By
Frances Perraudin
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A
2013 photo shows a woman walking past houses in Baga that were burnt during
fighting between Boko Haram and Nigerian forces. The town was completely razed
to the ground last week. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
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Foreign Office
minister says Nigerians living in UK can be proud of British assistance in
fight against Islamist militants.
Nigerians
living in the UK can be proud of the level of British support for Nigeria in
its fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram, the Foreign Office minister
Hugo Swire has said, while ruling out sending British troops to the country.
Responding
to an urgent question in the House of Commons from the Liberal Democrat MP
Sarah Teather, Swire said the UK’s contribution to the UN’s central emergency
response fund and the European commission’s humanitarian aid and civil
protection programmes in 2014 was £1.7m, and that the Department for
International Development’s budget for Nigeria was one of the biggest in the
world, at about £250m.
Teather
asked how the government was responding to the escalating security situation in
Nigeria and the mass displacement of people in west Africa where non-government
organisations were struggling to respond to the Ebola crisis.
“This
weekend saw an inspiring and moving display of international solidarity in the
wake of the Paris shootings,” she said, “but while we were watching the horror
unfold in Paris, hundreds or possibly thousands of civilians were slaughtered
by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, with very little international attention.”
The debate followed reports that as many as 2,000 people were
massacred by the Islamist group in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Baga last
week. Witnesses have said the town, which had a population of around 10,000,
was razed to the ground.
The
attacks came five weeks before presidential elections, which are expected to
trigger more bloodshed. The UN estimates more than 1.5 million people have been
displaced by the insurgency.
The
Conservative MP John Redwood asked the minister to clarify why the west was
right to try to use military force in Syria and Iraq, in similar situations,
but not in Nigeria.
Swire
said drawing such parallels was not useful. Nigeria was one of the richest
countries in Africa, spending 20% of its own budget on defence: “In the normal
course of events, it should be able to handle these things itself, but it
cannot and that is why we are providing assistance to enable it to do so.”
The
Labour MP David Winnick asked whether there was any concern about whether the
Nigerian authorities were up to dealing with the threat.
“Time
and again, when the Nigerian president has been under a good deal of
international pressure, and rightly so, his response has been such that one can
conclude only that the commitment to fight the terrorism and atrocities in that
country is not as it should be,” Winnick said.
Swire
said that while the British government wished Nigeria’s institutions were
stronger, “both the Nigerian government and the international community are
absolutely certain that Boko Haram needs to be routed out, and quickly, before
it does further damage within the country and to its vulnerable neighbours”.
Another
Conservative MP, Richard Fuller, said that the more than 1 million Britons of
Nigerian origin would regard Swire’s response as inadequate and that he had
portrayed the problem as being smaller than they perceived it to be.
“With
the greatest respect to those who took part [in the rallies against the French
attacks], our response to Boko Haram needs more than a hashtag and a photo
opportunity,” Fuller said. “It needs an active response from the British
government, who believe in the freedom of the individual wherever they are in
the world.”
Swire
said the UK could not impose assistance, if it had not been requested: “There
is something called sovereignty, which may have escaped my honourable friend’s
notice, and the Nigerian government are perhaps, as I have said, too slow to
ask the international community for help.”
Source: http://www.theguardian.com
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