Lexington Herald Leader Editorial: "Eastern Kentucky can't SOAR While Public Corruption Thrives"! .... But Public Corruption Is A Part Of The Culture!!

Eastern Kentucky can't soar while public corruption thrives

At the risk of dampening SOAR's good vibe, we must point out a major obstacle to economic development in Eastern Kentucky that got little to no mention at last week's summit: corruption.

According to the United Nations, "corruption deepens poverty, debases human rights, degrades the environment and derails development (including private sector development) by creating disincentives for investment."

The U.N. observed International Anti-Corruption Day Dec. 9, while in Pikeville 1,700 people rallied under the Shaping Our Appalachian Region banner.

Meanwhile, U.S. prosecutors were unveiling the latest in a long string of criminal charges against Eastern Kentucky officials. Morgan County Judge-Executive Tim Conley pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he exchanged government contracts for kickbacks.

Regardless of how the latest prosecution ends, corruption is not a mountain stereotype or a comic form of local color. It's real, and it impedes investment.

The Herald-Leader's Bill Estep recently cited data from the U.S. Department of Justice showing that from 2002 through 2011, there were 237 public-corruption convictions in the Eastern District of Kentucky compared to 65 in the state's Western District.

Public corruption has abetted a drug abuse epidemic and denied youngsters a decent education. A Manchester pastor told Estep that honest people in Clay County saw no reason to vote until the feds broke up a vote-buying ring.

Ask yourself: What business or bright young person would stake their fortunes or futures on such a place?

Eastern Kentucky is full of honest people. The region is no more bound to be corrupt than it's bound to be poor or dependent on a single extractive industry.

Still, poverty can't be overcome without tackling corruption.

But how? The legislature should require local governments to beef up the ethics codes they were first required to enact in 1996, create some real penalties for violations and make ethics training mandatory for local officials.

Obviously, federal prosecutors and courts and Kentucky's attorney general must be vigilant.

But ethics in government — and business, for that matter — is more than just not doing wrong things.

Ethical government puts the greater good first, makes decisions in an open, accountable way, and invites everyone, including those on the margins, to the table.

Transformations that occur from within are always more successful than those imposed from without. Voters in Eastern Kentucky have the power to make change, provided they're given real choices. Those who care about the region must get busy making sure voters have real choices and honest candidates.

Healthy politics won't divide a community into feuding factions that also stifle development.

Both community and trust are critical to the spread of entrepreneurship, according to a study published this month in the American Sociological Review and summarized by Richard Florida in The Atlantic: "Entrepreneurship of all sorts — from the creative cutting edge, high-tech enterprises to building a small business — is in fact a social process, depending upon teams of people working together and broad social networks. And community itself, the place where entrepreneurial activity happens, is a crucial part of the mix."

A lot of SOAR speakers came close to gigging the elephant in the room. Instead of looking to pave a road where there are 35 votes, Senate President Robert Stivers said, the mind-set should become looking for ways to create 35 jobs.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers said that SOAR's real reward might not be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but the rainbow itself. That certainly would be true if a new culture of honest, accountable government spreads across the mountains.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/12/15/2989539/eastern-kentucky-cant-soar-while.html#storylink=cpy

Child Brides Disgrace!

Nigeria's child brides: 'I thought being in labour would never end'

Though child marriage is prohibited under Nigerian law,
a toxic blend of routine and religion continues to ruin
young lives

Nigerian child bride activist Zainab Oussman, 16,
in Kwassaw village. At 14, she refused to marry,
instead staying in school.

Ibrahim Kanuma winces as he recalls the moment
a 63-year-old man asked him for his teenage
daughter's hand in marriage. The proposal was not
unusual in north-western Nigeria's remote, dust-blown
state of Zamfara, but he considered the suitor too old
for his only daughter, Zainab, 13.
"Even if he had been aged up to 50 – OK. But that old,
he'll soon die and leave her lonely," says the civil
servant in his peeling office in Gusau, the state
capital. To protect his school-aged child from the
crushing stigma of widowhood, Kanuma instead
gave his blessing to a union with a "reasonably aged"
 colleague – in his 40s – even though such a betrothal
is illegal.

For Kanuma and many others in northern Nigeria,
the recent outcry over child marriage is puzzling.
Zainab's marriage is prohibited under Nigeria's
Child Rights Act, which bans marriage or betrothal
before the age of 18. But federal laws compete with
age-old customs, as well as a decade of state-level
sharia law in Muslim states.
 
Warning posters about female circumcision and 
fistulas. 

"I wouldn't force my daughter to marry somebody she
doesn't like, but as soon as a girl is of age
[starts menstruating], she should be married,"
Kanuma says.

Four of the 10 countries with the highest rates of child
marriage are in west Africa's Sahel and Sahara belt. In
the years when rains or crops fail, so-called "drought brides"
– who bring in a dowry while being one fewer mouth to feed
– push numbers up dramatically.

But the practice came under scrutiny in July, when
legislators tried to scrap a constitutional clause that states
citizenship can be renounced by anyone over 18 or a married
woman, apparently implying womencan be married under 18.
The obscure ruling will have little direct impact on the one
in four rural northern Nigerian girls married off before they
turn 15, but it reveals
prevailing attitudes in a nation with acute gender disparity.


A successful vote was later derailed by senator Ahmed Yerima,
who in 2010 married a 13-year-old from Egypt. A former
Zamfara governor who
introduced a rigidly enforced version of sharia law in the north
in 2000, Yerima argued that a married girl was considered an
adult under certain interpretations of Islamic law. That prompted
outrage. "Does it then follow that the married girl who is
below 18, at election time, would be permitted to vote?" says
Maryam Uwais, a lawyer and child rights advocate in the
northern capital of Kano.

Other grassroot Muslim activists, however, fear the oxygen
of negative publicity trailing the high-profile Yerima, coming
most vocally from non-Muslims, could trigger a backlash among
conservative, rural Muslims. This would threaten painstaking
progress towards modernisation over the past decade.

In the week headlines erupted over Yerima, Aisha, nine, was
quietly rushed through the corridors of Zamfara's Faridat Yakubu
general hospital. Its cheerful cornflower blue walls belie stories of
the hidden horrors of early marriage. Aisha does not have the
words for what happened to her on her wedding night. Her husband,
she says, did something "painful from behind".

Nearby, Halima was on her third visit in three years. "I like it here.
It is the only time I ever see a television," she says. Just shy of 13,
the newlywed came under pressure to demonstrate her fertility.
"I thought [being in labour] would never end," she adds softly.

