Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram’s insurgency is having a “devastating” effect on the economies of three states in the northeast of the country, President Goodluck Jonathan said.
The violence by the militants, concentrated in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states in the majority-Muslim north of Africa’s biggest oil producer, “doesn’t affect the economy that much in terms of the economy of Nigeria as a state,” he said in an interview in New York yesterday.
Jonathan’s administration is struggling to contain the rebellion, which killed more than 4,000 people in the past 12 months, according to Maplecroft, the Bath, U.K.-based risk consultancy. Those attacks include three blasts in the capital, Abuja, in April, May and June this year, the first bombings in the city since 2011.
The president, whose government had previously said it was close to crushing Boko Haram, this year began describing the group as an expanding al-Qaeda-backed threat to Africa. The violence in Nigeria drew international attention after Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in April and threatened to sell them into slavery. Most of the girls are still missing.
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