Politics

Nigeria's military repelled an attack by suspected Boko Haram militants on Borno state capital Maiduguri in the northeast, security sources said on Sunday, a crucial win as the insurgents already control a large territory in the area. The assault on Maiduguri began just after midnight, killing at least eight people and injuring 27, mostly civilians, sources at two hospitals said. A raid on the town of Monguno, 140 km (80 miles) north, began later in the morning. The army's inability to quash the Sunni jihadist group is a major headache for President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking re-election in February and who visited the state capital on Saturday as part of his campaign.

The elections are expected to be the most hotly contested since the end of military rule in 1999 with many fearing violence in the aftermath. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the commercial capital Lagos on Sunday to urge the candidates and their supporters to respect the election outcome, underscoring U.S. concerns that post-poll violence could destabilise the country and undermine the fight against Boko Haram. The five-year insurgency, which aims to carve out an Islamic state in Africa's most populous country, has seen thousands killed. At around 9 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Sunday, a Reuters witness in Maiduguri said shelling could be heard and that military helicopters were circling the city, but by the early afternoon calm had returned.

Scores of militants and soldiers were killed in the clash, a military source and a civilian joint task force leader (JTF) said. "We're still combing the bush for their corpses, we pursued the Boko Haram men until Auno, 12 km outside the city...some fled towards Mainok," said the civilian JTF leader who declined to be named for security reasons. Nigeria's defence headquarters tweeted on Sunday morning that coordinated land and air operations were being used to repel the attacks and a curfew had been imposed on Maiduguri. The militants began the attack at the edge of the city in the Njimtilo area and tried to take the airport which services the air force as well as civilians, security sources said. Boko Haram last attempted to take Maiduguri from the same area in December 2013.

Along with much of Borno, the militants control some areas of neighbouring Adamawa and Yobe states, and recently took control of the town and a multi-national army base at Baga by Lake Chad. The government said 150 people had been killed in that attack but local officials say the figure is far higher and some have put it as high as 2,000. In Monguno, some 50 km (30 miles) from Baga, security sources said that the military was being overwhelmed by Boko Haram's firepower. Houses in the town were also being set ablaze. "Boko Haram has more power than us and are shelling the town ... our colleagues are fleeing," a soldier in Maiduguri said after speaking to friends fighting the insurgents in Monguno.

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Jan.2015

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Some elements of the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram have slaughtered 4 people, carried away 350 sheep and goats and 800 oxen.  Cameroon Concord sources in the Far North region hinted that the incident occurred at Kossa in the department of Mayo-Sava earlier today. We gathered that 30 heavily armed Boko Haram fighters, made an intrusion into three villages: Ayouri, Mogogne and Woumre in the Kossa sub division looted and also abducted 4 young teenagers.

Our senior military informant revealed at the time of writing this report that the Nigerian Islamic sect seems to be running out of cash and basic food supplies. Consequently, Cameroonian traders and farmers have now become regular targets.

Boko Haram incursions into Cameroon territory are made easy through the porous borders between Cameroon and Nigeria. The two countries are separated by a long border of over 2,000 kilometres. In addition, the populations of both sides of the border speak the same language which facilitates one hand the intrusion of members of the Nigerian Islamist sect to Cameroon.

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Jan.2015

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A terrorist attack by Nigeria’s Takfiri group, Boko Haram, has killed 15 Muslims in the country’s northeast. The attack early Saturday targeted the Kambari village with Boko Haram terrorists setting the entire area ablaze, Nigerian security officials said.People in Kambari, which is near the Muslim-dominated city of Maiduguri, were preparing for the morning prayers when the attack happened. A village leader was also among the dead.

