Attended by security chiefs and all 36 State Governors, the meeting on April 23, 2014, was to address Nigeria's security challenges.

With almost a year of emergency rule in three states in the northeast intended to curb incessant militant attacks and the growing incidence of farmer-herdsmen skirmishes, Nigeria’s President, Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday, April 23, summoned a meeting of all 36 State Governors and security chiefs to proffer solutions to the problem.

A state of emergency was declared on May 14, 2013, in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States to curb the attacks of Boko Haram Islamic militants. The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria reported that yesterday’s meeting or the National Security Council, was to consider whether to extend the emergency rule that ended on April 19, 2014. State Governors and major stakeholders from the region last week expressed opposition to the extension of the emergency, claiming it had not achieved the desired results.

Boko Haram recently claimed responsibility for the April 14, 2014 bomb blasts at the Nyanya Bus Station in the capital, Abuja that left at least 75 people dead. Over 200 school girls are still being held by the sect after they were abducted from their school in Chibok, Borno State on April 15, 2014.  Amnesty International says 1,500 people have been killed this year in the five-year conflict between Boko Haram insurgents and Nigerian security forces, more than half of them civilians.

Meanwhile, a BBC Hausa Service documentary broadcast on Tuesday, April 22, 2014, showed how Boko Haram has the support of some criminal elements in southeastern Niger Republic, al-Shabab in Somalia and the al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, AQIM in carrying out its terror activities. The sect, the BBC said, has infiltrated Niger where about 50,000 Nigerians have fled since the crisis escalated in recent times. A member of a gang said militants from Nigeria “regularly come across the border, looking for recruits.”

According to the BBC report, it is only a matter of time before the insurgency begins to thrive in Niger as the sect has intensified its recruitment drive. Citing the report, Thisday newspaper said some miscreants in Diffa, a border town with Nigeria’s Yobe State, admitted receiving money from Boko Haram to recruit for them. Young men in their twenties said they were paid 3,085 US Dollars (about FCFA 1.5 million) to join the insurgency. Attributing their readiness to join to unemployment, the recruits said they were willing to strike if given any assignment.