AZAZI: Combating a common terrorist threat

Note: Andrew Azazi is President Jonathan's Nigerian National Security Advisor.

Washington Times

4 January 2012

AZAZI: Combating a common terrorist threat

Time for a strategic security relationship between the U.S. and Nigeria

By Owoye Andrew Azazi

Terrorists from Nigeria have again turned the joyful celebrations of Christmas into a D-Day for premeditated mass murder. This year, extremists slaughtered worshippers in a church during Christmas services near the Nigerian capital and elsewhere in the country.

America is at risk for this type of violence. Two Christmases ago, a militant from my country - the infamous Underwear Bomber - tried to blow up an American jetliner over Detroit.

Nigeria welcomes the White House’s rapid Christmas Day declaration of support against the perpetrators of that day’s attacks, but we must stress that the threat emerging in our country is far larger and may be headed America’s way.

It’s time for a strategic security relationship between Nigeria and the United States.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation. We are blessed with more people than Russia or Japan and are America’s fourth-largest foreign supplier of oil.

In the past two years, a group called Boko Haram has wounded and murdered hundreds of innocent Nigerians. Many observers in the United States and Nigeria dismissed Boko Haram as a tiny, weak, even incompetent terrorist group that, at best, was aimed only at destabilizing our democratically elected president.

They were mistaken. In August, Boko Haram escalated its attacks by sending a suicide bomber to blow up the United Nations building in Abuja. The terrorist group issued a statement to taunt not the president of Nigeria, but the president of the United States.

We can destroy Boko Haram in its early stages, before it goes truly international. We don’t want or need American troops. But we would benefit greatly from American know-how and other forms of support as we develop our new counterterrorism strategy. We have much to offer through our own expertise, human resources and experience.