Posted on: 12:49 Sun, 22 Nov 2015



Ahead of the December presidential
deadline for the nation’s armed
forces to end the activities of the
Boko Haram sect, the Presidency has
said Nigeria will not seek the help of
foreign mercenaries.

The Special Adviser to the President
on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi
Adesina, disclosed this in an
interview with our correspondent on
Saturday.

He was responding to a question
from our correspondent on whether
or not President Muhammadu Buhari
would ask the military to seek
external help in view of recent
attacks by the sect.

Adesina, said it was uncharacteristic
of the President to direct the military
to seek external help in form of
mercenaries.

He said Buhari’s position had always
been that the nation’s military has
the capacity to end insurgency in the
country, having performed
creditably well in peace-keeping
missions in many countries.

Adesina insisted that while the
President would appreciate foreign
support in terms of equipment,
trainings and intelligence, he would
not be favourably disposed to
mercenaries.

The presidential spokesman said,
“The position of the President has
always been that he believes the
military has the capacity to fight
terrorism.

“President Buhari has always made it
clear that Nigeria will appreciate
support in terms of equipment,
training and intelligence. The
support the President is seeking is
definitely not in terms of manpower
or what you will call mercenaries.”

Meanwhile, the United States’
government has described the
President’s goals towards countering
terrorism and ending Boko Haram
insurgency in the North-East as
ambitious.

This was stated during a recent
briefing at the Washington Foreign
Press Centre in the US.

According to the US Acting Assistant
Secretary, Bureau of Political-
Military Affairs, Todd Chapman,
America will continue to support
Nigeria to counter Boko Haram.
Chapman said, “We have had some
security assistance programmes that
have been very active. We just
completed some training through our
Global Security Contingency Fund,
which is a $40m effort to help
counter Boko Haram.

The Obama administration
authorised the use of presidential
drawdown authority to provide
another $45m in support to the
countries fighting Boko Haram. And
this is all on top of an additional
$50m that we had already provided
to the region to help with equipment
training and logistics systems.”

He added, “President Buhari has set
ambitious goals for himself. I’ll leave
it up to others to determine whether
or not those goals can be met. But we
are committed to supporting them as
they counter the threat.

We heard many stories while we
were there (in Nigeria) of some of
the horrors that are being
perpetrated in the North-East and
elsewhere in Nigeria. And clearly,
this government, the Buhari
administration is committed very
strongly to doing all that they can to
defeat Boko Haram.”

Speaking at the briefing, another US
official, Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labour, Steven Feldstein, noted
that there was more to be done than
defeating the insurgents on the
battlefield.

Chapman and Feldstein who visited
the country recently pointed out that
the issue of human rights protection
remained critical in addressing the
current crisis in the North-East.

“A lot of the rhetoric of what the
regime and what the president has
said when it comes about the
importance of linking human rights
protection, civilian protection, with
the fight against Boko Haram and
other elements is something that we
view as essential pillars and
cornerstones.

And so for us to be able to have these
important conversations with our
military counterparts but also with
civil society groups, with human
rights activists, other government
counterparts,’’ Feldstein said.

Source: PunchNg