said more needed to be done regional efforts against the insurgency, although he noted that things have improved in recent times.
He said: “Niger has been proactive and aggressive, Chad has shown zero tolerance for Boko Haram,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“Cameroon, we’ve engaged them to be more pro-active. They haven’t really. Not yet.”
He maintained that the military knew where the over 200 schoolgirls abducted from Chibok, Borno State, are but there are fears that their captors might kill them if a rescue attempt is made – the same position of chief of defence staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh (pictured).
“We want to bring them out alive,” he said, ruling out any prisoner swap deal.
“If you let them out, the terrorists get stronger. We also need to protect those they haven’t yet killed or kidnapped,” Bello said.
There were reports, yet to be denied, that a swap deal was arranged but was called off at the last minute by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Jonathan declared a state of emergency in northeast Nigeria a year ago but Boko Haram retreated to the Cameroon border.
It has launched near daily hit-and-run attacks for the past year from the Mandara mountains between Cameroon and Nigeria.
Bello said there had been decades of poor communication between the two countries that hampered cooperation.
They have had a border dispute since gaining independence in the 1960s from the British and French colonialists that carved them up.
Cameroon’s information minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, denied his country was dragging its feet, pointing to its sending of troops in its Far North region to counter the Boko Haram threat.
“Cameroon has never been the weakest link in the chain,” Tchiroma told Reuters.
“As the deployment of troops and equipment in the past few days prove, we have put up an iron curtain with enough firepower, which Boko Haram cannot break.”
Cameroon is a problem because our out-of-shape “Generals” and Intelligence officers , who have Boko Haram intelligence in the literal sense, are unable to do their spade work and destroy this insurgency vermin with a surgical stroke. Cameroon cannot do your work for you all the time, including destroying Biafra in exchange for Bakassi , an agreement that you, in your usual perfidious nature reneged on.
This job is easy when you know how. Please ask Freddie Debbie of Chad(the President’s Christian and Islamists – hating son) how he managed to destroy the Malian Islamists within one month, while you people have more Boko Haram sympathisers in your Army than Boko Haram has combatants.
We do not have a nation to speak of , because this insurgency is sustained by the fifth columnists in the Armed Forces and Government, hoping for “another Northerner” to come to power a la Yakubu Gowon in his July 1966 speech. There is God OOOOO!!!
See Nigerian Generals! Why would the US not accuse you people of endemic corruption in the military?