SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 25 — US Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Nigeria today to discuss the potential for violence after elections next month and efforts to combat the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, State Department officials said.

Kerry will be the first secretary of state to visit Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, since his predecessor Hillary Clinton’s trip in 2012.

The top US diplomat will meet the rival presidential candidates — incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari — to urge that they accept the results of the February 14 poll and instruct their supporters to refrain from violence, said the officials, who asked not to be named under department protocol.

While President Barack Obama’s administration believes Nigeria is ready to hold the election as scheduled, it has seen signs of a potential repeat of deadly post-election riots in 2011, they said in a briefing in Zurich.

He’ll also discuss Boko Haram, which has been linked to a series of terror killings in the country’s northeast, the officials said. On Friday, three suspected extremists raided the village of Kambari, killing the village leader, at least two children and 12 others, vigilante leader Hassan Ibrahim said by phone from Maiduguri.

Earlier this month, the group razed two towns and killed as many as 2,000 people in the process, according to Amnesty International. Last year the group, which aims to impose strict Islamic law, kidnapped almost 200 schoolgirls from the predominantly Christian town of Chibok. Most of them have yet to be rescued.

Nigeria’s National Management Agency says more than 980,000 people have been displaced by violence tied to Boko Haram.

The group’s threat has become a regional concern, prompting Nigeria’s neighbors to launch a multinational task force and help the struggling Nigerian military.

The Nigerian government’s failures aren’t from a lack of military assistance, or support from the US or any other foreign country, Mausi Segun, a researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said on a January 22 call with reporters.

Soldiers’ will

“The government, to my mind, has tried to help the military by accepting some of these offers of assistance, but a lot of this has not trickled down to the men who are carrying out the fight in the northeast,” Segun said. “There is no amount of assistance or support, whether in terms of training, whether in terms of supply of military hardware and other equipment to the military, that can change the fate of this conflict if the soldiers on the ground do not have the will to fight.”

Dr. Ricardo Rene Laremont, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre, said the most positive role US can play in stabilizing the country is to urge unity.

“We have to remind him that the unity of Nigeria is essential not only to Nigeria but also to international security,” Laremont said on the January 22 call, referring to the eventual election winner. “I think that is the best role that the American government and the American electorate can play.” — Bloomberg