President Buhari To Visit Crisis-Hit Mali On Peace Mission Tomorrow

President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday depart for Bamako, the Republic of Mali on a one-day visit.

This is according to a statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina.

Buhari’s planned visit followed the briefing by the ECOWAS Special Envoy to the country, former President Goodluck Jonathan.

The statement adds that President Buhari and the ECOWAS Chairman, President Issoufou Mahamadou of Niger Republic had already agreed to meet in Mali to engage in further consultations towards finding a political solution to the crisis in the country.

The two leaders are expected to be joined by the Host President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Presidents Machy Sall of Senegal, Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana and Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire respectively.

“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,” President Buhari was quoted as saying.

Earlier, Jonathan in the company of President of ECOWAS Commission, Mr Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, on Tuesday briefed President Buhari on the unfolding situation in Mali, necessitating the visit of ECOWAS leaders to consolidate on the agreements reached by various parties.

The former President had filled in President Buhari on his activities as Special Envoy to restore amity to Mali, rocked by protests against President Keita, who has spent two out of the five years, the second term in office.

A resistance group, M5, is insisting that the Constitutional Court must be dissolved and that the President should resign before peace can return to the country.

The crisis had 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 President Keita.

Riots on July 10 had led to the killing of some protesters by security agents, causing the crisis to spiral out of control, hence the intervention by ECOWAS.