Nigeria's neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso are struggling to contain Islamic State and Al-Qaeda aligned militant insurgencies that have spread across their territories.

Nigeria already helped establish the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) for the Lake Chad region, involving the armed forces of Chad and Niger and others to battle Boko Haram militants there.

"We want to replicate this kind of model in countries of Sahel," Bazoum said in a statement from Nigeria's presidency after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.

"Why? Because, this model has allowed us in the Lake Chad basin to address a common threat."

He said Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and a regional powerhouse, helping organise a similar model for the Sahel would reduce the financial burden to fight militants there.

Niger is attempting an initiative to talk to jihadists whose attacks have battered the country's southwest, as fears grow of a new wave of bloodshed.

The impoverished Sahel nation has been fearing a new onslaught in its Tillaberi region since France announced its troops would quit neighbouring Mali.

Tillaberi is located in the flashpoint "three borders" zone of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, where jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) operate.

In neighbouring Burkina Faso, more than 2,000 people have died, according to an AFP tally, while the country's emergencies agency says more than a million and a half people have fled their homes since a militant insurgency began there in 2015.

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world, and its army is badly equipped and lacking training to deal with more mobile and determined jihadist forces.