Maiduguri, the capital of the northeastern Borno State, has been repeatedly affected by Boko Haram’s terrorist attacks over the past five years. A presidential election campaign has been launched in the city where the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, and the former military ruler, Mohammadu Buhari, a Muslim, are expected to engage in a fierce rivalry for the February 14 poll. Nigerian officials have stated that they will provide sufficient security for the upcoming election and people that have been displaced by Boko Haram attacks will be able to take part in the vote.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Jan.2015

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As Nigeria approaches its most divisive and closely fought election since the end of military rule in 1999, its leaders are having to reassure voters that Africa's most populous nation will remain in one piece. The Feb. 14 vote pitting President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian popular in his southern oil-producing Niger Delta region and in the east, against former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim favoured in the north and religiously mixed southwest, is already proving violent, with the electorate in Africa's biggest economy more polarised than for decades. "Despite the much-vaunted fear that our nation may not survive the elections ... I remain optimistic that we have ... the maturity to rise above the challenges," Senate President David Mark told parliament last week.

"Our nation will not disintegrate after the elections." Ever since 1914, when Britain carved Nigeria out of a swathe of West Africa that was home to diverse peoples speaking more than 500 languages, it has been dogged by the question of how viable it is as a unified nation state. However, most analysts say that even if serious bloodshed follows the election, as many expect, the worst-case scenario of a break-up of a country of 180 million people remains unlikely. "Nigeria has an enormous capacity to absorb risk," the International Crisis Group's Africa director Comfort Ero said. "While there are significant concerns about the elections, we are not predicting break-up."

However, she added that the republic was "in deep trouble, probably more than at any time since the end of military rule ... or even the civil war." The last time a bit of Nigeria tried to secede, it triggered the 1960s Biafra civil war in which more than a million people died. After that it seemed Nigerians were better off together. But as the election cycle has hotted up, some have floated the idea of division, and Boko Haram insurgents controlling territory the size of Belgium in the northeast are waging an increasingly bloody campaign for a breakaway Islamic state. Separately, dozens of people die every month in ethnic violence in the Middle Belt, where the largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet across a patchwork of minority groups that are likely to be split between the two candidates.

"Nigeria is bursting at the seams with ethno-religious ... problems waiting to explode," columnist Bayo Oluwasanmi wrote in the African Herald Express, a local daily, last month. "Competition in the coming 2015 presidential election could break the already tattered ties that keep Nigeria whole." That is probably hyperbole but there are signs the elections could trigger violence that may not be as easy to quell as in 2011, when Buhari's loss to Jonathan triggered three days of riots in the north that killed 800 and displaced 65,000. Besides regional and ethnic differences, Buhari is also a protest vote for many who say Jonathan has failed to tackle insecurity and corruption, Nigerians' two biggest complaints, and who was seen as tough on both when he ruled in the 1980s.

The pair hugged as they signed a peace pact last week, but clashes between thugs from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) and Buhari's opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) have marred campaign rallies, and the rhetoric remains poisonous and sometimes tinged with religion.
Last year the PDP accused the APC of a "devilish plot" to impose an "Islamic agenda" on Nigeria, a dangerous appeal to religious sentiment, while Jonathan has played up his Christian identity, forging ties with hardline evangelical pastors. PDP state governor Ibrahim Shema had to retract a speech in November in which he described APC supporters as "cockroaches" and urged the crowd to "crush them", a chilling echo of Hutu militia radio broadcasts during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. On the other side, APC governor Rotimi Amaechi said this month that if the poll was not fair, the opposition would set up a "parallel government", as happened after a disputed election in Ivory Coast in 2010.

"If they deny Buhari victory, it could mean civil war because both sides are so dug in," prominent northern opposition politician Mohammed Junaidu told Reuters. The 2010 Ivory Coast election did spark a civil war but the country was already militarily divided, which Nigeria is not. In Kenya in 2007, a disputed election triggered three weeks of ethnic bloodshed that killed 1,200, a toll that would be far higher in Nigeria where there are many more people and weapons. Ultimately what makes these polls so dicey is that they are a genuine contest, said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. By running in 2011 Jonathan broke an agreement with northern elites, in their minds at least, that it was the north's 'turn' to field a president. Now such regional deals are in tatters. "In the past there has been a kind of consensus among the people who run Nigeria ... Elections at the presidential level were largely predetermined," Campbell said. "What we are talking about now are real elections, with a polarised electorate."

