Already, it has commenced training of Nigerian military on rescue operations that will lead to the recovery of the abducted Chibok girls. Wendy Sherman,Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said, “if there were to be a rescue operation, there may be other ways to bring them home, but if it were to be a rescue operation, that’s a very specific skill set and not every army in the world has that skill set,” adding, “I know that there are some training that has been gone on with units of the military in Nigeria to build those skills, in other words special forces skills. Whether they’d be able to attempt a rescue, I think it would just depend on the circumstances.”
All the countries that were at the
meeting including Benin, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Nigeria alongside
representatives of governments of the European Union (EU), US, UK, and US are very focused on
coordinating their information, intelligence and resources to realize the
common aim of rescuing the kidnapped girls.
It is yet unclear why Canada and Israel did not attend the meeting, but they are also providing assistance. Tension may be flaring among the Western nations providing assistance to Nigeria judging by the absence of these countries from the meeting. Both nations have also been providing assistance to Nigeria in finding the abducted girls at about the same period that the other Western allies joined in.
Unconfirmed reports also said that President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria initially requested US and UK to convene the security parley but they declined but, Francois Hollande, the French President, accepted the proposal. The relations between Cameroon and Nigeria have always have an on-and-off relationship and the situation soured between the two neighbours with disagreements over the Bakassi Peninsular and claims and counter claims over culpability in dealing with the Boko Haram insurgency. Cameroon accused Nigeria of undermining its security by not effectively handling the militants while Nigeria also accused Cameroon of lapses in not
US
has been at the forefront of helping Nigeria deal with its present security contingency.
It designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and placed a $7
million bounty on his head. Presently, a multidisciplinary interagency
team is in Nigeria. It has also commenced flying Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft or drones over Borno
state. In France, Sherman met with the national security advisor of Nigeria and
held more discussions on ways of further engagement.
But, there are areas where US has
expressed its unwillingness to co-operate. One of this is ransom for the kidapped
girls. “The United States has its own view about ransom, exchanges, things like
that, but this is a Nigerian decision. Our views on this are well known,”
Sherman said. It’s been an age-old policy of the US government never to negotiate
with terrorists or agree to ransom with them.
However, though it frowns at this
action, it believes that the decision in this case belongs to Nigeria. Sherman
said,“ It’s not an American decision. Nigeria is a sovereign country and
its government will make what choices it thinks it’s appropriate.” If
Nigeria decides to do so, it is clear that it will do so alone without the
co-operation of US; it might even pull out of providing assistance.
President Hollande called
the meeting with not only Nigeria’s head of state alongside the heads of state of the
surrounding countries in order to have both the short-term goal of
coordinating all efforts to rescue the kidnapped girls and to ascertain the immediate and long term ways of ensuring that there was regional and global coordination to bring all Western assets to bear in dealing with Boko Haram, by securing regional borders, ensuring an end to Boko Haram insurgency and ramping up the
development in the sub-region so that it is not a breeding ground for
terror.
For now, the ongoing cooperation of
Nigeria with foreign forces have already yielded some useful intelligence. It has
been established that majority of the ammunition in use by Boko Haram were got
from Libyan rebels and the terror group got advanced training in Mali.
In the next few days, the UN will
impose sanctions on Boko Haram. This will include freezing its assets, travel
ban and imposition of any other punitive measure to destroy the terror group.
