Clinton Says Poverty Fuels Crisis In Northern Nigeria

[ChannelsTV]

A former U.S. President, Bill Clinton, on Tuesday said that Nigeria must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty across the nation's predominantly Muslim north in order to halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists there.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton Mr. Clinton, who disclosed this in Abeokuta at the 18th annual Thisday awards which was aimed at honouring the teaching profession, said poverty remains the main driver for the attacks and needs to be addressed by strong local and federal government programmes.

"You have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don't have it," Mr. Clinton said.

"You have all these political problems – and now violence problems – that appear to be rooted in religious differences and the all the rhetoric of the Boko Harams and others, but the truth is the poverty rate in the North is three times of what it is in Lagos," the former president said.

He pointed out that Nigeria, which earns billions of dollars from its oil industry and is a major supplier to the U.S., must not take a "divide the pie" approach toward attacking poverty. That appeared to be a subtle reference to the endemic corruption that envelopes government and private industry in the country.

"It's a losing strategy," Mr. Clinton said. "You have to figure out a way to have a strategy that will share prosperity."

Poverty is endemic in Nigeria, and corrupt public officials have siphoned away billions in oil earnings since the country began exporting crude more than 50 years ago. Government statistics show that in Nigeria's northwest and northeast, regions besieged by Islamic insurgents, about 75 percent of the people live in poverty.

The awards ceremony is an annual event organised by ThisDay newspaper and its publisher Nduka Obaigbena, who has invited Mr. Clinton several times to Nigeria, along with other celebrities. This year's event was also attended by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Via: ChannelsTV