(Reuters)

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Ngwa Bertrand

23.Jan.2015

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As Nigeria approaches its most divisive and closely fought election since the end of military rule in 1999, its leaders are having to reassure voters that Africa's most populous nation will remain in one piece. The Feb. 14 vote pitting President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian popular in his southern oil-producing Niger Delta region and in the east, against former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim favoured in the north and religiously mixed southwest, is already proving violent, with the electorate in Africa's biggest economy more polarised than for decades. "Despite the much-vaunted fear that our nation may not survive the elections ... I remain optimistic that we have ... the maturity to rise above the challenges," Senate President David Mark told parliament last week.

"Our nation will not disintegrate after the elections." Ever since 1914, when Britain carved Nigeria out of a swathe of West Africa that was home to diverse peoples speaking more than 500 languages, it has been dogged by the question of how viable it is as a unified nation state. However, most analysts say that even if serious bloodshed follows the election, as many expect, the worst-case scenario of a break-up of a country of 180 million people remains unlikely. "Nigeria has an enormous capacity to absorb risk," the International Crisis Group's Africa director Comfort Ero said. "While there are significant concerns about the elections, we are not predicting break-up."

However, she added that the republic was "in deep trouble, probably more than at any time since the end of military rule ... or even the civil war." The last time a bit of Nigeria tried to secede, it triggered the 1960s Biafra civil war in which more than a million people died. After that it seemed Nigerians were better off together. But as the election cycle has hotted up, some have floated the idea of division, and Boko Haram insurgents controlling territory the size of Belgium in the northeast are waging an increasingly bloody campaign for a breakaway Islamic state. Separately, dozens of people die every month in ethnic violence in the Middle Belt, where the largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet across a patchwork of minority groups that are likely to be split between the two candidates.

"Nigeria is bursting at the seams with ethno-religious ... problems waiting to explode," columnist Bayo Oluwasanmi wrote in the African Herald Express, a local daily, last month. "Competition in the coming 2015 presidential election could break the already tattered ties that keep Nigeria whole." That is probably hyperbole but there are signs the elections could trigger violence that may not be as easy to quell as in 2011, when Buhari's loss to Jonathan triggered three days of riots in the north that killed 800 and displaced 65,000. Besides regional and ethnic differences, Buhari is also a protest vote for many who say Jonathan has failed to tackle insecurity and corruption, Nigerians' two biggest complaints, and who was seen as tough on both when he ruled in the 1980s.

The pair hugged as they signed a peace pact last week, but clashes between thugs from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) and Buhari's opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) have marred campaign rallies, and the rhetoric remains poisonous and sometimes tinged with religion.
Last year the PDP accused the APC of a "devilish plot" to impose an "Islamic agenda" on Nigeria, a dangerous appeal to religious sentiment, while Jonathan has played up his Christian identity, forging ties with hardline evangelical pastors. PDP state governor Ibrahim Shema had to retract a speech in November in which he described APC supporters as "cockroaches" and urged the crowd to "crush them", a chilling echo of Hutu militia radio broadcasts during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. On the other side, APC governor Rotimi Amaechi said this month that if the poll was not fair, the opposition would set up a "parallel government", as happened after a disputed election in Ivory Coast in 2010.

"If they deny Buhari victory, it could mean civil war because both sides are so dug in," prominent northern opposition politician Mohammed Junaidu told Reuters. The 2010 Ivory Coast election did spark a civil war but the country was already militarily divided, which Nigeria is not. In Kenya in 2007, a disputed election triggered three weeks of ethnic bloodshed that killed 1,200, a toll that would be far higher in Nigeria where there are many more people and weapons. Ultimately what makes these polls so dicey is that they are a genuine contest, said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. By running in 2011 Jonathan broke an agreement with northern elites, in their minds at least, that it was the north's 'turn' to field a president. Now such regional deals are in tatters. "In the past there has been a kind of consensus among the people who run Nigeria ... Elections at the presidential level were largely predetermined," Campbell said. "What we are talking about now are real elections, with a polarised electorate."

