Clinton criticizes Nigeria for poor living standards that foment extremism

Clinton: Nigeria failing to curb extremism

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Nigeria on Tuesday for corruption and poor living standards that she said encourage the sort of extremism typified by the attempted bombing of an American airliner.

Speaking at a town hall meeting of State Department employees, Clinton said the Nigerian government has failed for years to address the legitimate needs of its people. She said that has contributed to a growing sense of alienation, particularly among the young who are then more susceptible to extremist ideologies.

“The failure of the Nigerian leadership over many years to respond to the legitimate needs of their own young people, to have a government that promoted a meritocracy, that really understood that democracy can’t just be given lip service, it has to be delivering services to the people, has meant there is a lot of alienation in that country and others,” she said.

“There has to be a recognition that in the last 10 years a lot of the indicators about quality of life in Nigeria have gone in the wrong direction,” Clinton said. She said illiteracy was growing, health standards were falling and described corruption in the country as “unbelievable.”

She said those conditions meant that “Nigeria faces a threat from increasing radicalization” by providing “an opening for extremism that offers an alternative world view” as shown by the young Nigerian man — Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — who allegedly tried to blow up the Detroit-bound Delta flight on Christmas Day.

Abdulmutallab, the son of a prominent Nigerian banker, did not grow up impoverished, but Clinton noted that he identified with the kind of ideology often fueled by poverty.

“The young people in the world today, they see other options,” she said. “They are all interconnected through the Internet and the information we have on the Christmas Day bomber so far seems to suggest that he was disturbed by his father’s wealth and kind of living conditions that he viewed as being not Islamic.”