Nigeria has yet to decide whether to join a Saudi Arabia-led alliance to fight the militant group Islamic State, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said on Thursday.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced a 34-nation Islamic military coalition, a move welcomed by the United States, which has been urging greater regional efforts to push back Islamic State, now in control of large parts of Iraq and Syria.
However, there has been confusion over the initiative, with some of the countries named as members of the coalition caught unawares by the announcement.
A list published by the Saudi state news agency included Nigeria, which, with other West African states, is battling home-grown militants in the form of Boko Haram, a group that like Islamic State wants to carve out a territory ruled by Islamic law.
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“Nigeria has been formally invited to be a member of the alliance and President Buhari is looking into it,” Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu told Reuters, in the first official comment from Abuja.
“A decision to join has not been taken yet. Nigeria is not in or out.”
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2 comments
Your comment..Nigeria better not ‘in’ because she is not a Muslim country,period.
There is a saying in Hausa that says’ the bird that invites the rain to fall is the one that will be beaten by the rain’. Let the Islamic countries sort themselves out amongst themselves since all they show us about Islam is fight, attack and kill fellow human beings. Nigeria is not one of them. infact we have enough of them here causing us a lot of problems, [boko haram + Shiite]} to mention a few. we will not join them!!!!!!!!!! period.