Reuters
Nigeria’s president at WEF pledges to free kidnapped girls
ABUJA Thu May 8, 2014
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan speaks during a Nigeria-Kenya bilateral business meeting in Abuja, May 5, 2014. .
Credit: Reuters/Afolabi
ABUJA (Reuters) – By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Lanre Ola
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan pledged on Thursday to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist rebels, as the hostage crisis overshadowed his opening address to a major conference designed to showcase investment opportunities in Africa’s biggest economy.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) being hosted in the capital Abuja, Jonathan thanked foreign nations including the United States, Britain, France and China for their support in trying to rescue the girls, who were kidnapped from a secondary school on April 14 by Boko Haram.
He thanked delegates for coming despite the danger posed by the militants, then quickly moved on to a speech about creating jobs in African economies.
“As a nation we are facing attack from terrorism,” Jonathan told delegates. “I believe that the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terrorism in Nigeria.”
Despite such pledges, Jonathan admitted on national television this week that he had no idea where the girls were.
The kidnappings and numerous other attacks by Boko Haram have totally overshadowed Nigeria’s hosting of the forum, an annual gathering of the rich and powerful that replicates the one in Davos, Switzerland.
Parents of the kidnapped girls said troops had arrived in Chibok on a mission to find the girls.
“There are about three military helicopters hovering around our town and many soldiers have just arrived,” said Maina Chibok, who has a 16-year-old daughter with the rebels.
“They are moving and advancing toward the bush. We hope and they succeed in rescuing our daughters.”
France became the latest nation to offer help on Wednesday, saying it was boosting intelligence ties with Nigeria and sending security service agents there to tackle Boko Haram, the militant group which claimed the kidnapping.
In the latest big Islamist attack in Nigeria, 125 people were killed on Monday when gunmen rampaged through a town in the northeast near the Cameroon border.
A senator from Borno state, Ahmed Zannah, put the number killed at 300, although local politicians have sometimes been accused of exaggerating casualty figures for political reasons.
Either way, the scale and ferocity of the massacre in Gamburu again underscored how far Nigerian security forces are from protecting civilians in an increasingly violent region.
BOKO HARAM
On Tuesday, residents of another village in the remote northeastern area where the schoolgirls were kidnapped said another eight girls were seized by suspected members of Boko Haram.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened to sell the girls abducted on April 14 from a secondary school in Chibok “on the market”, prompting a warning from the United Nations that this would make the perpetrators liable for war crimes.
Boko Haram’s five-year-old insurgency is aimed at reviving a medieval Islamic caliphate in modern Nigeria, whose 170 million people are split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims, and it is becoming by far the biggest security threat to Africa’s top oil producer.
Islamic scholars and human rights officials of the world’s largest Muslim organisation denounced the Boko Haram kidnapping as “a gross misinterpretation of Islam” and demanded the schoolgirls’ release.
“This crime and other crimes carried out by such extremist organisations … stand in contradiction to the clear teachings of the blessed Koran,” the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Fiqh Academy said in a statement.
Last month’s kidnapping occurred on the day a bomb blast, also claimed by Boko Haram, killed 75 people on the outskirts of Abuja, the first attack on the capital in two years. Another bomb nearby killed 19 people last week, prompting a few delegates to cancel their trips to the WEF.
The inability of security forces to protect the girls from being attacked or find them in more than three weeks has sparked national and international outrage and led to protests in Abuja and the commercial capital of Lagos.
Boko Haram has emerged in a region that is one of the world’s poorest, with high infant mortality, low literacy and massive youth unemployment that creates easy recruits for radical Islam. Campaigners often call on the government do more to tackle the north’s underdevelopment, which contrasts with a relatively prosperous, oil-rich and largely Christian south.
Acknowledging this, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, said he would invest $2.3 billion (1.35 billion pounds) in sugar and rice production in the north of the country, adding that creating employment was key to ending the insurgency there.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gave a speech in which he pledged “no strings” support for an African plan to develop a continent-wide high speed rail network, and said China has set aside $2 billion for an African Development Fund. Reuters
BBC
Goodluck Jonathan: Nigerian girls’ abduction a turning point
President Goodluck Jonathan: “I believe we will bring terror to an end in Nigeria”
The abduction of more than 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram could be a turning point in the battle against Islamist militants, Nigeria’s leader has said.
“I believe that the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terror in Nigeria,” President Goodluck Jonathan said.
In his speech, he also thanked China, the US, the UK and France for their offers of help to rescue the girls.
Their kidnapping three weeks ago has caused outrage worldwide.
For the past week there have been daily protests countrywide calling for more to be done to find the girls
Boko Haram’s leader has threatened to “sell” the abducted schoolgirls
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language, began its insurgency in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state in 2009.
At least 1,200 people are estimated to have died in the violence and security crackdown this year alone.
The schoolgirls were kidnapped from their boarding school on the night of 14 April from the town of Chibok in Borno state.
In a video released earlier this week, Boko Haram’s leader threatened to “sell” the students, saying they should not have been in school in the first place, but rather should get married.
It is believed the girls are being held somewhere in the forested areas which stretch from near Chibok into neighbouring Cameroon.
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai: “If we remain silent then this will spread”
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who survived a shooting by Taliban insurgents, has said the world must not stay silent over the abduction.
She told the BBC that “if we remain silent then this will spread, this will happen more and more and more”.
Safe schools initiative
Boko Haram at a glance
Founded in 2002
Initially focused on opposing Western education – Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language
Launched military operations in 2009 to create Islamic state
Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria – also attacked police and UN headquarters in capital, Abuja
Some three million people affected
Declared terrorist group by US in 2013
President Jonathan was addressing delegates at the World Economic Forum for Africa in the capital, Abuja, which has recently been hit by two attacks blamed on Boko Haram.
He thanked them for attending “especially at this time that as a nation we are facing attacks of terrorists” and said their presence was a “major blow for the terrorists”.
“If you had refused to come because of fear, the terrorists would have jubilated.”
The president said China had promised to assist in the search for the girls – and he also thanked the US, UK and France who have despatched teams of experts to Nigeria.
France on Thursday announced it would station about 3,000 troops in Nigeria’s neighbours, to help tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel region.
Shortly after his speech, President Jonathan told the BBC that with the extra assistance the country was now receiving, “we will be able to bring terror to an end in Nigeria”.
He pointed to the use of sophisticated satellite images, saying that, so far, nobody knew exactly what had happened on the day of the abductions.
Also at the event, Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, said that he would invest $2.3bn (£1.35bn) in sugar and rice production in the north of the country to help create jobs in the impoverished area.
Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now a UN education envoy, announced a “safe schools initiative” at the event in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said the Nigerian business community would donate $10m (£5,8m) to provide security for around 500 schools as part of a pilot project, without giving further details.
In the face of recent criticism over its handling of the abductions, the government has defended its response to Boko Haram’s insurgency, saying it was “fighting a war”.
John Simpson says the Islamist militants’ publicity coup is “likely to backfire”
“We have to limit and manage collateral damages – but the insurgents do not care,” presidential spokesman Doyin Okupe told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
“They can kill soldiers, they can kill villagers, but we cannot do that. And people must understand that, we have to fight this war within the rules of engagement that is accepted internationally.”
He confirmed that suspected Islamist insurgents attacked the town of Gamboru Ngala, near Cameroon’s border, on Monday, massacring civilians during a busy market day.
He said the official death toll was between 100 and 150; residents and the area’s MP have said more than 300 residents died during the five-hour attack.
BBC