H.E. Dr. Bolere Elizabeth Ketebu:

I thank the Acting Chairman. I will start with the role of the United Nations. The recently endorsed deployment of a 7,500-strong force of military personnel by the African Union received an endorsement from the United Nations. Clearance was sought from the Security Council of the United Nations before the African Union endorsed the deployment of these troops. This is part of the positive action on the part of the United Nations. I will take together the issues of the apparent complicity on the part of the Nigerian Government, corruption and those other issues that have portrayed this matter as coloured. In the earlier part of my presentation, I mentioned that Boko Haram's operational base is the Sambisa forest, which is near the border with three other countries, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The Government of Nigeria raised this issue continuously from the outset because it truly was a regional problem. Boko Haram would enter Nigeria from Cameroon, Chad or Niger, attack places, loot communities, attack markets, break into the strong rooms of banks, loot moneys and then return to Chad, Niger or Cameroon. Before this final decision by the African Union, the matter was taken up at the level of the Economic Community Of West African States, ECOWAS. Heretofore, even in respect of the Multinational Joint Task Force, each country was to place its troops or contributions to the contingent on its own territories. Forces from Nigeria could not enter Chad, forces from Chad could not enter Nigeria and Niger was obliged to place its people at its borders. This was the situation at the time Boko Haram attacked Baga. In my presentation, I mentioned how Niger had withdrawn its troops from its borders, because until the recent incursions into Niger and Cameroon, everybody else appeared to be looking at this as though it simply was a Nigerian matter. In the past week, Chadian troops have succeeded in crossing the borders into Nigeria to enable the Multinational Joint Task Force to actually confront Boko Haram from the Chadian, Nigerien, Cameroonian and Nigerian axes. If members are following up the issue in the media, they will have noticed that over the past two weeks more than half the territories under the control of Boko Haram have been recovered, because it has dawned on these countries that it is a regional problem and that until all the countries bordering the Sambisa forest pull together their resources to confront Boko Haram, we will not win the war against it. However, it is because they have done this that we are recording the positive incursions on Boko Haram from Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

On the issue of inequality of development or inequality in the deployment of resources, Nigeria operates with 36 states and a federal capital territory. Each state is governed by an indigene of that state and each state raises its own budget and applies its own resources. In other words, it is not the federal Government that develops all the states. Inasmuch as resources or major resources are disposed from the federal Government to the states, these states in addition raise their own internally generated revenue, IGR, to make up the revenue with which the various states develop themselves. These states do not suffer any form of inequity in the allocation of revenue from the federal process. Various indices are put in place to allocate resources to the various states, such as population, resources, taxes, VAT and so on. All those parameters are put in place, the states meet and each state collects a legitimate due. As a result, I do not subscribe to the suggestion that Boko Haram has arisen because of inequity in the distribution of resources or development on the part of the federal Government. However, this does not preclude the federal Government from intervening in the development of the states. These states are the states in which the federal Government has a special education strategy introduced by the current President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, which is called the Almajiri education scheme. The purpose of Almajiri education is to provide Western education for Islamic children in the northern parts of Nigeria. Where the educational system is strictly Islamic, the children are withdrawn from the parents and are attached to various Islamic scholars. The federal Government realised that this was raising a critical mass of youths who were devoid of Western education in the northern part of Nigeria and in consequence, it introduced this special scheme. If members reads about Nigeria, they can google the Almajiri education scheme and will find that the scheme was designed and implemented by the Government of the current President.

On the issue of gay marriages, I am not aware that Nigeria has a law in place that has prescribed the death sentence for gay marriages. I am aware that the law in Nigeria has prescribed jail terms for gay couples. The system in Nigeria is that in passing any law, the National Assembly will hold public hearings with interest groups and people are free to make known their views. Usually, when they do so, the National Assembly takes this into consideration before passing the law. Therefore, it is not a matter of the President of Nigeria having passed the law. While he has given his assent to the law, that is the law which is in place in Nigeria, passed by the National Assembly.

People who had gay rights had the opportunity and privilege to make their views known. They were not precluded from the process of public hearings or from making their contributions. As of today, the law in Nigeria prohibits gay marriages. That is what the law is.