Youths stone Jonathan's convoy in Jalingo
Youths angry at the Nigerian government's failure to fight Islamic extremists threw stones Thursday at President Goodluck Jonathan's electioneering convoy in the eastern town of Jalingo, Taraba State, breaking windshields and windows on several vehicles, though no one was hurt.
From Jalingo, Jonathan flew to Yola, capital of Adamawa
state, where officials had declared the route of his motorcade a no-go area.
The presidential cavalcade already had been stoned in northern Katsina city and
northeast Bauchi last week. Youths in Bauchi flung shoes and plastic bottles at
Jonathan's podium at a rally.
In Jalingo, soldiers guarded billboards and posters of
Jonathan, who is running for re-election on Feb. 14. Protesters shouted that
the troops should instead be fighting the Boko Haram insurgents blamed for the
deaths of some 10,000 people in the past year.
"Why are they using soldiers and other security
operatives? They should be deployed to Sambisa and fight with Boko Haram, not
with innocent civilians," one youth yelled as he tore down a poster of a
smiling Jonathan.
Sambisa Forest is where the insurgents have camps and where
they are believed to be holding some of the 276 schoolgirls abducted from a
boarding school in the remote town of Chibok in April — a mass kidnapping that
brought international outrage.
Dozens of the girls escaped on their own but 219 remain
missing, a reminder of the failures of Nigeria's government and military.
At a rally in Yola, Jonathan promised his government will do
more to help some of the million-plus people driven from their homes in the
5-year-old insurgency.
"We are totally committed to the liberation of Adamawa
state," Jonathan pledged. But Adamawa state legislator Adamu Kamale
complained Wednesday that seven villages and Michika town have been under
attack by Boko Haram since Friday and that he has appealed in vain for soldiers
to come and fight the extremists.
It is unclear if displaced people will be able to vote.
Hundreds of thousands have fled across borders. And it is not known how many
remain trapped in more than 100 northeastern village and towns held by the
insurgents.
Nigeria's home-grown Boko Haram group has been attacking
Cameroonian villages and troops, broadening the conflict and raising fears
among Nigeria's neighbors.
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