Nigeria: Dealing with Boko Haram's violence
In the wake of President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in Nigeria, the government is faced with the tricky task of how to diffuse the violent northern Boko Haram sect, writes Cameron Duodu.
Even though President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are congratulating themselves on their victory in both the presidential, legislative and governorship elections held in April, the elections results give some cause for concern.
President Jonathan was able to obtain a simple majority (57 to 31 per cent) over his nearest rival, the former military head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari. Jonathan also scored enough votes in Nigeria’s 36 states to enable him scale the tricky mathematical provision which obliges the winning presidential candidate to win 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds of the states. (In 1979, a hugely controversial court case arose over the mathematical requirement, which was then to get the sum of ‘2/3 of 19 states’.)
So this year, President Jonathan was not forced to go into a bitter second round, as it had been feared he might have to do.
Equally important, many of the international observers who watched the election declared it ‘free and fair’. In the light of the body blow delivered to the election process, by a one-week postponement, decreed at the last minute by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) – because it was unable to provide all the printed material needed for the election – the judgement of the international observers was quite helpful in setting Nigerians’ minds at rest.
But alas, President Jonathan’s main opponent, General Buhari, thought otherwise and declared that he believed the election had been rigged. This was enough to serve as a signal for some of his followers, especially young unemployed people, to engage in acts of brutal violence. At least 500 people were reported killed in northern Nigeria, where Buhari obtained his greatest support. Many others were injured. Internally displaced persons were estimated to number about 70,000.
The violence was particularly ferocious in Kaduna and Bauchi states, where it took on the depressingly familiar forms of to renew its campaign of wantonly slaughtering people in the cause of religion. (‘Boko Haram’ means, more or less, ‘Western education and lifestyle must be eschewed.’)
Two explosions which killed three people in Maiduguri, Borno state, on 24 April 2011, were Cameron Duodu is a writer and commentator.
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