N'Djamena---Two months after neighbouring countries sent troops to help crush the ruthless Islamist movement Boko Haram inside Nigeria, there is frustration at the lack of cooperation from the Nigerian authorities.
Chad, Niger and Cameroon have sent troops into action against the sect, whose bloody insurgency threatens the region surrounding Lake Chad, where the borders of all four nations converge.
But Nigeria's army has been criticised for failing to deal with Boko Haram fighters whose bid to set up a hardline Islamic state has killed more than 13,000 people since 2009 and put scores of thousands to flight.
In recent weeks, the country's politicians have seemed wrapped up in presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on Saturday.
In the latest instance of a failure of cooperation, almost three weeks after troops from Chad and Niger recaptured the town of Damasak near the border with Niger on March 9, not one Nigerian soldier has set foot there.
- Strategic military exchange -
At the start of February, Chad's army seized Gamboru on the border with Cameroon. The soldiers were finally withdrawn two weeks ago, but no Nigerian troops moved in. Boko Haram took advantage of the military vacuum to raid the town, killing 11 civilians.
Chad's President Idriss Deby Itno makes no secret of his bitterness at the distant attitude of Abuja.
"The Chadian army is fighting its battles in Nigeria on its own," Deby told French weekly Le Point this week, adding that "the whole world is asking why" Nigeria's big army could not handle "untrained kids armed with Kalashnikovs".
"We would have hoped to have at least one Nigerian unit with us. It was even a direct request to the Nigerian government, but for reasons that escape us, up to now we have been unable to work together," he said.
Cooperation is made harder by a language barrier between English-speaking Nigeria and the former French colonies on its borders, along with old grudges.
Though Cameroon and Nigeria peacefully settled a territorial dispute over the Bakassi peninsula in court, Abuja has barred any Cameroonian troops from crossing the frontier.
"We really ask what the Nigerians are playing at," a Cameroonian security source said.
AFP
