Buhari to host Lake Chad security summit

President Muhammadu Buhari will on June 12 host leaders of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) to an informal security meeting.

Buhari made this known during a bilateral meeting with the Chadian President Idris Deby in Saudi Arabia, on the sidelines of the meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The LCBC, created in 1964, is an intergovernmental organisation that oversees water and other natural resource usages in the basin. There are eight member governments–Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Algeria, the Central African Republic, Libya, and Sudan.

The meeting will hold on the sidelines of democracy day and second term inauguration celebrations on June 12.

According to the president, the summit will focus on bringing new strategies to bring to a permanent end, the Boko Haram insurgency plaguing countries of the Lake Chad region.

Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, quoted Buhari as saying since elections are over, he would have more time to pursue the threat of terrorism with “full force’’.

“The Nigerian and Chadian leader agreed on the need for sub-regional leaders to sit down and agree on changing the strategy ‘for a more sustained operation, which will continue until the threat is brought to a permanent end’,” Shehu said.

“The two leaders shared information on the oncoming rainy season and challenges that it poses for the ongoing military operations. They agreed on the need for urgent operational measures before that time.

“They also talked about how the meeting in Abuja should respond to the infiltration through Libya of the displaced elements of the Daesh, which is an acronym of ISIL’s Arabic name al-Dawlah al-Islamīyah fī l-ʻIrāq wa-sh-Shām into the Lake Chad area.”