Two of Nigeria’s top diplomats vowed Wednesday that their nation’s postponed elections will occur March 28, and accused the Obama administration of promoting a false narrative that President Goodluck Jonathan is bent on using the security crisis around the terrorist group Boko Haram as a ruse to stay in power.
As a new video emerged of Boko Haram’s leader promising to violently disrupt the vote, Nigerian Foreign Minister Aminu Bashir Wali and Ambassador to Washington Ade Adefuye asserted that their nation badly wants to buy American weapons to fight Boko Haram — but continues to be stiff-armed by the Obama administration because of concerns of the government’s human right record.
The two diplomats said Washington’s overall relationship with Nigeria, which boasts Africa’s largest economy, has grown stronger in recent years, but they said the relationship has suffered from poor communication and miscalculated public pronouncements from top Obama administration officials.
The Nigerian officials said Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s public condemnation this month of Mr. Jonathan’s decision to delay the vote by six weeks early this month fueled hysteria about a failure of democracy. What’s worse, Mr. Bashir Wali and Mr. Adefuye claimed, the State Department itself had helped fund a report that outlined how Boko Haram-related security risks could have ruined the election had it not been postponed.
The report, prepared jointly in January by the International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute, said mayhem being sewn by the Islamist terror group in northern Nigeria would “mean the disenfranchisement of a large number of voters,” a factor that would “well call into question the legitimacy of the election.”
“Holding the vote as planned on Feb. 14 would have been a catastrophe in view of the challenges that were enumerated in the report,” said Mr. Adefuye. Mr. Kerry’s statement “was oblivious of the facts of the report,” he said.
“American opinion is highly respected in Nigeria,” the ambassador added, noting that Nigeria’s lead opposition party, the All Progressives Congress, has “harped on the statement to make these allegations” first made by Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Kerry suggested on Feb. 7 that U.S. officials were wary of the Jonathan government meddling in the election process, warning that “political interference with the Independent National Electoral Commission is unacceptable, and it is critical that the government not use security concerns as a pretext for impeding the democratic process.”
Mr. Bashir Wali rejected the insinuation Wednesday. He also pushed back against U.S. news reports citing anonymous officials in Nigeria who claimed President Jonathan’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is putting heavy pressure on the election commission’s leadership to delay the vote.
“We have nothing to hide,” he said. “This is propaganda by the opposition, when the reality is that the PDP and President Jonathan are totally committed to democracy in Nigeria.”
Mr. Bashir Wali added that Nigeria’s elections were similarly postponed — but with far less fanfare — at the last minute in 2011, and that the delay this time around was justified by multiple factors. Among them, he said, is the fact that thousands of Nigerian military personnel would not be able to provide security at polling stations because they are fighting Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. He also said the election commission is woefully behind in distributing required voter identification cards to millions of the nation’s citizens.
Mr. Bashir Wali said he is confident both factors will be resolved by late March, and said that there is no question the election will take place on March 28.
But in a video published Wednesday by the SITE Intelligence Group, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau reiterated the insurgents’ intention to use violence to disturb the elections, scheduled for March 28.
The warnings come as the militaries of Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad finalized plans for a joint offensive against the group.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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