Abuja -France on Wednesday expressed its readiness to continue to provide Nigeria its neighbours with military support to ensure that Boko Haram was eliminated.
The French ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Denys Gauer, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the Paris Summit on Security in 2014 helped to reduce Boko Haram attacks.
Gauer pledged that France was ready to organise another summit if President Muhammadu Buhari requested for it.
According to him, the 2014 summit organised based on requested by then President Goodluck Jonathan.
“The conference in Paris in May 2014 was very important because it was President Jonathan who appealed to President Francois Hollande that Nigeria had security challenges.
“Jonathan said that the problem also involves all of the neighbours and we needed to cooperate.
“He appealed to France because, of course, France has very good relations with all those neighbours and could encourage all those neighbours to better cooperate with Nigeria.
“I will say that gesture from Jonathan was quite logical but at the same time probably some years ago, nobody would have thought about that, would have considered that possible”, he said.
Gauer said the summit brought together Jonathan and all the presidents of Nigeria’s neighbouring Franco-phone countries where they were encouraged to cooperate very strongly with Nigeria.
He said the summit led to the implementation of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) with headquarters in N’djamena.
He said France had since then supported the Nigerian Armed Forces and the neighbouring countries with military intelligence in some specific areas because of France military presence in the Sahel.
“We are very present in the whole Sahel areas because France is very close to it; we have special planes there overflying the whole area.
“So we can provide that kind of information. We have also some military cooperation with Nigerian Armed Forces.
“We also support very strongly, the Franco-phone neighbours of Nigeria very strongly in terms of military and cooperate with them in many other areas.
“You have seen during the last months how active they were in the fight against Boko Haram, especially the Chadian forces have played important role in that fight against Boko Haram”, he said.
According to him, now that the MNJTF is on ground, France will continue to provide support.
“President Buhari has made the efforts to visit the neighbouring countries, he has still to visit Cameroon but I think this will be organised quite soon.
“But you may have noticed also that Hollande was in Cameroon some days ago, he met President Biya, he encouraged him to work with Nigeria closely”, the envoy said.
Gauer said during the visit Hollande promised to facilitate another summit if need be.
“We are doing everything possible to encourage a real regional cooperation for common fight against Boko Haram.
“This is because this terrorist threat is a threat to the whole region and must really be eliminated,” he said. (NAN)