confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Is a Buhari doctrine emerging?
Blue Lines
Despite the lengthy delays in forming
a
cabinet, President Muhammadu Buhari has been much quicker to appoint
his top military and security officers and to push ahead with a series
of bilateral and multilateral summits. Not only did he chair the
regional leaders' meeting to tackle the Burkina Faso coup, having
unequivocally condemned it five days earlier, he has agreed on the
agenda for a new regional security conference with French President
François Hollande. The plan for
this meeting, aimed at strengthening
military coordination and sharing intelligence about Boko Haram's
operations in Nigeria and its
Francophone neighbours, was discussed
during Buhari's trip to Paris on 14-16 September.
Flanked by his National Security Advisor, General Babagana Monguno,
Buhari told French officials that Nigeria would be taking a far greater
role in regional security. Buhari talks about the 'concentric circles'
of Nigeria's foreign policy, which puts peace and security on its
borders as the top priority.
France, traditionally wary of a militarily assertive Nigeria, now
finds
its forces overstretched in Africa as problems multiply in its
operations in Mali and Central African Republic, so it
wants to
encourage Buhari. Several other governments, such as Kenya, South
Africa, Britain and the
United States, are also keen to
discuss
security matters with Buhari when he arrives in New York this week for
the United Nations General Assembly meetings.
