In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on
Wednesday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan agreed that Boko Haram could
pose an existential threat to his country.
“If Boko Haram is not contained, it would be a
threat not only to Nigeria, but to West Africa, Central Africa and of course to
North Africa,” he said. “Elements of Boko Haram link up with some of al Qaeda
in northern Mali and other North African countries.” Continue after the cut...
For that reason, he said his government is “totally
committed” to working with friendly nations to help contain problems in Mali.
Like many other world leaders, Jonathan said the problem there has been
exacerbated by the free flow of weapons out of Libya since the fall of dictator
Moammar Gadhafi.
President Jonathan admitted that initially Boko
Haram caught Nigeria off guard; now, he said, the country has been making
progress to contain “the Boko Haram saga.”
He said his government is working day and night to
make sure that the deadly attacks on an Algerian oil field do not happen in
Nigeria.
The Economist reports that the death toll from Boko
Haram attacks in 2012 was 1,099 – double was it was the previous year.
“If you look at the last six months, incidents of
killing started dropping,” President Jonathan contended, insisting that the
government is gaining control.
He denied suggestions from the U.S. State Department
that the Nigerian government has conducted a large quantity of arrests and
killings that have been indiscriminate, possibly driving more people into the
hands of Boko Haram.
“The United States of America is completely wrong,”
he told Amanpour. “No security agency arrests anybody just for the love of arrest.
We have intelligence that enables us to arrest the people who have been
arrested.”
President Jonathan also insists that poverty and
unemployment are not fueling the violent rise of Boko Haram – citing religion
as the primary motivation of this jihadist group.
As part of a counter terrorism effort, President
Jonathan’s national security adviser has sought to engage in dialogue with Boko
Haram.
Jonathan told Amanpour that the discourse has helped
the situation, and that he will continue to pursue this strategy.
The
Power of the Presidency
Christiane Amanpour was the first journalist to
interview Goodluck Jonathan when he assumed the presidency in April 2010. One
focus of that conversation was about the endemic electric outages that average
Nigerians face.
Three years later, despite continued problems and a
report by Nigeria’s Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission that says
60% of Nigerians are without access to power, Jonathan said that the country
has made significant strides.
“That is one area where Nigerians are quite pleased
with the government – that our commitment to improve power is working,” he
said. “I promise you before the end of this year, power outages will be
reasonably stable in Nigeria.”
Endemic
Corruption
“You cannot change the mindset of people by waving
your hand. You must take means to make sure that you don’t create an
environment where everyone will be corrupt and we are doing it very well,”
Jonathan said.
He cited the previous elections as signs of success
against corruption. International observers, The African Union, and the
Independent National Electoral Commission all praised the polling.
But there is still widespread corruption in the oil
industry.
Last April, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala said that 400,000 barrels of oil a day were looted from the
country in just one month.
The International Energy Agency said that $7 billion
dollars a year is lost annually to oil theft.
“Frankly speaking, speaking I want the international
community to support Nigeria because this stolen crude is being bought by
refineries abroad and they know the crude oil was stolen,” Jonathan told
Amanpour. “The world must condemn what is wrong.”
No comments:
Post a Comment