NIGERIA: Residents in Lagos cautiously welcome a state of emergency declared by President Goodluck Jonathan in three northeastern states in response to an Islamist insurgency

Record ID: 236070

  • Title: NIGERIA: Residents in Lagos cautiously welcome a state of emergency declared by President Goodluck Jonathan in three northeastern states in response to an Islamist insurgency
  • Date: 15th May 2013
  • Summary: LAGOS, NIGERIA (MAY 15, 2013) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF NEWSPAPER STAND WITH RESIDENTS READING HEADLINES
  • Embargoed: 30th May 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9S28MSQ6WBMQBFW31905RPRLC
  • Story Text: Reactions poured in from Nigeria's commercial city of Lagos hours after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three northeastern states on Tuesday (May 14) in response to a worsening Islamist insurgency.
    Islamist sect Boko Haram has intensified its attacks on security forces and government targets in its northeast stronghold this month, prompting Jonathan to declare an emergency in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
    Francis Ikolodo, a resident in Lagos, said Jonathan should have declared a state of emergency earlier.
    "As far as I'm concerned, it's even late because this is something he ought to have done since, earlier before now, but I think Jonathan is beginning to, you know, step up the game and as a leader for you to work effectively, you must step on toes," he said.
    Meanwhile, Alaisha Canktus is a northerner who has been unhappy with the killings in the region.
    "Declaration of that three states of emergency yesterday is really good because we cannot count the number of lives that we have lost this year in that three states, lost. I even expect Nassarawa to be a man," Canktus, who works as a civil servant, said.
    Military vehicles carried scores of troops as they arrived in parts of northeast Nigeria on Wednesday (May 15).
    A Reuters witness saw six lorries laden with soldiers enter the city of Yola, capital of Adamawa state, which is one of the three states covered by the state of emergency.
    The Boko Haram insurgency has cost thousands of lives and destabilised Africa's top energy producing nation since it began in 2009.
    The movement has targeted security forces, Christian worshippers and politicians in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north.
    The troop deployment is likely to placate some of Jonathan's critics, who had accused him of not facing up to the gravity of the crisis, although some northern politicians have already voiced concern over the ratcheting up of tensions.
    Derin Ologbenla, a political scientist and analyst at the University of Lagos, said the actions taken by the president were necessary.
    "These people have gone beyond the pale of reason and for me and for majority of Nigerians, enough is enough, and I think the president has also reached that state of mind that these guys are not going to be treated with kids gloves and the military have to come in. If the military go overboard, the military will be disciplined later, but you have to give them a free hand to do their job," he said.
    He added that Jonathan should extend the emergency to cover more regions in the north.
    "I will urge the President to go further by declaring state of emergency in Kano, Jos, Plateau and possibly Kaduna and Taraba and even Bauchi because there are still pockets of these people, I mean the Boko Haram group, all over the northern states and you know, the President has been very patient with them to come out and make their claims or let us know their grievances and they have not really come out and let us know their grievances. What they have done is just to show brutal force and the brutality of the unleashed terror on the people of northern Nigeria is very, very, very unacceptable," Ologbenla said.
    In Maiduguri, the biggest and most heavily defended city in any of the states affected, and the birthplace of the insurgency, residents reported an influx of troops from outside.
    The mood was tense in the city -- shops were mostly shut and there were few people on the streets. Schools were also closed.
    Jonathan's orders followed growing evidence that Boko Haram now control parts of the northeastern territory around Lake Chad, where local officials have fled.
    Officials said they control at least 10 local government areas of northeastern Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency and are using porous borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger to smuggle in weapons and carry out cross-border raids.
    Dozens of Boko Haram fighters in buses and machine gun-mounted trucks laid siege to the town of Bama, in Borno, last week, freeing over 100 prison inmates and leaving 55 people dead, mostly police and other security forces.
    Two weeks earlier, scores were killed in the fishing village of Baga, also in Borno, on the shores of Lake Chad, when troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad raided it looking for Islamists who had apparently killed a soldier.
    Local residents said soldiers were responsible for many civilian deaths.
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