Brussels, 16/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament severely condemns the terrorist attacks committed by the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, in the north of Nigeria, and the murder of the British and Italian hostages, Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinar. It urges the government of Nigeria to put an end to the violence as soon as possible. However, in addition to deep-rooted religious tension made worse by Boko Haram to increase its “harmful power”, MEPs call for a more thorough analysis to be made of the root causes of the conflict, and of the measures to be taken to tackle abuse committed by oil companies operating in the country. The resolution on the situation in Nigeria, adopted by a show of hands on Thursday 15 March in Strasbourg, relays this message and invites Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, to take measures combining diplomacy with longer term development cooperation in order to ensure peace, security, good governance and respect of human rights in Nigeria. The EU is also urged to pursue its political dialogue with Nigeria (under Article 8 of the Cotonou Agreement binding the EU and ACP countries) and to settle, in this context, the questions of universal human rights and, in particular, freedom of thought, of conscience, of religion and belief, while combating all forms of discrimination.
Villy Sovndal, Danish Foreign Minister representing Catherine Ashton, said it was not by chance that Boko Haram was gaining ground in the north of the country, a region that has one of the worst socio-economic situations, and that is one of the “most forgotten regions of the world”. Boko Haram, he added, targets the secular, democratic state, as much the Christians as the Muslims. Mario Monti (EPP, Italy), the rapporteur, said the two European hostages assassinated were the victims of a fierce strategy, as are the Nigerians. Behind the ethnic-religious tension lurk power strategies for obtaining control of energy resources.
The resolution calls on the president of Nigeria to encourage interreligious and inter-faith dialogue and to strengthen freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The federal government is, for its part, invited to conduct an inquiry into the causes of the recent violence and to severely crack down on Boko Haram, which is possibly linked to the Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Parliament calls on the authorities to combat corruption, to stop the enormous gap between rich and poor (who suffer from “dire living conditions”) and to avoid vague and simplistic explanations based on a single religion. The Nigerian authorities and foreign companies operating in the Nigerian oil sector must respect the initiative in favour of transparency in the extracting industries, declaring oil revenues and the amounts that they pay to the Nigerian government, the Parliament states, and they must clean up pollution in the Niger Delta. (AN/transl.jl)