Buhari names source of Boko Haram arms

– President Buhari denied the claim that the Boko Haram was getting its arms and ammunition from ISIS– He says the insurgents use weaponry stolen from Nigerian army– The president announced a broad plan to rehabilitate Civilian JTF fighting Boko HaramPresident Muhammadu Buhari has revealed where the deadly Boko Haram sect was getting its arms and ammunition, Vanguard reports.The president while speaking with journalists after the closing of the second Regional Security Summit in Abuja denied linking Boko Haram’s source of weaponry to the Islamic State (IS).

Buhari stated that this claim remained unconfirmed. He said a keysource of the group’s sophisticated arms was from the different military and police bases attacked at the peak of the insurgency in the affected countries.

He said: “The type of weapons they are using, I believe were the ones taken from military bases they attacked at the peak of the insurgency especially in Nigeria.“If you recall they attacked military bases and carted away weapons, they attacked police stations and broke into their armouries, that was how they got the kind of weapons they have been using to fight.“Frankly, up till now we don’t have firm intelligence of what IS has been able to send to Boko Haram in terms of weapons or even money.“But the fact that they said they are affiliated to IS has made many people to believe that they were getting weapons from ISIS,’’ the president added.At the same time President Buhari relieved fears that members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) assisting in the counter-insurgency operation in the North East would constitute the threat to security in their communities. According to the president, the Civilian JTF were carefully formed by the different state governments, underlining that there was a broad plan to rehabilitate them in government’s post insurgency programme.The United States, Britain, Equatorial Guinea, the European Union, ECOWAS, the Economic Community of Central African States and the Gulfof Guinea Commission were represented at the summit which hadthe successful conclusion of ongoing military operations against Boko Haram at the top of its agenda.Since President Buhari’s inauguration on May 29, 2015 the Nigerian army has received a lot of success against the deadly Boko Haram sect.However, several new security threats reemerged under Buhari’s government.