Why did Nigeria ban UNICEF?
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Print edition | Middle East and Africa
Dec 18th 2018
EVEN AT THE best of times Nigeria is awash with speculation. Ask otherwise sensible people who is really behind Boko Haram, a jihadist group, and conspiracy theories come pouring out. National politicians have stoked the fighting, some say. No, others retort: it was American and British spies who started it. Not a shred of evidence supports these theories. Nor is there any plausible reason why any of them might be true. But none is as bonkers as the latest one from Nigeria’s army.
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On December 14th Nigeria suspended the operations of UNICEF, the UN children’s fund, accusing it of spying for Boko Haram. The two groups do not obviously share a common interest. One saves children’s lives. The other uses them as human bombs. Nonetheless, commanders insisted that UNICEF was “training selected persons for clandestine activities”. They added that there was “credible information” that foreign aid agencies and NGOs were training and deploying spies for Boko Haram.
This was so absurd that, within hours, the army was forced to lift the ban on UNICEF. Still, damage has been done. By obstructing (and implicitly threatening) aid workers, the army has put lives at risk. After almost a decade of conflict with Boko Haram in the north-east of the country, some 1.8m people are unable to return to their homes. Many rely on the UN for food and other essentials. More than 1.1m get clean water through UNICEF projects.
The Nigerian army has long viewed aid workers in the north-east with suspicion. In 2017 it expressed concerns to the governor of Borno state, who agreed to set up a panel to investigate NGOs “to determine whether they are exploiting security challenges for profit”.
However, some suspect that the army’s real reason for harassing aid workers is to stem the flow of embarrassing information. The army often commits atrocities and loses battles. Aid workers notice these things. Indeed, they are often the only witnesses who dare to contradict the government’s story that it is winning the war. National elections are due in February. President Muhammadu Buhari, who is standing for re-election, won office in 2015 after promising to restore security to the north-east. On December 17th an army spokesman threatened Amnesty International, a human-rights group, with closure for seeking to “destabilise” Nigeria.