Boko Haram, the Nigerian State, and Spiraling Violence in Nigeria

Boko Haram attack on a UN building in Nigeria

Since July 2009 Nigeria’s fledging democracy has struggled to contain the terrorism of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati (Group Committed to Propagating the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad; commonly called Boko Haram). The group’s avowed aim is to rid the country of its corrupt leaders and impose sharia law as the supreme law of the land. In the last three years, the extremist group has spearheaded more devastating attacks in Nigeria than all other groups combined. These attacks, which show evidence of increasing sophistication and geographical expansion, appear to be increasingly targeted at Nigeria’s religious and ethnic fault lines in a bid to hurt the nation’s stability.

Indeed, a flurry of attacks against churches from December 2011 through July 2012 points to a strategy of provocation through which the group seeks to spark a large scale of sectarian conflict that will destabilize the country. In a video released on 13 May 2013, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau vowed not to stop his group’s violent campaigns to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria.

Boko Haram first announced itself on the Nigerian stage in 2009, following a riot in Maiduguri that killed over 800 people. The group's founder and then leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed while in police custody. Ever since, Boko Haram has killed thousands of Nigerians, with the violent attacks and death toll rising nearly on a daily basis. Human rights organisations estimate that more than 3,500 people have been killed as a result of Boko Haram's violent attacks over the past three years. In April 2013, at least 187 Nigerians were confirmed dead after Boko Haram gunmen engaged soldiers of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in a deadly shootout that left the commercial border town of Baga in Borno State completely burnt down. At least 2,128 houses, 64 motorcycles and 40 cars were razed in the wake of the attack. More alarmingly, since January 2013, Boko Haram has taken control of Marte, Mobbar, Gubio, Guzamala, Abadam, Kukawa, Kala-Balge and Gamboru Ngala local government areas in northern Borno, chasing out local government officials, taking over control of government buildings and imposing sharia law.

So critical is the threat posed by Boko Haram that in January 2012, the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan lamented: 'The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war [1967-1970] that we fought.' Sadly, numerous attempts at negotiating with the radical group, including the recent presidential amnesty offer extended to its members, have stalled due to distrust on both sides, and the factionalized leadership of the group's different cells. Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram's current leader, responded to the amnesty entreaties by saying that his group had done no wrong, and that an amnesty would not be applicable to them. Shekau argued that it was the Nigerian government committing atrocities against Muslims. In his words: 'Surprisingly, the Nigerian government is talking about granting us amnesty. What wrong have we done? On the contrary, it is we that should grant you [a] pardon.' Barely a week after Boko Haram refused the offer of amnesty, the group launched a devastating attack that killed 53 people and burnt down 13 villages in central Nigeria's Benue State. Prior to that, some group of Boko Haram fighters, disguised in military uniforms and in buses and machine gun-mouthed trucks, laid siege to the town of Bama, in Borno State, killing 55, mostly police and other security forces, and freeing over 100 prison inmates.

The violent attacks led the Nigerian President to declare a state of emergency (on 15 May 2013) in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (three northern states where Boko Haram has a stranglehold and where they have been most active) in an attempt to restore order and reclaim the northern region. In a pre-recorded address broadcast to the Nigerian public on 14 May 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan agitated: 'What we are facing is not just militancy or criminality, but a rebellion and insurgency by terrorist groups which pose a very serious threat to national unity and territorial integrity.' Jonathan further added that 'it would appear that there is a systematic effort by insurgents and terrorists to destabilize the Nigerian state and test our collective resolve.' The president's speech brought the ongoing Islamic insurgency into stark relief, at one point describing how fighters had laid waste to state buildings and 'had taken women and children as hostages.' According to Jonathan, 'These actions amount to a declaration of war and a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and threaten (its) territorial integrity. '

Embedded in deep tradition of Islamism, Boko Haram (a nomenclature that means 'Western education is sin') members are purportedly influenced by the scriptural phrase: 'Anyone who is not governed by what Allah has revealed is among the transgressors.' Boko Haram is vehemently opposed to what it sees as Western-based incursion that undermines and erodes traditional values, beliefs, and customs among Muslim communities in Northern Nigeria.  Mohammed Yusuf, the group's founder, told the BBC in 2009:  Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam.' Elsewhere, the charismatic leader declared: 'Our land was an Islamic state before the colonial masters turned it to a kafir [infidel] land. The current system is contrary to true Islamic beliefs.’

One of the most important elements in understanding the psychology of why people become extremists is an appreciation of the psychology of vengeance. Catalyst events (violent acts that are perceived to be unjust) provide a strong sense of outrage and a powerful psychological desire for revenge and retribution. For many Boko Haram members, the extrajudicial killing of their founder Mohammed Yusuf was the catalyst event that served to foment pre-existing animosities toward state security forces. In a video that was released in June 2010, Abubakar Shekau – the group's current leader – vowed to avenge the deaths of its members. In September 2010, a Boko Haram member told the BBC's Hausa radio service that 'we are on a revenge mission as most of our members were killed by the police.' In November 2011, during the trial of six Boko Haram suspects, one of the group members told the court that their mission was to avenge the death of their founder. 

