Buhari: Boko Haram will be gone by December

President Muhammadu Buhari has given a definite date for the end of the Boko Haram insurgency: latest by December 31, 2015.

He was speaking in Cotonou, Benin, on Saturday at the gala lunch held in his honour by the President Boni Yayi.

Buhari commended Yayi for increasing the number of Benin troops in the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Lake Chad Commission to 800.

“I assure you that we will defeat Boko Haram by the end of this year,” he said.

Buhari was on a one-day visit to Cotonou as the special guest of honour at the 55th independence anniversary of Benin.

He said when he was military head of state, Nigeria had always learnt to live peacefully with her neighbours.

He said: “I am impressed by your concern and critical approaches by increasing your contributions to the multinational task force of the Lake Chad Commission. This is a great sacrifice on the part of the Benin Republic.

“Even in my first coming into office under a different arrangement, we have learnt to live in peace with our neighbours. Within the week I was sworn in, I went to Niger, Chad. I was supposed to go to Cameroon but I was summoned by the G7 leaders to brief them about the security situation in Nigeria concerning Boko Haram which declared allegiance to ISIS which gives it international dimension.”

Buhari said last week that the troops are now better prepared to tackle the militancy.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan made a similar promise of ending Boko Haram “by June 2012” while on a visit to South Korea.