Boko Haram came up because of 2015 - Okonjo-Iweala

By Ehi Ekhator

The Federal Government has said yesterday that Boko Haram insurgents came up as a result of the coming Presidential election in 2015 as people are fighting for power using different necessary means.

This was made known by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in an interview conducted by Reuters in Abuja as she was on her way to the airport en route New York.

Tax, Federal Government, Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria economy

She said “There is no war… there is an insurgency. We are not in a Colombia situation,” she added, rejecting comparisons with Colombia which has, for decades, battled a major left-wing insurgency that often affected large swathes of its national territory.

Talking about democracy in Nigeria, she said: “We tend to notice that when the electoral cycle comes in, all these things heat up. What we are going through now is democracy in raw form, because people are fighting for power and they will use anything to get there … and to win the election,” .

She stressed that Boko Haram in their bid to carve out Islamic state has destroyed schools, churches, government offices and security posts in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno, but in all, their fight only affect around 5% of the country’s territory.

She didn’t forget to mention that the insurgents can expand to other terrories as they strike last month in Abuja, Nyanya Motor Park which took the lives of about 75 innocent Nigerians.

The Minister of Finance assured that the Federal Government are working round the clock to bring the insurgency to an end.

She highlighted some of the strategies put in place by the government to tackle the menace, which she listed as:

• Recruitment of more people into the Armed Forces


• Increased spending to tackle the sect’s threat and;


• A Marshall plan for the northeast aimed at lifting the area out of poverty and underdevelopment.

She disclosed further that the sect was receiving support from Cameroon, Niger and Chad, adding that there were plans put in place to stop its sponsors from other militant Islamic groups in the Sahel.

She said : “We need to look at the source of this financing,” she said, stressing that President Goodluck Jonathan was working to obtain regional cooperation to remove Boko Haram’s support from Jihadi groups in the Sahel.”

She said that though Boko Haram had a negative impact on percentage point off Nigeria’s GDP in 2013, she assured that it could still be contained.

“We think we can absorb it, but of course, if like last year, it continues, then we have to make an estimate of the impact,” Okonjo-Iweala said.

She said that Nigeria had in the past stopped stopped insurgencies like Niger Delta militants, adding that Boko Haram can not in anyways be compare to Biafran War that divided the country from 1967-1970.

Responding to questions on abducted girls which has caused uproar among Nigerians, the minister said:  “We recognize that this is an inclusion problem … the fact that the human development indicators in that part of the country are among the lowest,” and hoped that politicians would heed President Goodluck Jonathan’s appeal for unity.

“Everybody has now come together and said this is ridiculous, crazy, unacceptable, for our children to go to school and be sleeping in their beds at night and for some people to come and abduct them,” Okonjo-Iweala said, referring to the schoolgirls’ abduction in which hundreds are still missing. Nigeria as a nation will overcome this,” she added, even as she stressed that the government was working to obtain backing from donors for the programme.

She stressed that despite the set back by the insurgents, the rebashing of the GDP last month, making the country the largest economy ahead of South Africa, more investors are looking closely at Nigeria.

She added “Nobody who is making an investment has so far said they will not make one, that we know of,” .

 

Boko Haram came up because of 2015 - Okonjo-Iweala