Nigeria

Debate between Sarah Teather and Lord Swire

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will make a statement on the current situation in Nigeria.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

The Boko Haram terrorist group continues to wreak havoc across north-east Nigeria. Many colleagues will have seen the press reports over the past week highlighting its latest sickening attacks. Hundreds of people are believed to have been killed in the town of Baga in Borno state last week as Boko Haram continued its bloody insurgency campaign. Suicide bombings in urban areas are also a common feature of Boko Haram’s tactics. This weekend, we saw another heinous example in the Yobe state town of Potiskum.

These attacks are just the latest example of the insurgents’ reign of terror. We believe that more than 4,000 people were killed by the group last year in north-east Nigeria. The United Nations estimates that more than 1.5 million people have been displaced by terrorist activities, and that at least 3 million have been affected by the insurgency.

The abductions of the Chibok schoolgirls on 14 April last year shocked the world and highlighted the mindless cruelty of Boko Haram. The group deliberately targets the weak and vulnerable, causing suffering in communities of different faiths and ethnicities. It is almost certainly the case that attacks by Boko Haram have killed more Muslims than Christians.

The year 2015 is an important one for Nigeria’s future. Presidential and state elections will take place in February. It is crucial that they are free, fair and credible and that all Nigerians are able to exercise their vote without fear and intimidation.

As Minister with responsibility for the Commonwealth, I responded to the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), the former Prime Minister, on behalf of the Government in the last debate in the House on this subject. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) for asking this timely question, which will allow Members from across the House to give this important issue the attention it surely deserves.

[Sarah Teather]

This weekend saw an inspiring and moving display of international solidarity in the wake of the Paris shootings, 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. While millions poured on to the streets in Europe in a hopeful, defiant march for peace, thousands of Nigerians fled across the border into Chad in fear of further violence, adding to the tens of thousands who have already fled to Chad, Cameroon and Niger and the 1 million or so people displaced internally.

I visited northern Nigeria with Voluntary Service Overseas in 2008, as recorded in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, to see projects working to improve access to and the quality of primary education. Will the Minister tell the House how UK Government-funded programmes for education in northern Nigeria are responding to the escalating security situation and to the mass displacement of people? What are the Government doing to ensure a rapid humanitarian response for refugees, who are mostly fleeing to countries that are already resource-poor and insecure? Looking ahead to the world humanitarian summit next year, are there measures that can be put in place now for the co-ordination of aid and support for local non-governmental organisations? Does the Minister recognise that the international NGOs are already hugely overstretched in the region, responding to multiple conflicts and Ebola?

What are the Government doing to bring pressure to bear on the Nigerian Government to tackle Boko Haram and to prioritise protection of humanitarian workers? What are we doing to encourage the Nigerian Government to stamp out corruption, which is such a breeding ground for loss of confidence in the state? Finally, looking ahead to the Nigerian elections, how will the Minister ensure that we can capitalise diplomatically on the window of opportunity provided by a newly elected Nigerian Government to tackle such issues, however discredited those elections might turn out to be, when we will be in the middle of our own election campaign?

[Mr Swire]

I thank the hon. Lady again for asking this urgent question, which gives us the time to return to these matters. There is a problem in that when something crops up elsewhere in the world, we are easily diverted and we forget the appalling suffering that continues in other parts of the world. I pay tribute to the world leaders who gathered in Paris at the weekend, including my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and the “Je suis Charlie” campaign. I know we would all have liked to be there to show our solidarity.

To return to the question of Nigeria and managing the humanitarian crisis, we are working closely with our international partners to react to the large numbers of people who have now been displaced by the conflict in the north-east, an issue that affects not just Nigeria but its close neighbours. The UK’s contribution to the UN’s central emergency response fund and the European Commission’s humanitarian aid and civil protection department programmes in 2014 was £1.7 million and, of course, DFID’s total budget for Nigeria is one of the biggest in the world at some £250 million, which includes funding for the safe schools initiative and promoting women’s and girls’ rights in northern Nigeria. British aid will help 800,000 more children to go to school in Nigeria, including 600,000 girls.

Corruption is worth highlighting, and it is worth remembering as we discuss these matters that Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa. It spends 20% of its national budget on security, so, properly run, Nigeria should be able to do a lot of this work itself. Our money from DFID does not just alleviate poverty, although there is a disparity in the economies of the north and the south, but helps build robust institutions so that Nigeria can take on some of the problems itself.

The hon. Lady refers to the forthcoming election in February. We have concerns about violence during the election and about the feasibility of running a nationwide election when an area the size of Belgium is now under Boko Haram.