Cameroon, Chad and Niger have decided to take their fate in their hands and put the terror sect ,Boko Haram, in its place after losing patience with Nigeria on account of its alleged passive handling of the war against the group.

Consequently, the three countries have launched a regional bid to combat the Boko Haram insurgents whose attacks have spread beyond Nigeria with mounting concerns over federal government’s failure to regain control.

The three neighbours have opted for a joint military response to the cross-border threat from Boko Haram fighters and have made veiled criticisms of Nigeria, AFP reported yesterday.

Officially, all four states, whose borders converge at Lake Chad, formed a military alliance due to take shape last November to battle Boko Haram.

But building a combined Lake Chad force seems to have dropped off the agenda. Now the urgency of the situation is such that Nigeria’s partners appear to have finally lost patience and decided to act.

Cameroon, in particular, has been critical of what it sees as the Nigerian authorities’ passivity in the face of Boko Haram.

Last Friday, after Chad’s parliament voted to send armed forces to Cameroon and Nigeria to help fight the insurgents, Chadian army vehicles headed south out of the capital N’Djamena.

The move followed the seizure of the fishing town of Baga, Borno State on January 3 in an offensive that Amnesty International called the deadliest ever by the sect.

Satellite pictures released by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch last week showed widespread destruction with around 3,700 buildings in Baga and nearby Doron Baga damaged or destroyed.

Amnesty said 2,000 civilians may have been massacred but the Nigerian army objected to the “sensational” claims and said that the death toll in Baga was about 150.

The Islamists detained “over 500 women and hundreds of children” in a school, one woman who escaped the area told AFP, adding that she had seen “decomposing bodies scattered all over”.

The army had planned to use the isolated settlement of Baga as one of its key bases to work with a regional force.

However, the other countries are opposed to any major deployment inside a bastion of Boko Haram.

“The most worrying situation for us today is Nigeria, it’s the situation of Boko Haram,” Niger’s Defence Minister Karidjo Mahamadou said after the fall of Baga.

“Since November, we have no longer been at that post (Baga). We explained to the Nigerians that we could not stay since we did not wish to put the lives of our soldiers in danger,” Mahamadou said.

Like Niger, Cameroon was strongly opposed to the Baga deployment option and will not send any troops into Nigeria on a permanent basis, security sources said after officials said the army killed 143 Boko Haram fighters who had attacked a military base in the northern town of Kolofata.

President Paul Biya favours the exchange of intelligence reports to enable coordinated operations but believes each nation should act on its own territory around Lake Chad, the security sources said.

Cameroon has for months complained about the Nigerian army’s lack of fight and mass desertions in the face of the insurgents.

“Nigerian soldiers abandon their weapons when they desert their positions,” a Cameroonian military officer said last week.

“Those are the weapons with which we are attacked.”

For Chad, its battle-hardened army will step in to help “in the courageous and determined response of (Cameroon’s) armed force against the criminal and terrorist acts of Boko Haram,” the government stated Wednesday after President Idriss Deby received Cameroon’s defence minister.

And yesterday tens of thousands of Chadians marched in the capital to show support for the fight against Boko Haram chanting in French and Arabic: “Kick the forces of evil out of our territory.”

Chad’s “vital interests” are at stake, officials have said but N’Djamena is still cautious. When troops from both Chad and Niger withdrew from Baga, they were “unable… to accomplish their mission with the Nigerian army,” a Chadian official said, asking not to be named.