In the tradition of the rural Hausa people of the north, women are
expected to give birth at home. Crying out while in labour is seen as
a sign of weakness. But after three days close to death in her village,
Halima begged to be taken to a hospital. By the time her relatives
had scraped together enough to ferry her to the state capital, it was
too late.

The baby had died.

The prolonged labour left Halima with a fistula, which causes
uncontrolled urination or defecation. "Fistulas can happen to anyone,
but are most common among young women whose pelvises aren't at
full capacity to accommodate the passage of a child," says Dr Mutia,
one of two practising fistula surgeons in Zamfara.

Despite the obvious link, he is reluctant to blame child marriage for
Nigeria having the highest global rate of fistula. "The problem is not
early marriage. It is giving birth at home," he says.

Small victories

There have been small victories in reversing the ripple effects of
early and forced marriage, defined as forms of modern-day slavery
by the International Labour Organisation.

Fifteen years ago, Zamfara's statistics director, Lubabatu Ammani,
carried out a census to record the number of girls attending
secondary school in the state. The results were shocking: fewer than
4,000 girls were enrolled out of a population of 3.2 million.

"It was a combination of dropouts, early marriage and religious
misinterpretations," explained Ammani, who proposed creating a
female education board to help remedy the problem. "We asked all
the local emirs and found the main problem was that parents didn't
want girls who had hit puberty to be in co-ed schools."

Female enrolment in Zamfara is at its highest since independence
five decades ago, with 22,000 secondary school students. On most
days, Ammani visits wavering parents to encourage them to keep
their daughters in school.
Ammani welcomes the reawakened debate on child marriage but
warns of its limits: "The fact is, a lot of people [here], when they
hear the campaigning is by people from a different tradition or
religion, they won't agree with it."

Others are more blunt. Haliru Andi, who served as Yerima's top
aide while he led the call for sharia, bristles at the idea of interference
with his faith. "How I even use the toilet, how I share my time with my
family – everything is contained in my religion," he says in his
Persian-carpeted living room. "How, then, can I take instructions from
anybody who does not have a deep understanding of Islam?"

Cultural norms further muddy the issue. Posters outside Mutia's office
exhort against another disturbing practice related to child marriage.
In one,a woman is being forcibly restrained on a woven palm-frond mat.
An assistant grabs her legs; another sits on her chest, and yet another
reaches between her legs with a razor blade.

The scene shows a common recourse when a child bride refuses to sleep
with her husband, prompting her parents or in-laws to drag her to the  
wanzan, or traditional barber. "This traditional barber, he doesn't
understand anatomy. He thinks there's something obstructing the girl
down there, and that's whyshe fears her husband. So anything he sees,
he will just use his knife to cut it,"
Mutia explains. "They think they are helping."
None of the northern-based grassroots Muslim activists the Guardian
interviewedwanted to go on the record about child marriage – reflecting,
says one activist, the difficulties women face "going against the grain".

The storm of Twitter and online commentary has translated into a
handful of protests in the more liberal south, which is predominantly
Christian but also home to millions of Muslims.
In the tiny village of Rigasa, flanked by baobab trees and fields of millet,
Nafisa, 14, draws letters in the powdered maize she grinds every morning
for herself and her in-laws. A-B-C-D, she writes. It is all she remembers.
"My husband gets angry any time I asked him if I can take up my schooling
again, so I stopped asking. But my heart is in school," she says.

• 
  
  
  

Nigerian Scammers? Well, Maybe Not!

Read more here.

Since Obusonjo Obasanjo Is A World Renowed Crook Who Pillaged Nigeria, Why Should Anyone Believe His Views On Robert Mugabe's Re-Election In Zimbabwe?!

Zimbabwe poll 'free and peaceful' say Obasanjo and SADC

Olusegun Obasanjo: "I have never seen an election that is perfect"

Zimbabwe - New Era?

Zimbabwe's elections were free and peaceful, the two leading African observer groups have said.

African Union mission head Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed complaints of fraud, while another observer urged all parties to "accept the hard facts".
A local monitoring group said earlier the poll was "seriously compromised".
President Robert Mugabe's party is claiming victory in the election, which has been dismissed by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as a "huge farce".

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa: "We [Zanu-PF] are going to have a landslide victory"

On Wednesday, voters were choosing a president, 210 lawmakers and local councillors. The results must be declared by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) no later than five days after voting day.
No presidential figures have been announced but the first official results from national assembly elections show that Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party is taking an early lead. However, the seats announced were mostly in Mr Mugabe's rural strongholds, correspondents say.
Zanu-PF spokesman Rugaro Gumbo predicted that Mr Mugabe, 89, - who is running for a seventh term - would get at least 70% of the vote in the presidential poll.
"We are expecting a landslide victory," he was quoted as saying in Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper.
It is illegal to publish unofficial election results in Zimbabwe. Police have warned they would take action against anyone trying to leak early results.
Zanu-PF and Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.

Views from Zimbabwe press

The Herald (state-run) - 'The people have spoken':
Indications are President Mugabe will sweep to power with a colossal margin as his party scores a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
The absence of cases of violence has thrown MDC-T [Tsvangirai] and its handlers off kilter which is why they precariously hang onto trying to attack the voters' roll as if it is compiled at Zanu-PF headquarters.
It should be stated from the outset that the Registrar-General of Voters' Office falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs which was overseen by ministers drawn from Zanu-PF and MDC.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is made up of commissioners chosen from lists submitted by the three parties in Government.
It thus comes as a surprise that today; MDC-T denies ownership of the electoral process it has been party to.
Daily News (privately-owned) - 'Please stop vote fraud':

In Hatfield, hundreds of street kids and youths were given voter registration slips and went on to vote and we are told this was prevalent throughout the country.
What will Zec do about this blatant vote theft?
What people now need is change and that is the reason why yesterday [Wednesday] most of them braved the chilly weather and woke up early to join long queues to exercise their fundamental right.
Their desire is to see a better Zimbabwe. People need to separate good from evil, light from darkness, suffering from prosperity and make a demarcation between history and the future.
People went out in large numbers to put an end to Mugabe's 33-year rule that was characterised by suffering.

'Heavy blow'

Speaking in the capital Harare on Friday, Mr Obasanjo, Nigeria's former president, said the elections were fair and free "from the campaigning point of view".

