U.S. Deploying Security Team to Nigeria for Kidnapping Rescue

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram (loosely
translated as “Western education is forbidden” in the local
Hausa language) kidnapped
eight more girls from the village of Warabe in northeast
Nigeria shortly after its leader threatened to do just that and to
sell the nearly three hundred girls the group has kidnapped.

The U.S.
offered to send a specially formed rescue team to Nigeria, and
urged the president of Nigeria to make a decision quickly after he
reportedly “welcomed” the offer without definitively accepting it.
According to The Nation of Nigeria, the president
accepted the offer today:

The statement [from a presidential spokesperson] reads:
“President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Tuesday welcomed and accepted a
definite offer of help from the United States of America in the
ongoing effort to locate and rescue the girls abducted from the
Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok three weeks ago.”

“The offer from President Barack Obama which was conveyed to
President Jonathan by the United States Secretary of State, Mr.
John Kerry in a telephone conversation which began at 15.30 Hours
today, includes the deployment of U.S. security personnel and
assets to work with their Nigerian counterparts in the search and
rescue operation.”

Three years ago, shortly after the election of
Jonathan Goodluck as president of Nigeria, Uche Chukwumerije, a
senator from the north, suggested the rise of Boko Haram could have
been fueled by the successful use of militants and insurgency in
the Niger Delta in the south to win that year’s election. The
Nation
reported at the time:

Chukwumerije, representing Abia North, is worried about
what he calls the politicisation of militancy in some parts of the
country aimed at achieving political objective. 

The Senator expressed his views yesterday in a paper he presented
at the 2011 Igbo Day Lecture at the Women Development Centre (WDC)
in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi State… 

Chukwumerije said: “The issue of militancy in the Niger Delta has
yielded them (the Southsouth) the presidency. If you watch what is
going on now, the politicised illegal activities of Boko Haram are
a proper determination to win the second round of presidential
election in 2015”.

He accused other ethnic groups of using similar organizations, such
as the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of
Biafra (MASSOB), to win the presidency.

He cited the OPC, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
Delta (MEND) and other youth groups in the Niger Delta as vehicles
used by the Yoruba and the Niger Delta to win power.

The State Department stressed commandos, like the ones
deployed in Uganda to capture Joseph Kony, would not be
included on the team being sent to Nigeria. Whether the U.S. adds
Boko Haram to the informal list of war on terror groups for which
it has extended
its military footprint on the African continent remains to be
seen.