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| BOKO HARAM |
Accra (AFP) - "I think if
you have been listening hard enough or if you have been to the northeast
(of Nigeria), the military is really gaining ground," Nigeria's
President Muhammadu Buhari said on a visit to Ghana on Monday.
In reply to critics lamenting a lack of
progress against the insurgents, he said great strides had been made in
the fight against Boko Haram, "If you really bother to find out, a lot of progress is being made," he told reporters.
Since taking office
in late May, Buhari has made it a priority to eliminate the Islamists.
On August 13, Buhari gave his newly appointed military top brass three
months to rout the jihadists.
He said the rebels were "virtually limited" to the remote
Sambisa Forest area of Borno state, in northeast Nigeria.
In Nigeria, Buhari
has faced accusations of being too slow to act since becoming
president, particularly on appointments to key government positions.
Most senior ministerial roles remain unfilled.
He
has also had to dampen high or unrealistic expectations about a swift
end to the insurgency, which has left at least 15,000 dead, threatened
Nigeria's sovereignty and increased security fears across the region.
Hopes
have been high that an African Union-backed multi-national force,
comprising troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin, will
crush the Islamic State group-allied militants.
But
a planned July-end deployment of the force has been delayed. In the
meantime, deadly attacks have continued, although the military has
claimed a series of successes in recent weeks.
They
include the recapture of the strategic town of Gamboru Ngala on the
Cameroon border and the arrest of an alleged top commander.
Meanwhile many of the 2.1 million Nigerians displaced by six years of violence have begun returning home.
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