The former Nigerian president admitted that there were "incidents that could have been avoided", but he stressed that the 69 AU observers did not believe those irregularities could change the overall outcome of the poll.
At the same time, the AU mission expressed concern at the high number of voters turned away and those being assisted to vote - usually reserved for the illiterate or the infirm.
In a statement, it also noted that 8.7m ballot papers were printed - 35% more than the number of registered voters.
Shortly afterwards, monitors from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) - which had 562 observers - described the elections as "free and peaceful" but said it was too early to call them fair.
"In democracy we not only vote, not only campaign, but accept the hard facts, particularly the outcome," said Sadc mission head Bernard Membe, according to the AFP news agency.
Mr Obasanjo's assessment sharply contrasted to that by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) - the largest group of domestic monitors with some 7,000 people on the ground across the country.
It said on Thursday that the elections were "seriously compromised", with as many as a million people being unable to cast their ballots.
The ZESN said potential voters were much more likely to be turned away from polling stations in urban areas, where support for Mr Tsvangirai is strong, than in President Mugabe's rural strongholds.

Continue reading the main story

Zimbabwe election: Key facts

• About 6.4 million registered voters
• Vote for president and parliament
• Zanu-PF's Robert Mugabe and MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai are the main presidential contenders
• Mr Mugabe, 89, is seeking to extend his 33-year rule
• Mr Tsvangirai, 61, hopes to become president after two failed attempts
• The poll ends the fractious coalition between Zanu-PF and MDC, which was brokered by regional mediators after disputed elections in 2008 that were marred by violence
• First election under new constitution

• Vote around the country
• Q&A: Zimbabwe elections

The group also alleged significant irregularities before the poll. It said that 99.7% of rural voters were registered on the electoral roll in June compared with only 67.9% of urban voters.

But speaking to al-Jazeera, Mr Obasanjo questioned ZESN's conclusions, describing them as "not verifiable".
He said he was satisfied that the apparent anomalies between urban and rural voter registration had been explained by the registrar-general, who had the accurate figures for births and deaths.
Mr Obasanjo also said that Mr Tsvangirai's camp should have addressed concerns about the electoral roll before the vote - not after.
MDC member and Finance Minister Tendai Biti told the BBC that the assistance voting in rural areas was a "euphemism to say you have to vote for Zanu-PF under the guidance and watch of someone else".
"They [Zanu-PF] have stolen the election so much so that they are embarrassed at what they have done," Mr Biti added.
Still, Mr Obasanjo's assessment of the elections is a big boost for President Mugabe and a heavy blow for his opponents, the BBC's Andrew Harding in Johannesburg says.
It is unclear now how Mr Tsvangirai intends to fight on, our correspondent adds.
On Thursday, the prime minister said the elections were "null and void".
"Our conclusion is that this has been a huge farce... It's a sham election that does not reflect the will of the people."
Extra units - some in riot gear - have been deployed in Harare.
Under the electoral law, if no presidential candidate gains 50% of the ballots, a run-off will be held on 11 September.

I'm Elated To Witness Nigerian President, Goodluck Johnathan, Continue To Grow Balls As He Battles Terrorist Group, Boko Haram.

Nigeria: Jail terms to tackle Islamist militancy

Nigeria has officially banned two militant Islamist groups, warning that anyone who helps them will face a minimum jail sentence of 20 years.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared Boko Haram and Ansaru to be terrorist groups, his office said.
The army has been waging an offensive against the militants in their northern strongholds since a state of emergency was declared last month.
The insurgency has killed about 2,000 people since 2009.
The activities of both Boko Haram and Ansaru would now fall under the Terrorism Prevention Act, Mr Jonathan's office said, in a statement.
It means that "any person who knowingly, in any manner, directly or indirectly", offers support to Boko Haram and Ansaru would be jailed for "not less than 20 years" if convicted, the statement added.

Boko Haram: Timeline of terror

• 2002: Founded
• 2009: Hundreds killed when Maiduguri police stations stormed; leader Mohammed Yusuf captured and killed
• Dec 2010: Bombed Jos, killing 80 people; blamed for New Year's Eve attack on Abuja barracks
• Jun-Aug 2011: Bomb attacks on Abuja police HQ and UN building
• Dec 2011: Multiple bomb attacks on Christmas Day kill dozens
• Jan 2012: Wave of violence across north-east Nigeria
• April 2012: Deadly Easter church attack in Kaduna; ThisDay newspaper offices bombed
• February 2013: French family kidnapped in Cameroon
• May 2013: Heavily armed incursion into Bama town

• Boko Haram: From preachers to slave raiders

On Monday, the US said it was offering rewards for information on Islamist militants in West and North Africa.

The highest reward of up to $7m (£4.6m) is for information leading to the location of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, the state department said.

Boko Haram launched the insurgency in 2009, carrying out a wave of bombings and assassinations in north and central Nigeria.
Ansaru, which is suspected to be an off-shoot of Boko Haram, joined the insurgency in 2012, taking foreigners hostage.
It said it had killed seven European and Middle Eastern nationals abducted in February 2012 in the northern Bauchi state.

Last month, Mr Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, the three main strongholds of the Islamist groups.
It led to the army launching a ground and air assault to flush out the militants.
Rights groups repeatedly accuse government troops of targeting innocent people after falsely accusing them of backing the militants.
The army denies the allegation.

At Long Last, Nigeria President, Goodluck Johnathan, Starts To "Grow Some Balls" Against Nigeria's Al Qaeda, Boko Haram. Good For Him.

Nigerian president declares state of emergency

• 
  May 7, 2013: Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, center, makes a speech in the South African Parliament in Cape Town. On May 14, 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Nigeria. (AP)

Nigeria's president declared a state of emergency Tuesday across the country's troubled northeast, promising to send more troops to fight an increasingly violent Islamic insurgency.
Islamist sect Boko Haram -- whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north -- has intensified its attacks on security forces and government targets in its northeast stronghold this month, prompting President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in certain states.
 

Last week, dozens of Boko Haram fighters in buses and machine gun-mounted trucks laid siege to the town of Bama, in Borno, killing 55, mostly police and other security forces, and freeing more than 100 prison inmates. Days earlier, scores were killed in the fishing village of Baga, also in Borno, on the shores of Lake Chad, when troops from Nigeria, Niger and Chad raided it looking for Islamists. Local residents said soldiers were responsible for many civilian deaths.
 

