Our reporter/ President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday disclosed that his administration spent over $1 billion on equipment needed to recover territories in the North-East taken by Boko Haram.
According to a statement by presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, the President stated this during an address at the African Conference for Peace 2023 in Mauritania.
“When I assumed power in 2015, Boko Haram held about two thirds of Borno State, half of Yobe State, and a couple of Local Government Areas in Adamawa State, all in the North-East of Nigeria”, Buhari said.
“We have been able to retrieve these swathes of territories by investing over a $1 billion dollars to acquire hard and soft ware weaponry from the US and other friendly countries to carry out sustained operations against insurgency since 2015.”
The President also noted that Nigeria continues to engage bilaterally and multilaterally to comprehensively win the war against the insurgency and other related terror groups through kinetic and non-kinetic approaches.
Buhari, who was honoured by the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum with ‘Award for Strengthening Peace in Africa’, stated that Nigeria and other regional bodies in Africa and the rest of the world are working assiduously to deal with existential threats to the very existence of humanity.
“Our Armed Forces and those of our partners in the Multinational Joint Task Force (consisting of Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin Republic and Nigeria) continue to demonstrate great bravery while paying the ultimate price in securing our collective freedom.
“Despite the difficult times we face, we continue to spend very scarce and lean resources to ensure that we have a well-resourced military force to take on this task.
“Ideally, these are resources that could be spent on Education, Healthcare, infrastructure and other social services, but without peace, we have learnt the hard way that our children cannot go to school or seek good healthcare,” the President stated.
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