By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari made his first foreign trip since he was sworn in to Niger on Wednesday to discuss the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, a Nigerian presidential spokesman said.
After he touched down in the capital of Niger, Niamey, Buhari held a meeting with his counterpart Mahamadou Issoufou and other top officials about how to contain the militant group, which in a latest video appears to be renewing its allegiance to Daesh.
According to the presidential spokesman, Buhari in his meeting expressed confidence that the Nigerian army would crush the militants soon, adding that such efforts required the support of her neighbors like Niger and Chad.
"I am four days in office today and we have already started the process of ending the insurgency," the presidential spokesman quoted Buhari as telling the media in Niamey on Wednesday after meeting Issoufou.
"President Buhari said that because of the peculiarities of terrorism, the movement of terrorists across borders and the unconventional nature of the war against terrorism, Nigeria will continue to seek the support of neighboring countries in its bid to overcome Boko Haram,” the spokesman added.
Buhari's visit to the Francophone country comes a day after Boko Haram militants released a new propaganda video that showed a masked militant dismissing Nigerian military's claim of sweeping success against the terrorist group.
This is the first time since Boko Haram went digital that the propaganda footage did not show its leader Abubakar Shekau and neither was anything said of him.
This has fuelled speculations that Shekau, who the army claims was long dead and now was impersonated by other militants, may have died or lost out in the power play within the alleged fragmented group.
The 10-minute footage also depicted for the first time a new flag titled “Islamic State's [Daesh's] West Africa Province”, instead of its usual official name, “Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad”.
The foreign trip, the first since Buhari was sworn in as president, was criticized by the Nigerian opposition.
"He once described former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's collaboration with these small countries as a shame. What do we call his own visit now which is also a form of collaboration?" Alade Bashiru, a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, told Anadolu Agency.
President Buhari will head to Chad on Thursday.
Nigeria battles a six-year old insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced over a million people. After almost a year of Boko Haram’s rampage, Nigerian army, backed by regional troops from Chad and Niger, has pushed the insurgents out of most of the territories they earlier captured.
But the militants appear to be making some big comebacks in the last two weeks, with its suspected operatives carrying out deadly bombing on soft targets and making spirited efforts to enter Maiduguri, its birthplace in the northeast Borno state.