 President Jonathan, speaking live on state radio and television networks, also warned that any building suspected to house Islamic extremists would be taken over in what he described as the "war" now facing Africa's most populous nation. However, it's unclear what the emergency powers will do to halt the violence, as a similar past effort failed to stop the bloodshed.
"It would appear that there is a systematic effort by insurgents and terrorists to destabilize the Nigerian state and test our collective resolve," Jonathan said.
Jonathan said the order will be in force in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. He said the states would receive more troops, though he will not remove state politicians from their posts. Under Nigerian law, the president has the power to remove politicians from their posts and install a caretaker government in emergency circumstances.
 

The president's speech offered a stark vision of the ongoing violence, often downplayed by security forces and government officials for political reasons. Jonathan described the attacks as a "rebellion," at one point describing how fighters had destroyed government buildings and "had taken women and children as hostages."
"Already, some northern parts of Borno state have been taken over by groups whose allegiance are to different flags than Nigeria's," Jonathan said.
The president later added: "These actions amount to a declaration of war and a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and threaten (its) territorial integrity. As a responsible government, we will not tolerate this."
 

This is not the first time Jonathan has implemented emergency measures. In December 2011, Jonathan declared a state of emergency over some limited local government areas in the states, after a church bombing blamed on Boko Haram killed 37 people, but he lifted it in July last year. This new decree, however, is more drastic and covers whole states, likely to cause conflict with powerful governors sitting in those states, as well as the political opposition. On Monday, the Nigeria Governors' Forum, representing the governors of Nigeria's 36 states, issued a statement warning Jonathan against imposing emergency rule in response to the insurgency.
According to an Associated Press count, more than 1,600 people have been killed in attacks by Islamic insurgents since 2010. Recently, Nigeria's military has said Islamic fighters now use anti-aircraft guns mounted on trucks to fight the nation's soldiers, likely outgunning the country's already overstretched security forces.
 

Boko Haram has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and strict Islamic law adopted across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. It has produced several splinter groups, and analysts say its members have contact with two other Al Qaeda-linked groups in Africa.
The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people.
The group's leader died in police custody, in an apparent killing. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings. Recently, however, they've begun to use military-grade weapons, some of which they apparently seized from Nigerian military stockpiles.
Nigeria's military and police also have been repeatedly accused by human rights activists and others of torturing and summarily killing suspects, as well as burning down civilian homes and killing civilians in retaliation for militant attacks.
 

The latest incident, in a fishing village in Borno state along the shores of Lake Chad, saw at least 187 people killed and there are allegations that soldiers are responsible. While the military has denied repeatedly that it attacks and kills civilians, the country's armed forces have a history of committing such assaults.
 

Separately on Tuesday, an official in the central Nigerian state of Kaduna said gunmen armed with assault rifles and suspected to be Hausa-Fulani cattle herders killed 11 people in a village there. And in Benue state, a government spokesman said an attack blamed on Hausa-Fulani cattle herders there killed at least 12 people.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/14/state-emergency-declared-in-nigeria/#ixzz2TIwN4M6U

The Boko Haram Threat To Nigeria Is Real.

Insight: Nigeria's Islamists staging bolder, deadlier comeback

(Reuters) - After a crackdown pushed them out of Nigeria's northern cities, Islamist militant group Boko Haram have regrouped, rearmed and are staging a bold comeback that has already allowed them to seize control over parts of the northeast.
Using porous borders with Chad, Niger and Cameroon in the desolate scrubland around Lake Chad, they are smuggling bigger weapons, staging cross-border raids, killing and kidnapping in an escalation of violence that could further draw Nigeria's neighbors into its counter-insurgency fight, security officials say.
 
The Islamists now control at least 10 of the 27 local council areas in Borno state, Nigeria's most remote northeastern region on the edge of the Sahara and a relic of one of Africa's oldest medieval Islamic empires, security sources there say.
One says the real figure could be closer to 20, as local councilors fearing assassination have fled, leaving a power vacuum filled by bearded radicals with automatic rifles.
Boko Haram's struggle for an Islamic state has killed thousands since 2009 and is the main threat to Africa's top oil producer, although its fighters have so far not struck anywhere near the southern oil fields.
 
When Borno's governor Kassim Shettima briefed visiting senators and military advisers in a confidential security meeting on May 7, he said something that stunned them: Boko Haram were on the verge of seizing control of his state.
"What the governor said was frightening. He informed us there is a possibility that this state will be taken over by Boko Haram ... that they have the ability to do whatever they wanted here," senator Abdul Ahmed Ningi, a delegate and deputy majority leader for the ruling party, said after the meeting.
"I had thought Boko Haram had been subdued to some extent."
 
MOVEMENT IN FLUX
 
A wave of Islamic fervor took hold of northern Nigeria during an economic crisis in the early 1980s, triggering riots in the north's main city of Kano and later prompting many states to introduce Sharia law from 1999.
 
In 2002, a cleric called Mohammed Yusuf founded a radical Islamist movement in Borno, later nicknamed 'Boko Haram' or 'Western education is sinful' in the northern Hausa language because of its opposition to Western cultural influences.
A military crackdown during an uprising in 2009 led to the deaths of 800 people, including Yusuf, who died in police custody.
 
Far from being silenced, they struck back, first shooting or throwing bombs at police off the back of motorcycles, then graduating to increasingly sophisticated bomb-making technology.
By late last year it seemed the militants had been chased out of city centers and were losing the ability to carry out large-scale attacks, but Boko Haram have repeatedly proved masters of recovering from apparent defeat.
 
A coordinated strike by some 200 Boko Haram fighters on an army barracks, police station and prison in the town of Bama last week that left 55 people dead and freed more than 100 prisoners was the latest evidence that they have recovered their strength.
Initially funded by northern politicians who later distanced themselves from the militants, Boko Haram have forged growing links with Saharan Islamists such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, giving them new access to funding and training.
 
LAWLESS LAKE
 
The road from Borno's capital Maiduguri to Lake Chad, where Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon join, cuts through a semi-desert landscape dotted with lonely trees and thatched straw hamlets.
In one village, a skinny old man herds goats across wind-swept sands while a woman in a purple hijab balances a jug on her head, not far from the ashen remains of a car bomb.
Further along, a man in a turban and flowing robes rides on horseback across an expanse of grayish sand, a flashback to the centuries past when Borno was a prosperous sultanate profiting from trade routes crossing the Sahara to the Mediterranean.
Save the odd military checkpoint, there are few signs of statehood here. Disused schools and council buildings decay in dry heat. A fisheries college that was abandoned last year after an attack killed some staff stands eerily empty.
 
