Boko Haram 'ceasefire' doubts after attacks reported in Nigeria

Boko Haram Attacks Again Cast Doubt on Cease-Fire Claims

Attacks in northeast Nigeria by suspected Boko Haram insurgents have cast doubt on the government’s claim to have reached a cease-fire agreement with the group.

Militants raided at least two communities in the northeastern state of Borno for two days starting on Oct. 17, local pro-government vigilantes and residents said. The first assault came after Nigeria’s military announced it had reached a cease-fire with Boko Haram.

“These sorts of stories should nevertheless be treated skeptically as we do approach national elections early next year,” analysts Gareth Brickman and Catherine Bennett at ETM Analytics in South Africa, said today by e-mail. “It appears the militant group is very fractured, so broad terms may not be able to even be applied.”

President Goodluck Jonathan, 56, hasn’t said whether he will stand for re-election in a vote scheduled for Feb. 14. His spokesman, Doyin Okupe, said on Oct. 18 the government is in talks with Boko Haram to free about 200 girls kidnapped from the northeastern town of Chibok in April.

Jonathan’s political opponents say his government has failed to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency, which the president said has killed 13,000 people over the past five years. The kidnapping of the schoolgirls focused global attention on security in Nigeria, which this year statistically overtook South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy.

“Jonathan certainly needs a political boost like this, but it’s a temporary shot in the arm,” Mark Schroeder, Africa analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical advisory company based in Austin, Texas, said in a phone interview. “It does not address the structural issues that allow Boko Haram to operate,”

Those issues include poverty and the perception of residents in the northeast of the country that they have little political representation in the capital, Abuja, he said.