Speaker Explains Governor’s Investment In Delta State Educational System.

The Speaker, Delta State House of Assembly, Rt Hon Peter Onwusanya, has said that Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan’s investment in education is to give focus to children and youths in the state.

He urged alumni associations in the state to support the state government in its quest to position the state for a better future for the citizens.

The speaker made the remark when he hosted the executives of Osadenis High School Old Boys Association (OHSOBA), in his constituency office, Asaba.

Hon Onwusanya pointed out that Osadenis High School was one of the beneficiaries of Governor Uduaghan’s investment in education, stressing that the various education projects by the state government had reduced capital projects on the part of alumni associations.

The speaker who is an alumnus of Osadenis High School, Asaba advised OHSOBA executives to support government efforts, especially through award of scholarships, payment of JAMB fees for indigent students and seminars on careers and cultism.

He expressed his determination to continue to do his best to better the lives of his constituents since he was in the House to offer service and not for personal gains, pledging to continue to improve on the achievements he had recorded in office since his election.\

Hon Onwusanya commended the leadership of OHSOBA for their unflinching support, urging them to sustain their interest in the development of their alma mater.

Earlier, the President-General of OHSOBA, Comrade John Diabua, had said they had followed the activities of the speaker and were impressed by his performance as a lawmaker and Speaker of the state House of Assembly.

He commended the stare government for the various projects executed in Osadenis High School, Asaba, and pledged their support to the state governor and the speaker.

 

 

Biafra, The Ostrich Mentality And Nigeria’s Tragedy

Okey Ndibe 

There is a sense in which the name of the malaise afflicting Nigeria is Biafra. I have argued before—and I must do so again—that Nigeria’s refusal to confront and address the sore of the Biafran War is the chief reason no nation has been able to materialize out of the space called Nigeria, no peace has been had in that space, and no real progress—much less development—has been recorded. As the world watches, riveted, Nigeria is spinning and spinning in a dizzying, ridiculous, violent dance, racing ever closer to the edge of that jagged precipice we have all romanced for fifty-four years—if not before.

The wound called Biafra haunts Nigeria precisely because Nigeria imagined that it could get over Biafra through cheap sloganeering (no victor, no vanquished), the mere invocation of the mantra of the Rs—reconstruction, rehabilitation and reconciliation—through silence and willed forgetfulness—indeed, by playing the ostrich.

I’m not going to be detained by contested, contending accounts of the Biafran struggle, or even questions pertaining to whether the quest for secession was inevitable. At minimum, we ought to agree that Nigeria, from the moment of its British conception, was neither essential nor natural. It was, above all, convenient and profitable for the British. And all the logic that informed its constitution made eminent sense, finally, mostly from the prism of British interests.

When the British removed their bodies—but not necessarily their spirits and ghosts—from the Nigerian space, we all had a historical duty. That duty was to pause and ask the question, what does Nigeria mean? It was to determine whether we all—the 400 odd ethnic collectivities that the British bracketed inside the space called Nigeria—wished to maintain the shape of this British design. It was to discern whether we all—the constituent elements of the space—felt sufficiently animated by the prospect of living together, fraternizing as a people with shared aspirations and common destiny. In the event that we all found Nigeria an irreducible, compelling proposition, then we should have hatched out the terms of our coexistence.

We should have sketched out our imagination of Nigeria and spelt out what it meant to be called a citizen of Nigeria. In other words, we should have commenced the task of remaking the British-delineated space called Nigeria into a veritable, vital, and robust nation. Had we done this, we would have acquired some kind of compass for navigating our self-fashioned nation towards the direction of our own envisioning.

We did not as much as attempt to grapple with that arduous, messy, but inescapable process of nation-formation. We settled for the British-made illusion. We were content to take the British confection of a Nigerian idea and run with it. We pretended that there was some inherent logic to Nigeria, that it was coherent and organic, a full redemption of some promissory note, almost a divinely designed imperative.
Perhaps we shirked this duty out of laziness, a sense of convenience, or a naïve faith in the British. Perhaps, then, we believed that Nigeria was a nation just because imperial Britain had seen fit to outfit the space with roads that linked its different parts as well as such accouterments of the modern state as postal and telegraph services, railways, the police, prisons, schools, and a cadre of civil servants.

