U.S. tries to steady oil-rich, but restive Nigeria

Children gather around a scorched police truck after an attack at a police station in Kano, Nigeria, last week. Youths overran the police station in the Sheka neighborhood that morning. (Associated Press)

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• Politics
• War_Conflict
• Business_Finance
• Nigeria
• Goodluck Jonathan

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U.S. officials are monitoring developments in Nigeria, where massive protests and a series of bombings by a shadowy Islamist group have rocked the West African nation, a key U.S. oil supplier.

Concerns about the security situation facing President Goodluck Jonathan mounted after a series of coordinated suicide car bombings targeted police stations in the northern city of Kano this month.

State Department officials and regional analysts are downplaying the likelihood that the violence will interrupt crude oil exports, noting that the unrest centers on a region far from the oil facilities along Nigeria’s southern coastline.

U.S. and Nigerian officials engaged in high-level talks last week in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, with a focus on how Mr. Jonathan's government “can improve its security response” to the threat posed by the Islamist group Boko Haram, a State Department spokeswoman said.

On Sunday, Boko Haram militants ruled out talks with the government and threatened more attacks in Nigeria.

Nerves have been raw since the Jan. 20 bombings killed an estimated 185 people. The explosions hit just days after widespread demonstrations and the threat of a nationwide labor union strike nearly brought the country to its knees.

Analysts have been careful to isolate the Islamist violence from the protests, which have been embraced by a broad cross-section of Nigerians.

Nonetheless, a two-pronged crisis is harrying Nigeria as it struggles to overcome crushing poverty and a tense divide between the predominantly Christian south and the mostly Muslim north.

Social frustrations were running high long before Mr. Jonathan, a Christian from the oil-rich southern Niger Delta region, rose to power last year.

About 70 percent of Nigerians live on no more than $1.25 a day. Though the nation is Africa’s leading oil producer, it must import gasoline because its own refineries have collapsed as a result of widespread corruption.

Public anger boiled over this month when Mr. Jonathan, under budgetary duress, abruptly removed government subsidies for fuel, which sent gas prices soaring from about $1.70 to $3.50 per gallon.

The president was forced to reinstate the subsidies at the threat of a nationwide labor strike that likely would have crippled the oil export industry.

With gas prices down again and protests subsiding, the Jonathan government felt it had dodged a bullet. Then the Dec. 20 bombings hit, and a fresh wave of unease washed over the country.

The blasts put the spotlight back on Boko Haram, which is rooted in the mainly Muslim north. The group has been the focus of growing international concern since claiming responsibility for a similar bombing that killed 18 people at the U.N. headquarters in Abuja in August.

The threat to Nigeria’s stability, meanwhile, has become an issue of increasing interest amid shifts in the world’s crude oil market.

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