Boko Haram, under the leadership of fiery, gun-toting militant Abubakar Shekau, is thought to be getting closer to achieving its dream of creating some kind of Islamic rule in the lawless areas around Lake Chad, where even the police have fled.
"They are now holding territory," Kole Shettima, chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Development, said. "The next step is to create institutions: justice, social services," as Malian Islamists did before the French forced them out of its cities.
The Bama attack showed their substantial firepower, including machine guns, large numbers of rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, a sign the weapons flood from the Libyan war that helped rebels seize parts of Mali last year has reached Nigeria, officials say.
"They're getting bolder, better armed, more organized. it's looking bleak," a security official in Maiduguri said.
 
The exact number of Boko Haram fighters is hard to estimate -- and the degree to which Shekau and the four main members of his 'Shura council' -- Habibu Yusuk, Khalis Albarnawai, Momodu Bama and Mohammed Zangina -- have control over them is unclear.
They rarely communicate with the press since their spokesman was killed last year, although Shekau sometimes uploads videos of himself making bellicose statements onto the web.
Security officials believe they have several hundred well armed and trained fighters and possibly thousands of members.
The army spokesman for Borno state, Lieutenant-Colonel Sagir Musa, denied that the group were staging a significant comeback, but he told Reuters they were moving in bigger numbers than before.
 
"KILLERS"
 
A military convoy rumbles into the remote fishing settlement of Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, scene of fighting last month that killed dozens of people, many of them civilians.
As it weaves past the charred remains of ruined houses, locals shout abuse at soldiers in the Hausa language.
On April 16, Boko Haram militants armed with guns and RPGs killed a soldier on patrol, slicing his head off with an axe.
What happened next is disputed. Brigadier-General Austin Edokpayi, who heads a multinational force comprising 1,200 Nigerians, 700 Chadians and 300 troops from Niger charged with securing this volatile border area, said reinforcements arrived and met fierce resistance from entrenched Boko Haram gunmen.
 
Community leaders say the Boko Haram militants had already fled over the border into Chad by the time the soldiers arrived, who then exacted vengeance on the civilian population, shooting, setting fire to houses and killing 185 people.
Whatever the truth of what happened at Baga, Boko Haram's creeping establishment of a stronghold around Lake Chad is becoming a major headache for Nigeria and its neighbors.
"It has emboldened the terrorists," Edokpayi said, complaining that since most local government officials have fled, the military were effectively on their own. "They are eating deep into the ... sovereignty of the Nigerian state."
At one Baga village meeting in which elders complained of heavy handedness by Nigerian troops, an intelligence official told Reuters around half the attendees were Boko Haram members.
Many are poor, young men with little if any formal education and no job prospects in some of the poorest places on earth.
 
The group's ability to strike fear stems both from its secretiveness -- no one who isn't a member can be sure who is -- and its visibility in places where the state has withered.
"They are there for everybody to see. You can see them sitting in front of their houses, holding their guns," said a man near Baga fish market who gave his name only as Abubakar.
That Boko Haram is also a menace to other countries around the lake was highlighted in February when it kidnapped a French family of seven from a game park in north Cameroon, taking them over the border into Nigeria. They were freed in April.
The cross border threat is likely to prompt more joint operations. The multinational force was originally set up in 1998 to deal with marauding Chadian rebels, but last year was expanded to include anti Boko Haram operations.
 
Yet the insurgents' ability to melt away under military pressure and then come back has convinced many that only some kind of political solution will resolve the conflict.
President Goodluck Jonathan set up a body last month to formulate terms for an amnesty, like the one that helped silence militancy in the oil producing Niger Delta in 2009, but the Islamists showed no interest, with Shekau denouncing it.
 
And few think any peace can hold unless Jonathan's administration can address the underlying causes of insecurity -- the north's extreme poverty and unemployment.
In the meantime, Boko Haram's efforts to revive an Islamist theocracy in northeast Nigeria will cause more bloodshed yet.

In Nigeria, A Lot Of Criminals Who Need To Be Shot Are Instead Celebrated. What A Banana Republic!

Terror and Amnesty in Nigeria

In Lagos, Nigeria, where I live, people have been posing a counterfactual: How would Americans react if the Unites States pardoned the terrorists behind 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing? The Nigerian government has announced that it is preparing to offer amnesty to an unknown number of militants associated with the Boko Haram Islamist group, an entity responsible for the deaths of more than two thousand Nigerians in recent years. President Goodluck Jonathan has set up a committee that includes scholars, lawyers, and political and military leaders to examine what an amnesty process would look like.
 

Yet last week, in a massacre that was as much the fault of the heavy-handed military as Boko Haram, over two hundred people in the town Baga, on the shores of Lake Chad, in northern Nigeria, were killed in a battle between the two sides—and hundreds of houses were destroyed.

“There is no way this violence can end and we achieve peace if the government has maintained a double standard of voicing out support for dialogue and at the other time sabotaging it,” Shehu Sani, a human-rights lawyer with the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said recently in a statement. Sani was named to the committee, but rejected the idea of participating.

Civil and religious leaders in the predominately Muslim north of Nigeria have long advocated for amnesty for Boko Haram—and the government has long rejected their plea. Just last month, President Jonathan dismissed granting amnesty to Boko Haram, calling the move impossible because the group’s members were essentially faceless, “operating under a veil.” That hasn’t changed. It’s not evident why Jonathan has changed his mind, but those who live in central and northern Nigeria and who have borne the brunt of Boko Haram’s attacks—including people named to the amnesty committee—wonder if this last-ditch effort will be enough. (Boko Haram itself voiced opposition to the idea of a negotiated amnesty.)

Boko Haram claims to be working for a purer, Islam-driven society, a contrast to the corrupt patronage of the federal and state governments. It has recruited college graduates and political thugs—young men used by politicians to do their dirty work and set off violence after lost elections. They have robbed banks and bombed police stations with homemade I.E.D.s, acquiring guns and cash as they have bounced from the sponsorship of one northern politician to another, politicians who often end up denouncing the group after its members turn on them.
When, in 2009, Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, was captured and later killed in police custody, the group began its war on civilians. Pastors, Christians, openly critical imams, and Muslims—none have been immune. And all the while, the identities of the group’s members and followers (except for their spokespersons and leaders) have stayed concealed. Some may have scared their neighbors into silence while others live essentially off the grid, Bawa Abdullahi Wise, a security analyst who studies Boko Haram, told me. “Their mission has been to create chaos and make people feel that the country is ungovernable since they already mistrust their leaders. They want to force leaders to step down or concede to demands to change direction of leadership.” Amnesty, it appears, would only be a Band-Aid.

