Cameroon re-opens its northern border with Nigeria as threat from Boko Haram subsides

CAMEROON has finally opened its northern border with Nigeria having become sufficiently confident that the threat from Boko Haram has been diminished enough to combat cross-border terrorism.

 

Since 2009, Boko Haram has been waging a war of terror against Nigeria but in recent years, it escalated its activities, conduction region-wide attacks. This involved cross border raids into neighbouring countries like Cameroon, Niger Republic and Chad, where villages were attacked and people kidnapped.

 

As a result, Cameroon closed its northernmost border crossing with Nigeria to halt these raids but given the fact that the Nigerian Army has significantly diminished Boko Haram, it now feels confident enough to open the crossing. Local Governor Midiyawa Bakari, said Cameroun is reopening its border because the threats of attacks by Boko Haram militants have subsided sufficiently to resume commercial activities.

 

He added: “At this stage in the crisis, we are confident to declare that the insecurity caused by Boko Haram is firmly under control. The efforts of defence and security forces, as well as the remarkable contributions by self-defence groups, have paid off enough to permit the reopening of the closed markets and the land border with Nigeria.”

 

Governor Bakari added that schools will also resume teaching when the new academic year starts in September. Cameroun closed the border after at least 200 attacks by the Nigeria-based militant group Boko Haram, which has killed as many as 480 people since July 2015, according to Amnesty International.

These attacks have forced over 33,000 pupils to abandon schooling, according to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. Despite Cameroun’s decision to reopen its far northern border with Nigeria, fighting continued in Borno State, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, when fighter jets of the Chadian and Nigerian Air Force backed the ground troops of 119 Task Force Battalion stationed in Kangarwa to successfully repel an attack by the terrorists against their positions on Tuesday evening.

 

Nigerian Army spokesman, Col Sani Usman, said that the attack, which started at about 6.30pm, was successfully repelled. He disclosed that calm was restored after about three hours of exchange of heavy gunfire that inflicted tremendous casualties on the terrorists.

 

Col Usman said that due to poor visibility, the number of terrorists killed could not be immediately ascertained. He added that the successful resistance to the attack was made possible by support from the Nigerian and Chadian air force fighter jets.