Nigeria puts Boko Haram on the defense, plans rebuilding efforts

Cameroon announced today that the multinational force fighting Boko Haram’s insurgency arrested more than 300 fighters and freed at least 2,000 captives across the region. As the crackdown on Boko Haram deepens, neighboring Nigeria has started plans to reconstruct the northeastern part of the country ravaged by the terror group.

During the three-day operation, the troops destroyed one of Boko Haram’s training and logistics bases 22 miles north of the Nigerian town of Kumshe in Maiduguri state, said Bouba Dobekreo, Cameroon’s commander of the joint forces.

More than 8,000 forces from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Benin set up the multinational task force last May to tackle the six-year insurgency that has spread across the region.

On Monday, Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense said security agents arrested the leader of Ansaru, a breakaway group from Boko Haram. The extremist group, which is an al-Qaeda affiliate known for kidnapping foreigners for ransom, split from Boko Haram following disagreements on the killings of Muslims. The U.S. Department of State named Ansaru’s leader Khalid al-Barnawi a global terrorist in 2012. If his arrest is confirmed, al-Barnawi will be the highest-level extremist ever captured in the country’s six-year battle against the insurgency.

Defense Ministry spokesman Rabe Abubakar described the arrest as “a breakthrough in the fight against terrorism.”

Boko Haram’s insurgency began in Borno, a state in northeast Nigeria. Since then, the terror group has plagued the region and rendered many towns uninhabitable.

The office of the vice president said yesterday Nigeria needs $9 billion to reconstruct and rehabilitate the six states in the region destroyed by the terror group. The announcement, delivered by the Northeast Nigeria Recovery and Peace Building Assessment team, follows a two-day workshop between the Nigerian government and the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank.

Mariam Masha, the senior special assistant to the president, said Borno state, the birthplace of Boko Haram, was most affected by the crisis with a loss of $6 billion. The World Bank already pledged $800 million toward the project, but the team admitted it still has a long way to go.

“It is not something that can be fixed in one day,” Masha said. “It is not money that can be raised in one day, but it is a process that is ongoing.”

Boko Haram’s insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people and internally displaced more than 2 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.