Last month, the group released a French family of seven that it was holding in what appeared to be a desert-like patch of the north, after it had demanded prisoners in exchange. The hostages were taken, said the group, in retaliation for Nigeria’s leading role in a military intervention targeting Islamists in northern Mali. The Nigerian government did not release any prisoners, though the Cameroonian government may have done so (and paid, with France, a ransom). But, strangely, a Boko Haram “factional leader” has claimed to reporters that he ordered the family freed as a good-faith gesture in the interest of the amnesty process.

Sani, the human-rights lawyer, has been petitioning the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged atrocities committed by youth leaders, politicians, and retired Army personnel in the lushly green and mountainous region of central Nigeria called Plateau State, the site of havoc between Muslims and Christians after every election in the past decade. In Plateau, Muslim-Christian tensions have been exacerbated by the presence of Boko Haram, which has bombed a number of churches and markets, and driven the two communities, which previously mixed freely, further apart.
“This crisis has been lingering for so many years now, and the government has not produced any fruitful solutions to address it. I do not think the government is serious about investigating the violence,” Sani told me.

Central and northern Nigeria exemplify what happens when a country abandons certain regions so completely, failing to provide adequate education, social services, development, employment, and transparent political culture: extreme results rise up. In Plateau, I have spent time with a Christian who makes and sells guns, a reflective twenty-two-year old man with melancholic eyes who once thought he would go to college and start his own business, until his hometown became an undeclared war zone.

A 2009 amnesty program for militants in Nigeria’s oil-drenched Niger Delta mostly succeeded in quelling conflict there. Militants were pleased with the monetary settlement that aimed to make up for the immense oil profits the region has never seen, despite the pollution that energy companies are dumping in the area. Coming full circle, those same Niger Delta militants released a statement in April saying that, beginning in the end of May, they will attack mosques, Muslim institutions, and imams that they deem hostile, supposedly in order to “save Christianity in Nigeria from annihilation.” Who will save Nigeria from itself?

Alexis Okeowo is a journalist based in Lagos; she received support for the reporting in this post from the International Reporting Project Fellowship in Global Religion Reporting.
Above: President Goodluck Jonathan, center right, standing next to Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, center left, in March. Photograph by Wole Emmanuel/AFP/Getty.

Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, Serves As Country's "Morgue Attendant"!

Nigerian president is 'squeezing the life out of our country'

Goodluck Jonathan is more interested in retaining power and accumulating wealth than truly tackling terror and corruption

Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan.

There is a joke about a morgue attendant who was so used to
 seeing dead bodies that one day, when a supposedly dead
body started twitching, his response was, "this is the morgue,
not the emergency room". He promptly smothered the
twitching body until it was well and truly dead. "That's more
like it",he said, as he sat down to guard the cabinet
full of dead bodies and to wait for new arrivals.

In many ways, the way Goodluck Jonathan has handled
the affairs of Nigeria since becoming president can be
likened to that of the morgue attendant. And worse still,
Nigeria under his administrationhas grown to become
a vast, sprawling mortuary where deaths and dead
bodies do not seem to matter at all. In the aftermath
of Jonathan's visit to Maiduguri, the trouble northern
city under attack by Boko Haram,in security operatives
reportedly dumped about 70 bodies at the morgue,
up from the daily average of 10 or 20.

Like the morgue attendant in the story, when about two
years ago, the Borno state Elders Forum met the
president and asked him to order the withdrawal
of troops from Maiduguri to enable them take a different
approach against the jihadist group, Jonathan flatly refused.
In the two years since, how many more lives have been
needlessly lost in the fighting? His attitude seems to be,
"I'd rather preside over dead bodies than save lives".

Accepted, Jonathan took over a country that was severely
distressed. But what is the job of the president?
For someone who has spent the last 14 years in power
at the state and federal levels, the excuse that he is still
studying the situation is one of the lamest apologies in
political history. Either deliberately or inadvertently,
like the morgue attendant, Jonathan's actions and inactions
all seem geared towards killing Nigeria off once and for all.

Why was it that when he was eventually shamed into visiting
northern Borno and Yobe states by opposition governors,
his response to calls for an amnesty for Boko Haram was,
"We can't grant amnesty to ghosts". Within a week of
his mindless retort, another 25 Nigerians had been blown
to smithereens in Kano. Since he can't grant amnesty to
ghosts, perhaps, he can grant amnesty to dead bodies?

Incidentally, more and more Nigerians are beginning
to suspect that the deteriorating security situation may
be more than the handiwork of Boko Haram. More than ever,
there are growing fears that some, if not many of the attacks
attributed to Boko Haram may be the work of other "ghosts"
beyond the militants,whose ultimate objective may be to divide
Nigerians further along ethnic and religious lines for political
advantage. The very nature and timing of some of the attacks
on churches and some ethnic groups lend credence to that
supposition.

Is this the same Jonathan who told us on his inauguration
that, "Today, our unity is firm, and our purpose is strong,
our determination unshakable. Together, we will unite
our nation and improve the living standards of all our peoples
whether in the north or in the south; in the east or in the west.
Our decade of development has begun. The march is on. The
day of transformation begins today. We will not allow anyone
 exploit differences in creed or tongue, to set us one against
another?"

Perhaps, Nigerians should not be surprised at what Jonathan
has become. From the supposedly timid state governor and
vice president, we now have one of the most calculating and
thick-skinned leaders, totally deaf to criticism. The only
thing on his mind seems to be to retain power beyond
2015 while allegedly helping friends and cronies accumulate
wealth. After all, when he was asked about politicians
declaring their assets in public, he said: "The issue of public
asset declaration is a matter of personal principle. That is
 the way I see it, and I don't give a damn about it, even
if you criticise me from heaven."

Which is why the condemnations of the pardon he granted
to Diepreye Alamiesegha, a former state governor who stole
millions of dollars and jumped bail in the UK after disguising
 himself in as a woman, are likely to fall on deaf ears. It is why,
even with a daily income of $224 million, Nigerians are among
the poorest people on earth. It's why we have 68 million people
unemployed; why Nigeria is the most corrupt nation in the world
and why studies show that a child would be off being born
in Somalia, Mali, Chad, South Sudan and other war-ravaged
countries than in Nigeria.

