Jonathan: headed directly to Paris instead.
Reuters/AFP/Abuja
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has cancelled his first visit to the village from which more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted by Islamist rebel group Boko Haram a month ago due to security fears, senior government sources said yesterday.
Jonathan will instead fly directly from the capital Abuja to Paris for a regional summit to discuss the Boko Haram insurgency and wider insecurity and will not now make a stop in the northeastern village of Chibok, said one of the sources.
“The president was planning to go but security advised otherwise on the visit,” said the source of the last-minute decision to cancel the Chibok part of the trip.
Some Nigerians have criticised the government’s initial response to the plight of the girls, who were abducted on April 14, and US officials this week said the government had done too little to adapt to the threat posed by Boko Haram.
Jonathan asked France last week to arrange a security summit with neighbours Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin, and officials from the United States, Britain and the European Union to discuss a co-ordinated response. The summit will take place today.
Jonathan, the former vice-president, assumed the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation in 2010 on the death in office of his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua and won an election the following year. Nigeria will go to the polls again next year.
US officials said the safe return of the 223 girls still missing was now one of Washington’s top priorities, with specialist US teams, drones and surveillance aircraft involved in the rescue effort.
But French officials categorically ruled out Western military intervention, insisting that the solution should be found by Nigeria and its neighbours.
“Boko Haram represents a risk ... for all countries in the region and all heads of state should be aware of that,” a French diplomatic source said, singling out Cameroon as a key player.
Boko Haram fighters have frequently launched attacks from Nigeria’s neighbour to the east, with whom they have had tense relations in the past over disputed territory.
As Jonathan headed to the French capital, critics rounded on him for showing a lack of empathy for the distraught families of the girls and also for implying the northeast was beyond his control.
More than 2,000 have been killed this year alone, most of them civilians, in increasing violence across the Muslim-majority north that has seen churches, schools and entire villages attacked.
“If, as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he is afraid to visit Chibok because of security fears, he is simply telling the hapless people in the northeast that he cannot protect them and they should resign themselves to their fate,” said Debo Adeniran, of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders pressure group.
Lai Mohammed, spokesman for the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) said Jonathan had “lost all direction” and the cancellation was “a good example of his government’s policy indecision”.
“He has clearly abandoned the Nigerian people and Nigerians are conscious of this. Obama went to Afghanistan, so did Bush. I think Jonathan lacks good advisers.”
Jonathan is widely expected to seek re-election next year but critics said the hostage drama suggested he was unfit for high office.