Civil society leader rubbishes Biya’s Boko Haram declaration

Renowned and fearless civil society activist, Tazoacha Asonganyi, has made nonsense of President Biya’s renewed declaration that the dreaded Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram, would be wiped out of Cameroon soil.

President Biya had while receiving some 27 ex-hostages at the Unity Palace on Monday, vowed that government would go after the Islamist group Boko Haram “until it is totally wiped out”.

In a sharp reply to Biya’s renewed declaration to crush Boko Haram, Asonganyi told The Guardian Post by phone last night that it contradicts the Yaounde authorities’ eagerness to always negotiate with the Islamic militants each time they kidnap people on Cameroon soil. Hear him: “How can Mr. Biya be declaring war against a sect his government frequently negotiates with each time a kidnap is made? Mr. Biya should tell Cameroonians the conditions under which these hostages are freed.”

While sustaining that the war against Boko Haram shouldn’t be left in the hands of government alone, Asonganyi advised that the battle to completely wipe out Boko Haram from Cameroon should be void of reckless public declarations because they could be counter-productive.

Meanwhile, President Paul Biya had made the promise as he received 10 Chinese and 17 Cameroonians freed last week after spending months as hostages of armed men thought to belong to Boko Haram, an anti-Western rebel group in Nigeria which has been increasingly making incursions into Cameroon. “The Cameroonian government assures you that it will ceaselessly continue to fight Boko Haram until it’s totally wiped out,” he vowed at Monday’s Unity Palace reception.

The 27 Cameroonians and Chinese were handed to authorities on Friday night. The government has not said how they were freed, but a security source told AFP that “a ransom” was paid and around 20 imprisoned Boko Haram militants freed in exchange.

The Chinese were seized in May from a construction camp in Waza, near the border with Nigeria in an attack that left one Cameroonian soldier dead. The Cameroonians; including the wife of deputy prime minister, Amadou Ali, were abducted in July during two simultaneous assaults, also blamed on Boko Haram, in which at least 15 people died.

One of the released Cameroonians, Seiny Boukar Lamine, told state radio, “we were in these sort of huts in a pretty dense forest, it was in a savannah with big trees and a lot of brush. We slept on the ground.” He said he was held with his wife and six children.

Another former hostage, Abdouraman Seini, who survived a gunshot to his hand, said he and the other captives were forced to eat whatever was provided and at times went for days without water to drink. He said they lived in miserable conditions and that they were tortured by men armed with knives and guns. “Freedom is a good thing, I pray such a thing never happens to anyone”, he said.

Abdouraman Seini added that he did not see any of the more than 200 girls from Chibok, that Boko Haram claimed responsibility for kidnapping in April. According to him “women are separated from men in the various detention camps run by the militants in the bush”.

Seini also told reporters he believes it is very likely Boko Haram fighters will continue their attacks because they are running out of food for the hundreds of fighters and the hundreds of captives they have.

In a related development, the Multi National Joint Task Force, MNJTF, comprising soldiers from countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission have decided to establish the MNJTF headquarters in Borno state next month.

Nigeria’ s minister of foreign affairs, Amb Aminu Bashir Wali disclosed this, pointing out that troops of the task force will be deployed into action next month to checkmate the tendencies of Boko Haram terrorists crossing into border communities to wreak havoc.

According to Wali, after the meeting of LCBC member states in Benin Republic, it was agreed that the MNJTF headquarters be established in Baga town in Kukawa local government area of Borno state, on November 20, 2014.

He said the choice of Baga was in tandem with the decisions reached by heads of state and government of member states of Lake Chad Basin Commission, LCBC for which the ministers of foreign affairs and defence met in Abuja on Monday. Cameroon was represented at the meeting by the minister of external relations, Pierre Moukoko Mbonjo and the minister delegate in-charge of defence, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o.

The resolution of the meeting would be forwarded to United Nations Security Council and the African Union to put the legal frame work in place against insurgency.

Nigeria’s foreign minister noted further that the activities of Boko Haram terrorists in Baga, which served as the epicentre of their strategic activities in terms of arms procurement, planning for attacks and reception centre for foreign insurgents or mercenaries due to its proximity to porous borders, justified the expansion of the Task Force’s mandate in April, 2012 to include the fight against terrorism.

His words: “Our meeting today underscores our common commitment to good neighbourliness and fine-tuning our collective resolve and strategies to confront terrorism. It is an established fact, which we have often stated that terrorism is an international phenomenon that has to be addressed through collaborative efforts at sub-regional and global levels.

As a sub regional body, we are at a crossroad. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, which we must win or else, it will define us. At regional level, we have succeeded in enhancing cooperation in border patrol with neighbouring countries. We have also succeeded in deploying troops along our common borders...”

“A new Regional Intelligence Fusion Unit, RIFU, has since become operational. Various forms of assistance have been received at bilateral and multilateral levels from our development partners and friends in terms of training. Most of these initiatives were sound but regrettably, resulting in certain inconveniences which have raised questions about the balance that we must strike between our commitment to democratic values, our interests in security and other national priorities”.

For his part, the executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, Sanusi Imran Abdullahi said members states were more than determined to fight terrorism as a collective menace in the region.

“We had the meeting of ministers of defence and chiefs of defence staff and chiefs of security of the member countries and Benin in Niamey July and we discussed the current security situation and the deployment of troops by member countries as agreed by the heads of state. Each country is to give an equipped troop, battalion to the Multinational Joint Task Force. As at that time, Niger and Chad had already deployed their battalions at locations within their countries. Of course, Nigerian troops are already there in Baga more than even a Battalion...

“But Cameroon was preparing to deploy their contingent. So we are hopeful by the end of this meeting today and before the end of the month as agreed at the extra ordinary summit, Cameroon should have deployed their own contingent of a battalion within their border in the Lake Chad Basin until the legal arrangements are finalised for the operation of the force together to work across borders”.

Abdullahi disclosed that the president of Benin Republic, Boni Yayi, had promised to deploy a battalion which he described as a plus to us to member states. “The Multinational Joint Task Force is to give us a tool for the fight against all forms of terrorism in the Lake Chad Basin and in the member countries or at least in the member countries that have signed this declaration at the extra ordinary summit”.