Jonathan's well-paid and ill-mannered army of internet and media
warriors may sing his praises to high heavens and work hard to
distort any discourse about the woeful failures of their paymaster,
but they cannot hide the fact that, under Jonathan, Nigeria has
become a vast mortuary where death and tragedy are routine.

And like the morgue attendant, the president seems intent on
smothering all remaining signs of life.

Will Goodluck Jonathan bring good luck to Nigeria? That IS The Question.

Will Goodluck Jonathan bring good luck to Nigeria?
By Alex Perry

At first glance, the election of Nigeria’s incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan, who took nearly 60% of the votes cast, signals more of the same. Jonathan’s victory means another term for the country’s dominant People’s Democratic Party (PDP), giving it an unbroken four-term hold on power since the return of democracy in 1999.

Since Jonathan is a Christian southerner, his win will rankle northern Muslims, so the Muslim-Christian violence that plagues Nigeria will continue. In fact, the latest bouts, in the northern cities of Kaduna, Gombe and Zaria, began even as results were being announced Sunday and have already cost three lives. Since Jonathan is a product of the PDP, and since the PDP practices systemic corruption, that too will endure. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the holder of its biggest reserves of natural resources, will likely remain a prime example of a curse that has stood the test of time: how nations blessed with natural riches often end up more corrupt and less stable — and ultimately, poorer — than others.

Whether that doom-and-gloom analysis holds weight depends on Jonathan — and whether he himself offers more of the same. The good news is that there are several reasons for him not to. The biggest is demographics. Nigeria’s high birth rate has produced an extraordinarily young country — the United Nations says 62% of the country is under 24 — and that new generation is both increasingly unhappy with the ruinous ways of the aging elite and able to do something about it. Youthful energy alone is no guarantee of change, but channeled through social networks, powered by new resources bequeathed by an economy which expanded by 7.8% last year and multiplied by sheer size (62% of Nigeria’s population equates to 100 million people), it might well be.

The second, related reason is that Nigeria’s is an improving democracy that increasingly responds to popular will. Though final verdicts from election monitors will take days, initial reports suggest these have been Nigeria’s cleanest elections to date — and to the extent that Jonathan owes his election to the voters rather than PDP bigwigs, he might be expected to serve those interests in office. In addition, Jonathan has said he only wants to serve one complete term.

If he sticks to that decision, the normal concerns of self-promotion within the PDP that has persuaded so many in the party to act in the elite’s interest rather than the wider population’s will have much less sway. Jonathan has, for instance, already signaled that finally delivering a reliable electricity supply to Nigeria will be a top priority of his presidency — something that would unsettle those in the elite who have become rich out of squeezing the power supply, and selling the country generators. Encouragingly, Jonathan would not be alone should he choose to strike out on the path of progress and reform. Since 2009, Nigeria has had a formidable Central Bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, who is cleaning up Nigeria’s banks, and since 2007, the governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, has made huge strides remaking Nigeria’s megacity.

The big question is leadership. As someone who initially came to power by default — Jonathan was installed when former President Umaru Yar-Adua died last year — the President-elect has had, until now, no popular mandate beyond winning the PDP candidacy. Perhaps as a result, he has been an unimpressive President, more given to conferring than leading, more a servant to figures inside the PDP than their master.

For one of his advisers, former human rights lawyer Oronto Douglas, his popular election changes all that. “This is the dawn of a new era, the beginning of the rise and rise of the ballot over the bullet [and] of a new Nigeria where the power of the people will speak for the people and our country,” he said. But another adviser, speaking in the run-up to the vote, was not so sure. “Nigeria’s politics is ruthlessly pragmatic. You have to strike deals with some devils to become President.

The question is, after the election, will the President feel strong enough to turn around and say: ‘You know what? Thanks for your support, but I’m going to be my own man.’” Nigerians have put their faith in Jonathan. Will he put the same faith in himself?

United Nations Plans To Investigate Post Election Violence In Nigeria For Crimes Against Humanity. GOOD!

UN Plans Probe Of Post-Polls Riots – The Guardian

THE United Nations (UN) is taking the post-election violence in Nigeria beyond the realm of the country’s internal affairs.

Without encroaching on the powers of the Federal Government to maintain law and order, the UN through the International Criminal Court (ICC) says it will investigate the crisis to determine whether crimes against humanity were committed.

In a statement from the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, Mr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said it was following the mayhem in Nigeria from the National Assembly to the presidential polls to determine whether crimes abhorred by the global body had been committed.

At home, ethnic, religious, social groups and individuals yesterday condemned the unwarranted attacks on Nigerians by thugs believed to be championing the cause the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) presidential candidate, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who lost the election to the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP’s) candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan.

Among those who deplored the violence and demanded the probe of its masterminds are the leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Jama’atu Nasir Islam (JNI), South-South Elders Forum, the Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), and the Youth Adolescent Reflection and Action Centre, (YARAC).

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) confirmed yesterday that over 8,000 persons had been displaced by the crisis in Bauchi State.

Nigeria Needs To STOP FORCED National Youth Service Corps NOW!

Nigerian young poll workers come under attack

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Officials tasked the four young college graduates with monitoring election stations during Nigeria's presidential vote. Then when the poll results unleashed sectarian violence, an angry mob killed them by locking them inside their youth hostel and setting it ablaze.

Dozens of their colleagues in a nearby state narrowly escaped death after rioters torched their hostel too, leaving many with serious burns and few options to go home.

Nigeria's National Youth Service Corps is a mandatory yearlong assignment for all Nigerians who graduate from university before the age of 30. Most serve as teachers during their stint, but the April national elections have brought extra responsibilities — and danger — to their work.

Now federal officials are vowing to step up protection for young volunteers in the areas wracked by violence, while worried parents are wondering whether their children can be reassigned away from towns marked by charred bodies and torched buildings.

Attahiru Jega, chief of Nigeria's Independent Election Commission, said the young Nigerians had been targeted "to scare them away from continuing the honorable and excellent work they have been doing during these elections."

"I call on them, their parents and guardians not to allow the perpetrators of violence to scare them away from the noble job they are doing for this country," Jega said. "I commiserate with all those who have been affected in one way or the other by the violence. Some have paid the ultimate price for democracy and I am sure that I speak the minds of all Nigerians if I say that the nation will be eternally grateful to them."

One 29-year-old volunteer assigned to Kaduna, one of the epicenters of deadly riots, said his family wants him to withdraw, even if it means doing so without permission. The gubernatorial election there has been delayed until Thursday now because of safety concerns.