We neglected to pay attention to the fact that, at every opportunity—especially when our “nationalist” figures pressed the case for Independence—British officials had insisted that Nigeria was not a nation but a collection of “nations.” In retrospect, we should have paid attention to the British. They owned the patent on Nigeria; they knew that they had not achieved a nation—indeed, that they had not intended to achieve one—when they set out to cobble together the space called Nigeria.

It was a monumental error, this collective failure to examine the crisis-prone, top-down edifice called Nigeria. We all found ourselves in the nightmarish situation of belonging to an ostensible nation that reflected little or no sense of community. Instead, life in Nigeria was marked by strife and disillusionment and mutual distrust and—above all—a pathological brand of competitiveness. Forced to belong within a space that had no spirit-lifting narrative, no pathos or inspiring ideal to impart, Nigerians became fascinated with “eating” the flesh of their hollow bequest unto death.

It is no surprise that the metaphor of the “national cake” was a central, if not dominant, part of the Nigerian discourse. In the literature, journalism and politics of the country, each group exhibited an obsession with cornering its own “share of the national cake.” Nigeria made sense to Nigerians only as a banquet, a delectable dish, as something to be consumed.

A nation is dreamed and then carefully, deliberately, consciously designed and built. No people in history have ever “eaten” their way into a nation. If Nigeria were a true nation—or even one with prospects—we would all have been concerned with working hard to lift it to great heights. We would have been bakers, baking Nigeria into a grand cake, not just devourers bent on cornering ever-larger slices of the Nigerian cake.

Truth be told, the Igbo appeared the most committed of any group to the idea of realizing Nigeria. They dispersed to all corners of Nigeria and threw down roots. Wherever they settled, they built homes and learned the language and opened businesses or began careers as civil servants. They seemed to have taken more seriously than most the summons to inspirit Nigeria with national consciousness.

The pogroms of the Igbo, especially in 1966 and 1967, exposed the fragility of the British-fangled space and amounted to a profound, blood-soaked repudiation of the Nigerian project. Consequently, Biafran secession became the most significant interrogation of the unformed, ill-formed, malformed project named Nigeria. Biafra was far from an idyll; it actually had its imperfections and contradictions, including the cooptation of the ethnic minorities of the Niger Delta. Even so, it was a charter for justice, a demand by a besieged people to be left alone to arrange their lives in a separate space, apart from their tormentors.

Nigerians had not taken time to audit the content of what they inherited from the British, but they were quite willing to sacrifice more than two million lives in a little more than thirty months in order to sustain their unexamined, British-made project. The Biafran aspiration—which was the first time a group had risen to question a colonial arrangement—was ultimately squelched, the better to uphold the inviolability of Nigeria.

Alas, the defeat of Biafra birthed monsters that have since menaced all of us, exposing the seams and fissures in a space that continues to pretend that a nation already exists within it.

The concluding part of this column will be published next week. Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe

LACKING IN FRONT, LAGGING BEHIND; THE BURDEN OF AN UNSCRUPULOUS TREASURY LOOTING RULING ELITE

BY JAYE GASKIA

Why do some nations lag behind other nations? Why inspite of the immense human and natural resource potential does our country Nigeria, continue to lag behind? Why have we not fulfilled the promise of independence? Why are we nowhere near realising even half of the potential of this tremendously endowed Nation?

What manner of administratively inept and congenitally light fingered ruling class have we been saddled with as a people?

Let us take some examples; In the early 1960s, in the immediate aftermath of ‘flag independence’, Nigeria established, about the same time as Brazil, a Defense Industrial Corporation, now more than 50 years on, the Brazilian Corporation now manufactures Military tanks, aircrafts and other military hardware! 

And the Nigerian counterpart? The Kaduna based DIC is famous [or perhaps notorious] only for the fact that it is now a manufacturer of furniture!

Again from about the same period, Malaysia came to Nigeria, the world’s then leading producer and exporter of palm produce, to gain insight into this success story, and take palm seedlings to replicate the Nigerian success in Malaysia. Fast forward to the 21^st century; Malaysia is now not only the world’s leading producer of palm produce, but a major player in the global market for products derived from palm oil, and palm kernel, including biodiesel. In Nigeria on the other hand, not only do we import palm oil, we also depend more than 80% on imported refined fuel, even though we are one of the top 7 largest producers of crude oil.

Let us look at power generation; 

The mainstay of any modern economy. By the beginning of the 4^th Republic in 1999, the country was generating less than 3,000MW of electricity; and going by the projections of the vision 2020:20, Nigeria needs to be generating, distributing and transmitting not less than 35,000MW by the year 2020 in order to become one of the 20 largest economies in the world. 

