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Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria meets with family of slain sect leader in bid to halt bloody attacks
A former Nigerian president has urged relatives of a slain radical Muslim sect leader to halt the group’s increasingly bloody attacks against the government, meeting attendees said Friday.
The unannounced meeting came just weeks after the group known as Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a car bombing at the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria that killed 23 people and wounded 116.
The attack launched far from the group’s base in the country’s northeast represented a major escalation in violence. Officials also fear the shadowy group now has ties to al-Qaida-linked terror organizations elsewhere in Africa.
On Thursday, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo (pictured), spoke with the family of late Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf for two hours in the northeast city of Maiduguri, civil rights activist Shehu Sani said.
The meeting represented the first visit of a Nigerian leader to the family since Yusuf was killed while in police custody following a 2009 sect riot and security crackdown that left 700 people dead.
Obasanjo’s visit shows the government’s growing desperation in its fight against Boko Haram, which wants to implement Islamic law across northern Nigeria.
Obasanjo, who led Nigeria as a military ruler in the 1970s and later as its first elected president, remains a powerful force in the country’s politics and in regional diplomacy. Yusuf’s family agreed to meet with Obasanjo as he never cracked down on the sect during his eight years in office, Sani said.
During Thursday’s meeting, Sani said Obasanjo asked the family why the sect continued to attack security agents, clerics and government officials. Relatives said the attacks represented revenge against the government for Yusuf’s death and the killing of two other leaders during the 2009 uprising, Sani said.