(Reuters)

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Ngwa Bertrand

23.Jan.2015

Hits: 1351

As Nigeria approaches its most divisive and closely fought election since the end of military rule in 1999, its leaders are having to reassure voters that Africa's most populous nation will remain in one piece. The Feb. 14 vote pitting President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian popular in his southern oil-producing Niger Delta region and in the east, against former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim favoured in the north and religiously mixed southwest, is already proving violent, with the electorate in Africa's biggest economy more polarised than for decades. "Despite the much-vaunted fear that our nation may not survive the elections ... I remain optimistic that we have ... the maturity to rise above the challenges," Senate President David Mark told parliament last week.

"Our nation will not disintegrate after the elections." Ever since 1914, when Britain carved Nigeria out of a swathe of West Africa that was home to diverse peoples speaking more than 500 languages, it has been dogged by the question of how viable it is as a unified nation state. However, most analysts say that even if serious bloodshed follows the election, as many expect, the worst-case scenario of a break-up of a country of 180 million people remains unlikely. "Nigeria has an enormous capacity to absorb risk," the International Crisis Group's Africa director Comfort Ero said. "While there are significant concerns about the elections, we are not predicting break-up."

However, she added that the republic was "in deep trouble, probably more than at any time since the end of military rule ... or even the civil war." The last time a bit of Nigeria tried to secede, it triggered the 1960s Biafra civil war in which more than a million people died. After that it seemed Nigerians were better off together. But as the election cycle has hotted up, some have floated the idea of division, and Boko Haram insurgents controlling territory the size of Belgium in the northeast are waging an increasingly bloody campaign for a breakaway Islamic state. Separately, dozens of people die every month in ethnic violence in the Middle Belt, where the largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet across a patchwork of minority groups that are likely to be split between the two candidates.

"Nigeria is bursting at the seams with ethno-religious ... problems waiting to explode," columnist Bayo Oluwasanmi wrote in the African Herald Express, a local daily, last month. "Competition in the coming 2015 presidential election could break the already tattered ties that keep Nigeria whole." That is probably hyperbole but there are signs the elections could trigger violence that may not be as easy to quell as in 2011, when Buhari's loss to Jonathan triggered three days of riots in the north that killed 800 and displaced 65,000. Besides regional and ethnic differences, Buhari is also a protest vote for many who say Jonathan has failed to tackle insecurity and corruption, Nigerians' two biggest complaints, and who was seen as tough on both when he ruled in the 1980s.

The pair hugged as they signed a peace pact last week, but clashes between thugs from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) and Buhari's opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) have marred campaign rallies, and the rhetoric remains poisonous and sometimes tinged with religion.
Last year the PDP accused the APC of a "devilish plot" to impose an "Islamic agenda" on Nigeria, a dangerous appeal to religious sentiment, while Jonathan has played up his Christian identity, forging ties with hardline evangelical pastors. PDP state governor Ibrahim Shema had to retract a speech in November in which he described APC supporters as "cockroaches" and urged the crowd to "crush them", a chilling echo of Hutu militia radio broadcasts during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. On the other side, APC governor Rotimi Amaechi said this month that if the poll was not fair, the opposition would set up a "parallel government", as happened after a disputed election in Ivory Coast in 2010.

"If they deny Buhari victory, it could mean civil war because both sides are so dug in," prominent northern opposition politician Mohammed Junaidu told Reuters. The 2010 Ivory Coast election did spark a civil war but the country was already militarily divided, which Nigeria is not. In Kenya in 2007, a disputed election triggered three weeks of ethnic bloodshed that killed 1,200, a toll that would be far higher in Nigeria where there are many more people and weapons. Ultimately what makes these polls so dicey is that they are a genuine contest, said John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. By running in 2011 Jonathan broke an agreement with northern elites, in their minds at least, that it was the north's 'turn' to field a president. Now such regional deals are in tatters. "In the past there has been a kind of consensus among the people who run Nigeria ... Elections at the presidential level were largely predetermined," Campbell said. "What we are talking about now are real elections, with a polarised electorate."

(Reuters)

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Ngwa Bertrand

23.Jan.2015

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