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Nigeria: President Jonathan rejects ‘blackmail’ from Boko Haram radicals
It is often stressed that poverty and a lack of infrastructure in Nigeria’s north must be addressed as part of the solution to the violence.
Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sin” in the Hausa language spoken in northern Nigeria, is believed to include a number of factions with differing aims. Shekau is thought to lead the main radical Islamist branch.
After a 2009 uprising that led to nearly a week of fighting, ending with a military assault, the group went dormant for more than a year.
It re-emerged in 2010 with a series of assassinations. Bomb blasts, including suicide attacks, have since become frequent.
Its attacks have been focused in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north and a number of have occurred in the religiously and ethnically divided centre of Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer.
Nigeria, with a population of 160 million, is roughly divided between a mostly Muslim north and a predominately Christian south.
Copyright 2012 AFP
