ACCRA, JANUARY 20, 2015(CISA) – Leaders from West African countries will this week be holding a regional summit under the regional block ECOWAS to discuss the possibility of forming a united military force to fight Boko Haram.
Speaking to Reuters on Friday January 16, Ghana’s President John Mahama and chairman of the ECOWAS said the regional body would be seeking the support of the African Union in this endeavour.
“We are increasingly getting to the point where probably a regional or a multinational force is coming into consideration,” President Mahama told a news conference.
“Terrorism is like a cancer and if we don’t deal with it will keep going. It threatens everybody in the sub region. When it comes to terrorism nobody is too far or too near,” Reuters quoted the president as saying.
Boko Haram is currently the biggest security threat to Nigeria where the outlawed militia group has carried out several terrorist attacks recently crossing into Cameroon and Niger.
Following Boko Haram’s worst attack in Bago, Borno state where amnesty International estimated that 2000 people had been killed, Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama called for international support to help fight terrorism in Nigeria.
“We certainly need help to overcome this terrorist group because they seem to be expanding and growing more sophisticated in their approach,” the and they are claiming lives and displacing so many Nigerians,” the archbishop said.
Archbishop Kaigama urged the international community to show the same spirit of support they had shown following the recent terrorist attacks in France
