President Denis Sassou N’Guesso of the Republic of Congo and President Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea on Monday, February 24, 2015 were guests to President Goodluck Jonathan.
Emerging from their meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the three presidents, who were all smiles posed for pictures before President N’Guesso addressed newsmen, intimating them with the details of his meeting with the other rulers.
President N’Guesso revealed that their meeting was centered on prevailing issues bedeviling Africa, including the Ebola virus and the threat posed by Boko Haram.
Read his speech below:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, as we know Africa is confronting two challenges. Significantly, ebola is affecting basically countries in West Africa. These countries are: Liberia, Guinea and Serra Leone. Also, the operations of the terrorists generally affecting countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa and in northern Africa, particularly Boko Haram which has been affecting Nigeria, Chad and Cameroun.
Like you know at the last meeting of the Africa Union, the Heads of State took some very important decisions principally to check the Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroun and Chad. Following the meeting of the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African Countries had a meeting recently in Yaoundé to address particularly the Boko Haram challenge in Africa and to see the possibility of ameliorating the grave situation. It’s on that platform that we met with our friend President Jonathan of Nigeria.
We are here because we have been mandated by the Heads of State of the Central African Community to bring here, and show our solidarity to the people of Nigeria and the government of Nigeria, and to our brother and friend, President Jonathan.
And after here, we are on a mission to Accra to meet with President John Mahama of Ghana, who is the Chairman of ECOWAS. We will study the situation together and put in place a security architecture to see how we can coordinate all our actions to put out and eradicate the Boko Haram, which has been spreading in a very grave manner. We look forward to peace, security and development in Africa.
We have met with our friend, President Jonathan. We will have another meeting with President Mahama, Chairman of ECOWAS. We have no doubt that we will collectively utilize all political, military and diplomatic actions and mobilize all our actions in all fronts to degrade and eradicate Boko Haram. We have no doubt that we have arrived at a mechanism for coordinating all our actions for effectiveness.
We want to thank our friend President Jonathan for the peace we have seen here and for his listening, and the exchange we have had. We want to congratulate the government and the people of Nigeria and all the security forces for the recent success that they recorded in overcoming attacks by Boko Haram. We hope that the framework that we are going to put in place will give us a better and more effective result against Boko Haram.
We think that with the leadership of the people of our continent, which includes ECOWAS and Central African Community, and the support of the international community, we will get effective results for the continent. We hope that with our collective mobilization we will achieve sustainable peace and security for the continent.
That’s what we discussed with our friend, President Jonathan. Thank you.
