American foreign policy has ignored the religious ideology motivating the Boko Haram terrorist group, the Most. Rev. Nicholas Okoh told the Baptist Press last week. The West keeps “talking about economic problems,” claiming this is the motivation for the terror campaign waged by the Islamist militant group across Northern Nigeria. “That is not true,” he said, adding the Obama Administration has “deliberately ignored the fundamental issues of religious ideology.” The archbishop stated “some of the economic facilities, employment opportunities are visible in the northeast,” but “Boko Haram has destroyed all of them. So if they were actually interested in economic progress, they would not go around destroying what offered some economic succor to our people.” He urged Western governments to support the Nigerian government to “combat Boko Haram to a standstill” and force peaceful negotiation. “Christians in the West first of all need to encourage western governments to see Boko Haram as a very deadly terrorist organization…,” the archbishop said. “And they also need to support the government of Nigeria in every way possible so that the government will be able to combat Boko Haram.”