Nevertheless, inspite of this vision, regardless of the nearly $50bn investment in the sector since 1999, notwithstanding the privatization of the sector, and several Power and electricity road maps later; as of April 2014, according to the presentation of the Minister of power to the National Conference committee on Energy, here is the grim statistics – “Current Transmission capacity – 6,870MW; Current Distribution capacity – 7,325MW; Technical Loss Rate – 12%; Current Installed Generation Capacity – 9,920MW; Current Available Generation Capacity – 6,000MW; but Alas, Current Peak Generation Capacity – 3,962MW.

Several questions should of necessity agitate our minds from this unimaginable scenario. What is responsible for the huge discrepancies between installed generation capacity [at more than 9,000MW], the available generation capacity [at 6,000MW], and the peak (actual) generation capacity [at just below 4,000MW]? How can we be comfortable with losing nearly 4,000MW between installed and available generation capacity; and losing a further 2,000MW between available, and actual peak generation capacity? 

To compound an already disgustingly bad situation, why do we always witness system failures, including total system failures whenever we are close to generating and distributing 4,000MW of electricity, even though the installed transmission capacity is 6,870MWs? 

What manner of ruling elite worth its economic, much less its political salt can live comfortably with such gross inefficiency? How come after spending [some will say wasting] nearly $50bn on transforming the sector, the sector stills require more than $35bn worth of new investment after privatization to minimally improve generation, distribution, and transmission of electricity for a mere 10,000MW peak generation? And more significantly, why inspite of this odious testimony to filth, have no heads rolled? Why haven’t there been investigations, arrests, prosecutions, sackings/dismissals, and judicial punishments meted out to convicted culprits?

Let us move on to other areas. How can any right thinking and or rational human being explain a situation where we are at one and the same time, one of the world’s largest producer and ex[porter of crude oil, as well as being one of its largest importer of refined petroleum products? What manner of gluttonous greed is responsible for this monumental anomaly?

As a result of the grand ineptitude, and crass banditry of our treasury looting ruling elite we have become one of the most unequal countries in the world. The world’s 26^th largest economy, Africa’s largest economy, is also home to the world’s third largest population/concentration of poor peoples. Furthermore, contrary to Section 16 of the 1999 constitution as amended, a mere 10% of the country’s wealthiest citizens own more than 40% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 20% own a mere 4% of National wealth.

To make matters worse, The world’s 25^th richest man, and Africa’s richest man, as well as Africa’s richest woman and the richest black woman are both Nigerians, in a country with 112 Million people [705 of its population] living in poverty; in a country with nearly 30% general unemployment, and where 54% [NBS – 2012]/80% [CBN – 2014] of youths between 15 and 35 years are unemployed [that is more than half, or just about four-fifth of 70 million youths]!

 Add to this the fact that Nigeria, according to official figures from the Housing Ministry suffers 18 million housing deficit; that is nearly 90 million people [at the average household size of 5] living in subhuman conditions or homeless, again contrary to Section 16, Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution amended.

The end result of these greed compounded ineptitude of the thieving ruling class has been the current extremely high levels of insecurity and violent crime across the country. So much so that according the latest report on The situation of internal displacement and the condition of the internally displaced worldwide; Nigeria now has an internally displaced population of 3.3 Million People. 

This figure of 3.3 million internally displaced Nigerians as a result mainly of conflict, is the 3^rd largest population of internally displaced persons globally, after Syria and Colombia, both of which are countries with long running civil wars. What is more, Nigeria, along with four other countries [all of which are experiencing civil wars] account for 63% of the global total number of internally displaced persons. The other four, civil war ravaged countries, are Syria, Colombia, DRC, and Sudan.

So this is the very grim picture of our brutish existence 54 years after independence, a collectively damning scorecard of our pillaging and light fingered ruling class after 100 years of amalgamation, and on the eve of another general election!

We can draw only one rational, logical and humane conclusion from this nightmarish scenario; this ruling class has not only collectively failed us, it is also historically incapable of leading us out of the doldrums, and away from the edge of darkness towards which it has inexorably led us. 

This is why we must make the upcoming elections all through 2014 and 2015 issue based elections. 

This is why we must aggressively interrogate not only the candidates, but also their parties; and more significantly, this is why we must in taking our destiny into our own hands, create, establish, and nurture our own independent political platform, which alone can enable us make the historically necessary transition from ‘Protest To Power’.

