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Muhammadu Buhari

Time is up for Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president and former army general, who promised before his inauguration on 29 May last year to stamp out Boko Haram within 12 months – and has singularly failed to do so, despite a tough military crackdown in the country’s north-east.

While the terrorist group, blamed for 20 000 deaths over the past seven years, has taken a beating, it is down but not out. Analysts warn, meanwhile, that Buhari’s harsh approach to unrest of any kind may be causing more problems than it solves across Nigeria as a whole.

At a summit in Abuja earlier this month, Buhari appeared to admit the difficulty of fulfilling the task he set himself. The meeting included representatives from Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. France, the US, Britain and the EU, who back the anti-Boko Haram campaign, also attended.

Despite increased support from London and Washington, which have each sent about 300 troops to the region in a training and advisory capacity, Buhari’s aim was yet closer military cooperation via an expanded international effort.

“I believe Buhari is acknowledging. . .that it is not easy for the military to just go out there and eliminate Boko Haram,” Martin Ewi of the Institute for Security Studies told al-Jazeera.

“The rural areas have always been neglected when it comes to security and that has always been the problem – the ungoverned places.”

Nigerian army offensives have won back territory from Boko Haram in the past year, and the number and frequency of terrorist attacks has fallen significantly.

Last year’s dramatic announcement by Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, that he was entering into an alliance with Islamic State appears to have been a propaganda stunt amounting to little in practical terms.

Yet when one of the 276 Chibok schoolgirl hostages abducted in 2014, Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki, was rescued earlier this month, Buhari made great play of it, having her flown to meet him in Abuja. The fuss looked like a slightly desperate bid to deflect attention from the fact the other girls remain unaccounted for.

Also contradicting the official “winning” narrative is evidence that faced by more determined military pressure, Boko Haram is resorting to wider use of suicide bombings, carried out by women and children, and increased attrition, including more hostage-taking.- Reuters