Goodluck Jonathan. Photo: World Economic Forum.

Goodluck Jonathan

President of Nigeria

In Goodluck Jonathan, who has served as Nigeria’s president since 2010, Israel has a significant ally in a region of Africa that has been indelibly scarred by Islamist terrorism. The kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls by the barbaric Boko Haram terrorist militia last year dramatically underlined the human costs of an insurgency that claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people in 2014. President Jonathan paid his first visit to Israel in 2013, paving the way for closer cooperation between the two countries in areas ranging from security to humanitarian aid. When three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists in the West Bank last year, Jonathan declared in a letter to the Israeli Prime Minister that “any act of terrorism against any nation or group is an act against our common humanity. We unequivocally condemn this dastardly act, and demand that the children are released unconditionally by their abductors.”