Follow me on Twitter: @jayegaskia & [DPSR]protesttopower; Interact with me on FaceBook: Jaye Gaskia & Take Back Nigeria

Tight security as crisis-torn Edo House of Assembly resumes sitting

•Newsmen, Assembly workers turned back

By Nelson Dafe

Security was water-tight as the crisis-torn Edo State House of Assembly resumed sitting this morning. Journalists, Assembly workers, personal aides of the lawmakers and men of the State Security Service (SSS) were refused entry into the main complex of the Assembly.

Particularly insistent on the denial of entry into the House by some journalists (including News Express Correspondent) was one of the suspended legislators, Abdul Rahzak Momoh (PDP).

The police officer in charge, not wanting to be seen as biased, agreed that any non-legislator who was not cleared to enter by either of the warring factions of the House had to leave.

All the lawmakers were frisked (including Speaker Uyi Igbe) before entrance to guarantee that they were not in possession of arms or other dangerous objects.

The House is locked in crisis over the fate of four suspended PDP lawmakers who are being accused of gross indiscipline. The suspected members have vowed to defy a court order that asked them to stay away from sitting in the House.

As at the time of filing in this report the lawmakers were inside, with little information available on how things were going.

Source News Express

Pilfering of luggage resurfaces at Lagos Airport

Pilfering of belongings of air travellers has returned in full force at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The development has left many victims with sour tales of how they lost valuables after arriving at the airport from various overseas countries.

The victims alleged that their belongings were tampered with during the process of bringing their loads to the conveyor belts at the arrival hall of the airport.

According to them, any baggage not having padlock stands high risk of being pilfered by the ground staff of the aviation handling companies at the airport.

One of the victims, Mrs Sarah Ashafa, lamented that her luggage had been tampered with at the nation’s premier gateway after a recent trip overseas.

Ashafa lamented that she lost many personal belongings at the airport on June 3 on her return from a trip to the U.S., saying that she had suffered a similar experience before.

When my bags got to me through the conveyor belt, I discovered that one of the bags that had my under wears, shoes and other items had been torn open with many items missing.

I was very embarrassed; why should they steal my pants along with my shoes and clothes.

The authorities should do something about it because I know that this will be happening to other passengers. I believe it happened here in Lagos,” she said.

Another victim, Mr Fred Uzo, who returned to Lagos on May 8, aboard a Delta Airlines flight from the U.S, also complained that he lost an expensive belt which he kept in an unlocked compartment of his luggage.
I was amazed when I returned home to discover that the belt was gone. I later realised that I kept the belt in an unlocked compartment of my luggage.

“I was totally embarrassed because I didn’t realise that such crimes would still be taking place at the Lagos Airport after all the measures put in place by the Federal Government.’’

Uzo said that he had thought that the era of luggage pilfering at the airport had ended, urging the authorities at the airport to step up security at the luggage area of the airport.

He said that he was not aware that he ought to have reported the incident to officials of the airline he used or to other relevant authorities at the airport.

A staff of the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO), who spoke on the development, said the management of the company was not aware that belongings of travellers were being tampered with at the airport.

The worker, who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to comment on the issue, said that no passenger had come forward to report the matter to the NAHCO management.

The official said that if such incident occurred, the passenger had the right to report the matter to the airline he or she used for the trip.

He argued that that such unfortunate incident may not have happened at the point of arrival because the luggage may have been tampered with at the point of departure.

According to him, any case of reported pilfering usually shows on the computer system of the airline, ground handlers and the security agencies involved for appropriate investigations to be taken.

We advise the victim to formally report the incident either to the airline or the Consumer Protection Unit of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority at the airport.

“Once the case is reported, a copy of the report is electronically sent to the airline, ground handling company and agencies involve in scanning of luggage at the point of entry,” he said.

The official said that the investigation would lead to the arrest of the culprit, assuring that appropriate sanctions would always be taken against culprits.

 by: Okukuwe Ibiam <o.ibiam@gmail.com>

#BringBackOurGirls: Addressing the Growing Threat of Boko Haram

  

 

Testimony

Robert P. Jackson
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on African Affairs

Washington, DC

May 15, 2014

Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Flake, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to update you about U.S. efforts to address the chilling threat that Boko Haram represents to Nigeria, one of our most important partners in sub-Saharan Africa.

