Cameroon to cement a regional fighting force against Boko Haram, he told AFP on Monday.
Buhari met his counterparts from
Niger, Chad and Benin at a summit in Abuja last week but Cameroon's
leader Paul Biya was noticeably absent and represented by his defence
minister.
The two countries
have long had strained ties, in part over a bitter territorial dispute
but also after Boko Haram mounted cross-border raids into northeast
Nigeria from Cameroon's far north.
Buhari
visited Niger and Chad in his first week in office and said he would
have gone to Cameroon's capital Yaounde for talks with Biya had he not
been invited to attend the G7 summit in Germany.
"But
on my return to Nigeria now, I will try to go to Cameroon," he said on
the sidelines of the African Union summit in Johannesburg.
Last
week's Abuja summit rubber-stamped an 8,700-strong regional force
involving the five countries to replace an ad hoc coalition of Nigeria,
Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The current force came into
being after Chad's President Idriss Deby sent troops to assist their
Cameroonian counterparts against a wave of attacks by the Islamist
militants.
Troops from Niger
and Chad have crossed into Nigerian territory but those from Cameroon
have not, in an indication of the strained relations between the
neighbours.
But Buhari
indicated last Thursday that soldiers from the new Multi-National Joint
Task Force (MNJTF) would not be restricted in terms of movement.
The
MNJTF will be headed by a Nigerian officer for the duration of the
mission, with his deputy from Cameroon for an initial 12 months once
troops are deployed from July 30.
Buhari
has made crushing Boko Haram his immediate priority since coming to
power on May 29 and he told AFP that foreign support was vital.
"The most important support is
intelligence. What we are looking for from the G7... is intelligence. We
want help in terms of logistics," he said.
"Boko
Haram declared that they are in alliance with ISIS, so terrorism has
gone international. They are in Mali, they are in Nigeria, they are in
Syria, they are in Iraq, they are in Yemen...
"It's an international problem now," he said.
In
the interview, Buhari also addressed concerns he had not yet appointed a
cabinet more than two weeks after he came to power following his
victory in March polls.
"I don't know why people are so anxious to have ministers, but eventually we will have," he said.
Buhari
said that audits were currently being carried out in various government
departments -- and the finance and petroleum ministries in particular
-- to try and establish what situation they were left in by the previous
administration.
"I am not in a hurry to get ministers," he said.
"I
want to get ministers after at least I have seen this report, so that I
don't have to appoint a minister today and sack him next week."
Source:AFP
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