Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
held an election rally on Saturday at the epicentre of Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
's insurgency, vowing to defeat the fighters as locals mourned another 15 deaths.
The president's visit to Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria
... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border...
's restive Borno state, came the day after Boko Haram murderous Moslems killed 15 villagers in nearby Kambari.
"What I can assure you is that if reelected as president, the problem of insecurity will be addressed," Jonathan, who is seeking a second four-year term in the February 14 vote, told his supporters at the rally.
"I am deeply disturbed by the number of people who bit the dust due to activities of some irresponsible people," he added.
Jonathan said he had assured local traditional and Islamic leaders of his resolve to end the insurgency.
The president ordered a minute's silence in respect of the victims of the protracted Boko Haram violence.
There was a heavy security presence before and during Jonathan's visit, the latest in a series of campaign stops across Nigeria, with hundreds of armed police and sniffer dogs deployed at strategic areas.
The president visited Maiduguri briefly on January 15, his first stop there since March 2013. The visit earlier this month was shrouded in secrecy.
Boko Haram was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 and remained largely peaceful until a police and military crackdown against its then-leader Mohammed Yusuf and his followers in 2009.
Brutal raids, massacres, suicide kabooms and kidnappings by Boko Haram have claimed at least 13,000 lives and driven an estimated 1.5 million people from their homes, mainly in arid northeast Nigeria.
Nigeria's military has been criticised for failing to crush the rebellion but soldiers complain they lack the arms and ammunition to fight the better-equipped hard boys.
Nigeria's neighbours Cameroon
...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there...
, Chad and Niger have launched a joint bid to combat the murderous Moslems and halt their advance, and officials from Nigeria and those three countries met this week to thrash out details of a new regional force to counter the Islamists.