Transcript of Christiane Amanpour’s Interview of Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan On CNN
Friday, January 25, 2013Omoba
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan agreed that Boko Haram could pose an existential threat to his country.
“If Boko Haram is not
contained, it would be a threat not only to Nigeria, but to West Africa,
Central Africa and of course to North Africa,” he said. “Elements of Boko Haram
link up with some of al Qaeda in northern Mali and other North African
countries.”
For that reason, he
said his government is “totally committed” to working with friendly nations to
help contain problems in Mali. Like many other world leaders, Jonathan said the
problem there has been exacerbated by the free flow of weapons out of Libya
since the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
President Jonathan
admitted that initially Boko Haram caught Nigeria off guard; now, he said, the
country has been making progress to contain “the Boko Haram saga.”
He said his government
is working day and night to make sure that the deadly attacks on an Algerian
oil field do not happen in Nigeria.
The Economist reports
that the death toll from Boko Haram attacks in 2012 was 1,099 – double was it
was the previous year.
“If you look at the
last six months, incidents of killing started dropping,” President Jonathan
contended, insisting that the government is gaining control.
He denied suggestions
from the U.S. State Department that the Nigerian government has conducted a
large quantity of arrests and killings that have been indiscriminate, possibly
driving more people into the hands of Boko Haram.
“The United States of
America is completely wrong,” he told Amanpour. “No security agency arrests
anybody just for the love of arrest. We have intelligence that enables us to
arrest the people who have been arrested.”
President Jonathan
also insists that poverty and unemployment are not fueling the violent rise of
Boko Haram – citing religion as the primary motivation of this jihadist group.
As part of a counter
terrorism effort, President Jonathan’s national security adviser has sought to
engage in dialogue with Boko Haram.
Jonathan told Amanpour
that the discourse has helped the situation, and that he will continue to
pursue this strategy.
The Power of the
Presidency
Christiane Amanpour
was the first journalist to interview Goodluck Jonathan when he assumed the
presidency in April 2010. One focus of that conversation was about the endemic
electric outages that average Nigerians face.
Three years later,
despite continued problems and a report by Nigeria’s Infrastructure Concession
Regulatory Commission that says 60% of Nigerians are without access to power,
Jonathan said that the country has made significant strides.
“That is one area
where Nigerians are quite pleased with the government – that our commitment to
improve power is working,” he said. “I promise you before the end of this year,
power outages will be reasonably stable in Nigeria.”
Endemic Corruption
“You cannot change the
mindset of people by waving your hand. You must take means to make sure that
you don’t create an environment where everyone will be corrupt and we are doing
it very well,” Jonathan said.
He cited the previous
elections as signs of success against corruption. International observers, The
African Union, and the Independent National Electoral Commission all praised
the polling.
But there is still
widespread corruption in the oil industry.
Last April, Nigerian
Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that 400,000 barrels of oil a day
were looted from the country in just one month.
The International
Energy Agency said that $7 billion dollars a year is lost annually to oil
theft.
“Frankly speaking, I want the international community to support Nigeria because this stolen
crude is being bought by refineries abroad and they know the crude oil was
stolen,” Jonathan told Amanpour. “The world must condemn what is wrong.”
Culled from CNN
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