It has now been one month since Boko Haram kidnapped more than two hundred girls from the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria. At the time of the kidnapping, these brave girls had returned to their high school in order to complete examinations that would allow them to attend university. 

By seeking knowledge and opportunity, they represented a challenge to Boko Haram in the heart of its area of operations. As the world now knows, Boko Haram opposes democracy and formal education. It has attempted to crush the kind of faith in the promise of education and prosperity that families in Chibok showed.

Boko Haram, the terrorist organization that kidnapped these girls, has shown it has no regard for human life. It has been killing innocent people in Nigeria for some time, and the attack at Chibok is part of that long, terrible trend. 

This year alone, Boko Haram has murdered more than 1000 innocent people in vicious attacks on schools, churches, and mosques. Since 2013, it has targeted and systematically kidnapped women - including these girls – seeking to deny them the education and opportunity they deserve. The abductions in Chibok fit into this larger pattern of violence. Throughout northeastern Nigeria, innocent civilians are terrified by gunmen who come in the night to kill young men and teachers and steal away young women.

Boko Haram has also retained its ability to target Abuja, as we saw with two recent bombings at the Nyanya bus depot outside the capital. And we’re concerned by the expansion of the group’s operations beyond Nigeria, including in Cameroon where it has also conducted kidnappings. The group is not just a Nigerian problem; it is a regional security problem.

We join the world, the people of Nigeria, and the parents of these children in expressing our outrage at Boko Haram’s shocking acts and its perverse ideology.

Young people, in Nigeria and across the globe, deserve the chance to pursue their dreams without suffering the predations of violent extremists. 

What happened in Nigeria resonates around the world, and pleas to free the kidnapped schoolgirls have come from First Lady Michelle Obama, from Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, and other champions of women’s right to an education.

This tragic kidnapping demands that we redouble our efforts to defeat a Foreign Terrorist Organization that has troubled Nigeria for more than a decade. World leaders, including President Obama, have pledged their full support to the government and people of Nigeria as they seek the safe return of these brave girls. We acted swiftly to carry out the President’s pledge. 

By Monday, May 12, the U.S. Government had deployed an 18-member interagency team to provide military and law enforcement assistance, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support. We have provided commercial imagery and are flying manned and unmanned ISR aircraft over Nigeria to support the search. We are working closely with international partners on the ground, including the U.K. and France, and we are pressing for additional multilateral action, including UN Security Council sanctions on Boko Haram. 

As the President has directed, we will do everything possible to support the Nigerians in their efforts to find and free these girls. But we won’t stop there. We can and must continue to work closely with Nigeria to prevent Boko Haram from harming any more innocent people.

Given Nigeria’s importance, Boko Haram cannot be allowed to continue its array of bloody tactics: murdering police officers, snatching children, destroying churches, burning schools, attacking mosques, driving people from their homes, and challenging the government’s authority.

Mr. Chairman, A peaceful and stable Nigeria is crucially important to the future of Africa, and we cannot stay on the sidelines if it stumbles. Nigeria has the continent’s largest population and biggest economy. 

We look to Nigeria as a partner in our quest to help Africans lead lives free of violence and filled with possibility. As an engine of growth, a fountainhead of art and industry, and a political giant, Nigeria is vital to the success of President Obama’s 2012 Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa. As we implement that strategy, we are focusing on building a democratic, prosperous, and secure Nigeria.

Since Boko Haram came to the world’s attention with a massive uprising in 2009, we have been working to help Nigeria counter this threat. We provide Nigeria with security cooperation, which goes toward professionalizing the Nigerian military, investigating bomb sites, improving border security, and carrying out responsible counterterrorism operations. As we hear reports of Boko Haram cells in neighboring countries, we have increasingly placed our response to Boko Haram in a regional context. 

Through our Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, the Global Counterterrorism Forum, and our bilateral relationships with Nigeria’s neighbors, we are encouraging greater information sharing and border security efforts.

 

At the same time, we have been urging Nigeria to reform its approach to Boko Haram. From our own difficult experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, we know that turning the tide of an insurgency requires more than force. 

The state must demonstrate to its citizens that it can protect them and offer them opportunity. When soldiers destroy towns, kill civilians, and detain innocent people with impunity, mistrust takes root. When governments neglect the economic development of remote areas, confidence can falter. 