"If security improves between now and then, I will definitely participate," the volunteer said on condition of anonymity because youth service corps rules prohibit volunteers from speaking to journalists. The punishment for doing so could include having more time tacked on to their assignment.

Even for those who don't fear being penalized for leaving early, getting out of the troubled north could prove difficult. Most taking part in the mandatory yearlong national service corps are posted far from their home communities.

Plane tickets are costly and many commercial buses have stopped making trips to the troubled zones. After the attacks on service corps residences, many members are seeking refuge.

One 25-year-old corps member in Bauchi is now sharing a room with 59 other people.

"If you find any barrack, an army barrack, a police barrack, they'll find a mattress for you to sleep on," he said. "You meet people here who have seen terrible things."

Ironically the founders of the program created it in 1973 to promote national unity in a country with more than 150 ethnic groups and to help reconcile Nigerians after a 31-month civil war claimed as many as 1 million lives. By encouraging young graduates to explore new parts of the country, the goal was to dispel negative stereotypes.

As evidenced by the rioting that erupted after this week's vote, Nigeria remains deeply divided 38 years later.

In a televised address to the nation Thursday, President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the attacks on the young Nigerians.

"These young and innocent Nigerians are guests within our communities and are agents of public good and national unity," he said of the service corps.

He also ordered state governors to "take personal responsibility for their security and safety in the states where they serve," but no directive has yet been given for corps members to abandon their duty, even in the most distressed areas.

Corps members serving in dangerous areas say that there should be more efforts made to secure their lives. One worker recalled seeing a man in line caught with knives and a machete at a polling unit, but none of the police officers ran after him when he fled.

"Things are much worse in rural parts of Bauchi state where some corps members aren't even protected by armed officers," he said.

The 25-year-old volunteer said corps members were still working in a local government where other volunteers had been targeted or killed.

"The response time is too slow," he said. "It makes you think of how much you've sticked out your neck for the country and the country won't stick out its neck for you."

Still, international observers have applauded the young Nigerians for helping to make the April 16 presidential vote so smooth — previous polls have been marred by thuggery and rigging. Former Botswana President Festus Mogae who led a team of Commonwealth monitors reserved special praise for members of the youth service corps who walked voters through a demanding process.

"These young Nigerians, a large number of whom were women, showed dedication and courage in helping to deliver a transparent electoral process, often in difficult conditions," Mogae said. "They are a source of pride and hope for Nigeria."

Nigeria: A Nation Divided. Renewed Unrest Reminds One Of The Biafran War. I Am A Biafran, By The Way.

Nigeria unrest 'recalls lead-up to 1967 Biafra war'

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said the violence following his election is a "sad reminder" of events that plunged Nigeria into civil war.

He said Nigeria was still struggling to come to terms with the suffering of the 1967 conflict when the south-east tried to establish the state of Biafra.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the recent post-poll unrest.

The president said the violence was intended to frustrate remaining polls, but they would go ahead.

However, elections for powerful state governors will be delayed for two days, until Thursday, in two of the worst affected states - Kaduna and Bauchi, the electoral commission announced.

Riots broke out in the north on Monday after Mr Jonathan, a southerner, emerged as the winner of the presidential poll.

Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, who is popular in the north, denies instigating the "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted" events.

Nigeria is divided by rivalry between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south, which also have cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences.

Mr Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP) has previously alternated its presidential candidate between people who come from each of the two halves of the country, in an attempt to keep the peace.

'Enough is enough'

In an address to the nation, President Jonathan said the "horrific acts" of the last few days had been shocking.

"They killed and maimed innocent citizens. They set ablaze business premises, private homes and even places of worship," he said.

"If anything at all, these acts of mayhem are sad reminders of the events which plunged our country into 30 months of an unfortunate civil war," he said referring to the Biafran war in which more than one million people died.

"As a nation we are yet to come to terms with the level of human suffering, destruction and displacement, including that of our children to far-away countries, occasioned by those dark days.

"Enough is enough," he said.

The BBC's Abdullahi Kaura Abubakar in Kaduna, the state which has witnessed the worst of the violence, says Kaduna city is now calm.
Continue reading the main story
A picture taken on April 18, 2011 shows Nigerian police enforcing a curfew in the capital of Bauchi state, northern Nigeria, after riots

But it is difficult to confirm what is happening in the south of the state where there have been reports of continuing trouble.

Kaduna's police say 32 people have died in the clashes - our reporter says the casualty figure may rise as Muslims tend to bury their dead quickly - sometimes before their deaths are officially reported.

He went to one hospital in the city and saw 25 charred corpses on a mortuary floor and was told there were another 25 bodies in the mortuary fridge but he had to leave without checking because of the stench.

On Wednesday, the Red Cross put the figure of those fleeing the violence at 48,000.
'Dastardly acts'

During his speech, the president said that security has been reinforced nationwide to quell any further unrest.

He added that there was no grievance that the law courts could not address.
Nigerians read newspapers on 20 April 2011, at a newspapers stand in Kano, northern Nigeria Calm has returned to most areas but many people have fled fearing more violence

Gen Buhari has said that his party will challenge some of the results - he maintains the election commission's computers were programmed to disadvantage his party in some parts of Nigeria.

But he urged his supporters to refrain from attacks, saying: "It is wrong for you to allow miscreants to infiltrate your ranks and perpetrate such dastardly acts as the mindless destruction of worship places.

"Needless to say, this act is worse than the rigging of the elections."

International observers have said the election was reasonably free and fair.

Mr Jonathan, a Christian from the oil-producing Niger Delta, was appointed to the presidency last year upon the death of incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern Muslim whom he had served as vice-president.

He staked his reputation on the election, repeatedly promising it would be free and fair.

Editor's note: Presidential Results

Goodluck Jonathan, People's Democratic Party: 22.5 million votes (59.6%)
Muhammadu Buhari, Congress for Progressive Change: 12.2 million votes (32.3%)
Nuhu Ribadu, Action Congress of Nigeria: 2.08 million votes (5.5%)
Ibrahim Shekarau, All Nigeria Peoples Party: 911,455 votes (2.4%)

Editor's comment: If Nigerians were not cowards, we would seek partition of the country into two, and take up arms LIBYA STYLE, if need be.

U. S. Census: Four Of The Top Five POOREST Counties In The United States Are In Eastern Kentucky. All In The Top Ten Are In The South! Surprised?!!

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