Nigerian government unable to contain Boko Haram, says former military leader

The main goal of Boko Haram, or for that matter any practitioners of Islam in it's broadest definition is the implementation of sharia.  The Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan seems unwilling, or unable to contain the spreading jihad violence.  As Boko Haram increases it's campaign of murder and chaos, it will present itself as the solution to the violence; give us what we want and we will stop killing you.

Good luck, Jonathan.


From The National December 27

Nigeria lacks the leadership to quell militant threat of Boko Haram

ABUJA // Nigeria lacks competent leaders to tackle its security problems, a former military ruler said yesterday, following Christmas Day bomb attacks on churches by Islamist militants that killed more than two dozen people.

Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner who lost the last presidential election in April to incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, said the government was slow to respond and had shown indifference to the bombings.

The Boko Haram Islamist sect, which aims to impose Sharia across Africa's most populous country, claimed responsibility for three church bombings, the second Christmas in a row it has caused destruction at Christian houses of worship.

Security forces also blamed the sect for two explosions in the north and fear is growing that Boko Haram is trying to ignite a sectarian civil war between Christians and Muslims who, for the most part, coexist in peace.

"How on earth would the Vatican and the British authorities speak before the Nigerian government on attacks within Nigeria that have led to the deaths of our citizens?" Mr Buhari said in a statement published by Punch newspaper. "This is clearly a failure of leadership at a time the government needs to assure the people of the capacity to guarantee the safety of lives and property."

He said the government needed to do more than spend more on security to deal with the problem.

Mr Jonathan, a Christian from the south who is struggling to contain the threat of Islamist militancy, called the attacks "unfortunate" but said Boko Haram would "not be (around) forever. It will end one day".

Pope Benedict yesterday condemned the attacks as an "absurd gesture" and prayed that "the hands of the violent be stopped".

The pope, speaking from his window overlooking St Peter's Square in Rome, said such violence brought only pain, destruction and death.

The attacks strike at historic internal religious and regional divides that have often threatened the country - dangerous divisions that included a brief but bloody civil war over the secession of Biafra in the eastern region.

The Christmas church bombings included one in the central city of Jos, a religious and ethnic region lying in the heart of the divide between the mercantile, largely Muslim pastoralist peoples of the north and the traditionally farming, largely Christians in the south.

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