We share these lessons with our partners in Nigeria, urging them to ensure that security services respect human rights; officials end a culture of impunity; people see the benefits of government; and diverse voices are heard and represented in the capital. We have seen some signs of reform – we were encouraged in March of this year to see National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki announce his “soft approach” to countering violent extremism, though Nigeria needs to follow through on implementing this strategy. 

We have also worked through our Counterterrorism and Conflict and Stabilization Operations Bureaus to promote narratives of nonviolence in Nigeria, and we are working broadly to protect civilians, prevent atrocities, and ensure respect for human rights.

At the same time, we are providing law enforcement assistance, including by training Nigerian law enforcement officials on basic forensics, hostage negotiations, leadership, and task force development.

To counter the spread of violent extremist ideology, we support programs and initiatives – including job training and education -- that create economic alternatives for those vulnerable to being recruited by terrorist organizations.

All of this is part of a coordinated effort to help strengthen Nigeria’s ability to respond responsibly and effectively to these challenges in a way that ensures civilians are protected and human rights are respected.

We have also joined the international effort to isolate Boko Haram. In June 2012, the State Department designated Boko Haram’s top commanders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224.

 In June 2013, the State Department added Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s official leader, to our Rewards for Justice Program and offered up to $7 million for information leading to his location. In November 2013, the State Department designated Boko Haram and Ansaru as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224. 

Last week, our Ambassador met President Jonathan on the margins of the World Economic Forum, and they agreed on the importance of quick action on the UN designation of Boko Haram as a terrorist group. The United Nations Security Council has renewed calls for regional cooperation to address Boko Haram. This week, Nigeria brought this question to the UN Security Council. And as I mentioned, we continue to work with Nigeria and others to press for UN Security Council sanctions on Boko Haram.

The importance of regional and multilateral coordination is clear at a time like this, as Nigeria and its partners seek to prevent Boko Haram from smuggling young women across the border or using neighboring countries as safe havens. I must note, however, that our ability to encourage regional collaboration is made more difficult, at this time, as our highly qualified nominees to be the U.S. Ambassadors to Niger and Cameroon continue to await confirmation by the full Senate.

As we strike a balance between helping empower Nigeria and counseling its government on reform, we engage regularly with Nigeria at all levels of our government. President Obama and Nigerian President Jonathan discussed security issues during their bilateral meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly last September. 

Most recently, our Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Dr. Sarah Sewall, and U.S. Africa Command Commander General David Rodriguez spent May 12 and 13 in Nigeria. They met senior Nigerian security officials to discuss how to intensify efforts against Boko Haram, reform human rights practices, and pursue a comprehensive approach to Boko Haram. 

Under Secretary Sewall and General Rodriguez devoted considerable attention to the crisis surrounding the kidnapped women. Under Secretary Sewall called the principal of the young women’s school in Chibok to express U.S. outrage and deep concern about the deplorable kidnapping.

All of these policy tools – our security cooperation, our legal and sanctions actions, and our diplomatic engagement – constitute the framework within which we are working to help Nigeria safely bring back the women kidnapped by Boko Haram. Resolving this crisis is now one of the highest priorities of the U.S. Government. 

As I mentioned when I began, we deployed an interagency team to advise Nigerian authorities on how to recover safely and assist these young women. Led by a senior diplomat from our Africa Bureau, the team is liaising with counterparts across Nigeria’s Government to offer specialized expertise on military and law enforcement best practices, hostage negotiation, intelligence gathering, strategic communications, and how to mitigate the risks of future kidnappings. 

At the same time, USAID has mobilized resources to provide humanitarian assistance to those affected by Boko Haram violence, including through the provision of psychosocial and medical support and treatment. We are cooperating thoroughly with the U.K., France, and a host of other countries who are also dedicating significant interagency manpower, resources, and time to this effort. Our field team remains in close, coordinated contact with State Department headquarters here in Washington.

Nevertheless, Nigeria’s conflict with Boko Haram will not end when these young women are bought home. Consequently, throughout this crisis, our assistance is framed by our broader and long-term policy goal of helping the Nigerians implement a comprehensive response to defeating Boko Haram that protects civilians, respects human rights, and addresses the underlying causes of the conflict. We are sharing practices and strategies with the government of Nigeria that will bolster its future efforts to defeat this deadly movement.

Nigeria’s importance and the violent attacks committed by Boko Haram are both growing. We cannot ignore either trend. We welcome your interest in these urgent matters, and we look forward to continuing to work with you as we strive to bring these young women home and address the broader threat posed by Boko Haram. I would be pleased to respond to your questions.