Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari will begin a two day visit to Cameroon on Wednesday, as part of efforts to rally Nigeria’s neighbours to back the battle against the deadly insurgency of Boko Haram.
Cameroon had sent it’s defence minister to Abuja in June at the talks where a decision was reached by leaders of the Lake Chad Basin region to form a Multinational Task Force to engage the insurgents, now striking all the neighbours with suicide bombers and outright attacks.
Buhari had visited Chad and Niger, a few days after he took over on 29 May.
The Cameroon visit which will end Thursday comes as his government announced the approach by a group that says it is a faction of the Islamist Boko Haram with an offer to hold peace talks, a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari said on Monday.
Suspected members of the militant Islamist group have killed close to 1,000 people in the region in a spate of bombings and shootings since Buhari was inaugurated as president on May 29, according to some tallies.
Efforts to reach an agreement to end the violence, including a 2014 deal fostered by Chad, have repeatedly failed during the six-year insurgency waged by the group in its bid to set up a state in the northeast adhering to strict Islamic laws.
“A faction of the Boko Haram group came forward claiming to have the mandate to negotiate with the government,” said presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, adding that efforts were under way to “verify their claims” of having such authority.
Buhari’s administration has previously said it was not averse to negotiating with the group which has killed thousands and left around 1.5 million people displaced during its insurgency.
“It is now left for them to show proof that they have the mandate, but they made it clear that they are representing a faction of Boko Haram that wants peace,” said Shehu.
Earlier this month, a human rights activist said fresh talks had started with the militants for the release of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the group last year, but said the government was not involved in those discussions.