They arrived at the decision at a day summit at Abuja airport. Cameroon was represented by its defence minister.
A statement afterwards said the joint force, based in the Chad capital Ndjamena, would be up and running by July 30 with a permanent Nigerian leader, a concession to Buhari’s opposition to rotating commanders.
Changing the force’s leadership would hamper “the military capacity to sustain the push against the insurgents, who also have the uncanny ability to adapt and rejig their operational strategies,” Buhari said before the meeting.
Chad and Cameroon have deputy commander and chief of staff posts in the force, whose mission is to crush Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and displaced 1.5 million people in its six-year fight to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria’s northeast.
Squashing the insurgency was one of Buhari’s main campaign promises, in contrast to his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, who was accused of dithering and incompetence, particularly after the kidnapping of more than 200 girls from a school in the town of Chibok in April last year.