President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday (today) depart for Bamako, Republic of Mali on a one-day visit, following the briefing by the ECOWAS special envoy, former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity Femi Adesina confirmed this in a statement on Wednesday.
”The Nigerian President and some ECOWAS leaders led by the Chairman of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the sub-regional organisation, President Issoufou Mahamadou of Niger Republic, agreed to meet in Mali to engage in further consultations towards finding a political solution to the crisis in the country.
”Host President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Presidents Machy Sall of Senegal, Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire are expected to participate in the Bamako meeting,” Adesina stated.
Buhari had only travelled out of the country twice in 2020, first to the United Kingdom on January 17 and to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 7 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Jonathan was, however, at the State House in company of the President of ECOWAS Commission Jean-Claude Kassi Brou on Tuesday to brief Buhari on the unfolding situation in Mali.
The briefing, according to Mr Adesina, has necessitated the visit of ECOWAS leaders to consolidate on the agreements reached by various parties.
“We will ask the president of Niger, who is the chairman of ECOWAS to brief us as a group, and we will then know the way forward,” Buhari had said during Jonathan’s briefing.
Buhari thanked Jonathan for his comprehensive brief on the situation in Mali, “which you had been abreast with since when you were the sitting Nigerian President.”
The former President had briefed Buhari on his activities as special envoy to restore amity to Mali, rocked by protests against Keita who has spent two out of the five years second term in office.
A resistance group M5 is insisting that the Constitutional Court must be dissolved, and that the president resigns before peace can return to the country.
Crisis erupted after the court nullified results of 31 parliamentary seats in the polls held recently, awarding victory to some other contenders, which the resistance group said was at the instigation of Keita.
Riots on July 10 led to the killing of some protesters by security agents, causing the crisis to spiral out of control, hence the intervention by ECOWAS.
