Youths angry at the Nigerian
government's failure to fight Islamic extremists threw stones Thursday
at President Goodluck Jonathan's electioneering convoy in the eastern
town of Jalingo, breaking windshields and windows on several vehicles.
An Associated Press reporter was unable to see if anyone was hurt.
Police used tear gas and whips to disperse the mob.
From
Jalingo, Jonathan flew to Yola, capital of Adamawa state, where
officials had declared the route of his motorcade a no-go area. The
presidential cavalcade already had been stoned in northern Katsina city
and northeast Bauchi last week. Youths in Bauchi flung shoes and plastic
bottles at Jonathan's podium at a rally.
In Jalingo, soldiers
guarded billboards and posters of Jonathan, who is running for
re-election on Feb. 14. Protesters shouted that the troops should
instead be fighting the Boko Haram insurgents blamed for the deaths of
some 10,000 people in the past year.
"Why are they using soldiers
and other security operatives? They should be deployed to Sambisa and
fight with Boko Haram, not with innocent civilians," one youth yelled as
he tore down a poster of a smiling Jonathan.
Sambisa Forest is
where the insurgents have camps and where they are believed to be
holding some of the 276 schoolgirls abducted from a boarding school in
the remote town of Chibok in April — a mass kidnapping that brought
international outrage.
Dozens of the girls escaped on their own but 219 remain
missing, a reminder of the failures of Nigeria's government and
military.
At a rally in Yola, Jonathan promised his government
will do more to help some of the million-plus people driven from their
homes in the 5-year-old insurgency.
"We are totally committed to
the liberation of Adamawa state," Jonathan pledged. But Adamawa state
legislator Adamu Kamale complained Wednesday that seven villages and
Michika town have been under attack by Boko Haram since Friday and that
he has appealed in vain for soldiers to come and fight the extremists.
It
is unclear if displaced people will be able to vote. Hundreds of
thousands have fled across borders. And it is not known how many remain
trapped in more than 100 northeastern village and towns held by the
insurgents.
Nigeria's home-grown Boko Haram group has been
attacking Cameroonian villages and troops, broadening the conflict and
raising fears among Nigeria's neighbors.
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