president Thursday on her African tour as the continent's largest oil
producer faces Boko Haram insurgency raising deep concern among
Western powers.
Clinton is due to arrive Thursday afternoon in Nigeria, Africa's most
populous nation and a major supplier of US oil imports, for a brief
stopover before travelling to Ghana for the funeral of president John
Atta Mills.
Her visit comes as President Goodluck Jonathan is under growing
pressure to stop the violence, with Boko Haram having killed more than
1,400 people in northern and central Nigeria since 2010, according to
Human Rights Watch.
Some US lawmakers have been pushing President Barack Obama's
administration to label Boko Haram a terrorist organisation, but
diplomats have resisted the designation, stressing the group remains
domestically focused.
In June, the United States labeled suspected Boko Haram leader
Abubakar Shekau and two other Nigerian militants "global terrorists,"
allowing any US assets they may have to be blocked.
Shekau appeared in a video posted to YouTube last weekend dismissing
the designation and criticising Jonathan.
"I think one of the key concerns is the insecurity around the country,
especially arising around the activities around the Boko Haram sect,"
said Clement Nwankwo, head of the Abuja-based Policy and Legal
Advocacy Centre civil society group.
He said Jonathan's administration "has not shown sufficient ability to
understand how to tackle the problem."
Nigeria has provided some eight percent of US oil imports, and crude
production, based in the country's south, has not been affected by the
insurgency.
Boko Haram's targets have continually widened, with the group having
moved from assassinations to increasingly sophisticated bombings,
including suicide attacks.
Members of Boko Haram are believed to have sought training in northern
Mali from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Qaeda's north African
branch, and Western nations have been monitoring closely for signs of
further links.
While Muslims have often been its victims, it has recently
specifically targeted churches, and Jonathan has accused the group of
seeking to provoke a religious crisis in a country.
On Monday night, gunmen stormed a church in central Nigeria, shutting
off the electricity and gunning down 19 people. There has not yet been
any claim for the attack, though it resembled others blamed on Boko
Haram.
The group is believed to include a number of factions with varying
interests, and many analysts say deep poverty and a lack of
development in Nigeria's north have been key factors in creating the
insurgency.
US diplomats and rights groups have repeatedly urged Nigeria's
government to begin to address those underlying issues in order to
resolve the crisis.
The country and its enormous economic potential have long been held
back by deeply rooted corruption, with infrastructure sorely lacking
and electricity blackouts occurring daily despite its oil wealth.
US-based Human Rights Watch this week asked Clinton to urge Jonathan
to address the violence as well as corruption.
"Despite Nigeria's tremendous oil wealth, endemic government
corruption and poor governance have robbed many Nigerians of their
rights to health and education," the group said.
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