TheCable

President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday “skirted” around a question on who the sponsors of Boko Haram were.

At a joint news conference with President Francois Hollande of France, at the presidential villa, on Saturday, Buhari was asked of the sponsors of the sect, but instead of responding to the question, he narrated how Maiduguri was a commercial nerve centre until the onslaught on the insurgents.

Question: Have you been able to identify the sponsors of Boko Haram?

Buhari’s response: Boko Haram has ‎preoccupied this discussion both in and out of the bilateral discussions. We do appreciate the efforts, the successes recorded by this administration. I was told that a hundred articulated tankers leave Kano alone on a daily basis, seven days a week to go to Maiduguri, from there traders from Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, so you have at least two million Nigerians from wheel barrow pusher to traders that benefit from  Maiduguri market before Boko Haram struck. Now if you conduct survey, that traffic is gradually coming back. You need to ask about this area for you to understand the successes scored by this government with the help of G7 including France in terms of training our military personnel, provision of hardware and keep on pushing Boko Haram out of Nigeria. Nigeria has been the main battle ground. We were not aware of their international colouration until they claimed that they are loyal ISIS. So I assure you we are doing our best.”

And on how he would access the level of threat of Boko Haram?

He said: “When we came in they were controlling 14  local governments where the hoisted a flag and declared it a republic or a kind of caliphate of some sort but now they are not holding any local government. They are exploiting available technology in terms of using improvised explosive device on soft targets – in mosques, churches, markets and motor parks.”

‎”Many of the territories they held captives have been freed and now our maintain problem rehabilitation infrastructure destroyed – educational, health, bridges blown etc. We have made a comprehensive survey and very soon we will start to empower them.

“On the IDP‎s, more than 60 per cent of them are women and children and more than 60 per cent of the children are orphans, this is a pathetic situation and is a major problem we are going to face in this country.”

The news conference was ahead of the second regional security summit currently taking place in Abuja.

The first summit held on May 17, 2014 in France.

Its aim is to finding solutions to the security challenges facing the global community.