MALI: NIGERIA BACKTRACKS ON FOREIGN SUPPORT

Nigeria is now in a fix over its apparent reluctance to seek logistics support from the international community for the troops deployment to Mali, sources told Daily Trust in the Malian capital Bamako.

A senior military source said Nigeria seems to have tactfully rejected offers, especially from the US, to assist in logistics, and “yet the country is still deploying its troops and other military equipment to Mali in great pain.”

Nigeria is expected to send 1,200 troops for the military operation. The country is yet to begin deploying armoured vehicles for its troops which are also necessary in the hostile Mali environment.

N7BN SPENT ON MALI WAR SO FAR - JONATHAN

President Goodluck Jonathan has disclosed that Nigeria has spent $34million (about N7billion) on the immediate deployment of troops and logistics support to stop the activities of Islamic terrorists in Mali. He also made an additional $5million pledge to further help that country.

Jonathan stated this yesterday at the donors’ conference held at the end of the 20th Ordinary Session of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Nigeria had already deployed 900 combat soldiers and 300 Air Force personnel to Mali as part of the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA).

BOKO HARAM TAKES BATTLE TO MALI

As the Federal Government prepares to increase the number of troops being sent to war-torn Mali, to join forces with other foreign armies to flush out armed rebel groups in northern part of the troubled West African country, a Defence intelligence report has revealed that Nigeria’s violent group, Boko Haram, has been mobilising and sending fighters to support their comrades-in-arm at the Malian war front.

It was gathered that Boko Haram, whose operational bases and training ground have been traced to Mali, as Saturday Sun reported on October 27, 2012 and confirmed by President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday, knowing that the routing of the Malian rebels in the northern part of the West African country would affect them have been mobilising fighters, who would be ferried out of Nigeria to Mali to join the rebels.