Notably, since the recommencement of Boko Haram attacks in 2010, the group have raided over 60 police facilities in at least 10 northern and central states, and Abuja, and killed at least 211 police officers. Between January and September 2012, at least 119 police officers were killed in suspected Boko Haram attacks, more than in all of 2010 and 2011 combined. According to Boko Haram leaders, these attacks on police officers and state security agents are a response to the extrajudicial killings by the police of their founder and members, as well as for ongoing police abuses including arbitrary arrest, torture, and the persecution of its members.

While the overriding goal of Boko Haram is to create an Islamic state in Nigeria, the cocktail of corruption, poverty, inequality, and unemployment in Northern Nigeria – the most underdeveloped region in Nigeria – continues to anger and drive members of the group to violence. Boko Haram communities have been wrecked by poverty, deteriorating social services and infrastructure, educational backwardness, rising numbers of unemployed graduates, massive unemployment, dwindling fortunes in agriculture and the weak and dwindling productive base of the northern economy.

Time and again, religious dimensions of the conflict have been misconstrued as the primary driver of violence when, in fact, disenfranchisement and inequality are the root causes. According to Sope Elegbe, Research Director of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, 'the increasing poverty in Nigeria is accompanied by increasing unemployment. Unemployment is higher in the north than in the south. Mix this situation with radical Islam, which promises a better life for martyrs, and you can understand the growing violence in the north.' Toeing a similar line, Nigeria's eminent writer, the late Professor Chinua Achebe, noted that 'economic deprivation and corruption produce and exacerbate financial and social inequalities in a population, which in turn fuel political instability.' 

Unfortunately, the response of the Nigerian state to Boko Haram has been brutal and counterproductive, involving the use of government security forces to mount aggressive pursuit and crackdown of Boko Haram members. To this end, the Nigerian state established a special Joint Military Task Force (JTF) known as 'Operation Restore Order' (or JTORO) to eliminate the threat posed by the Islamist group. In the biggest military campaign to date against Boko Haram, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ordered some 2,000 soldiers to the region in a direct military offensive against the Islamist group. The president vowed to 'take all necessary action… to put an end to the impunity of insurgents and terrorists.'

However, far too often, JTF have been accused of terrorizing Northern communities and indiscriminately taking the lives of innocent people in the name of policing terrorism. For example, in Bornu State, JTF were responsible for extralegal killings, unfounded arrests, and 'intimidation of hapless Borno residents.' Far from conducting intelligence-driven operations, the JTF simply cordoned off areas and carried out house-to-house searches, at times shooting young men in these homes. These ongoing human right abuses and state excesses in Northern Nigeria has not only fuelled further reprisal attacks, but also brought about the alienation of many affected communities who are now less willing to disclose useful information on the whereabouts of Boko Haram members and activities. In the most recent crossfire between JTF and Boko Haram in Baga (a village on Lake Chad) which claimed 187 people, Baga residents have accused the JTF, not Boko Haram, of firing indiscriminately at civilians and setting fire on much of the fishing town. Nigerian authorities have rarely brought any to justice for these crimes.

The current intimidatory technique of the Nigerian government not only presents the image of a Nigerian state which is low in legitimacy and desperately struggling to survive, but has done more to threaten state coherence than to aid it. Moreover, it must be considered that the current heavy-handed approach of the Nigerian government may force ultra-radical elements within Boko Haram to increasingly establish terrorist networks, such as Al-Qaeda and Al Shabaab, as a form of survival strategy. In the event of this happening, Boko Haram's operational base could expand beyond northern Nigeria and their target selection could change fundamentally to include attacks on Western interests. This has become all the more important not only because of recent attacks on the UN headquarters in Abuja which prompted widespread concern that the group was receiving training and support from AQIM, but also due to fresh evidence which links Boko Haram to terrorist developments in Mali and the entire Sahel region. Although rooted in the local Nigerian context, it would seem that Boko Haram has been exploiting the growing internationalisation of militancy to get externally wired.

The urgent task of resolving the Boko Haram crises is complicated by the fact that, as the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan once noted, 'some [members of Boko Haram] are in the executive arm of government, some of them are in the parliamentary/legislative arm of government, while some of them are even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies.' This brings the age-old Yoruba (Nigerian) proverb into bold relief: 'Kokoro tin jefo, ara efo lo wa' / 'The insect that is eating a vegetable exists inside the body of the vegetable.' This paper argues that political negotiations, not military crackdowns, remain the only sustainable solution to the current crisis in (northern) Nigeria. Unless the Nigerian government seeks creative ways of winning the confidence of Boko Haram soon, to at least bring them to the negotiating table, there may be no end in sight to the Islamic insurgency ravaging Africa's most populous country.

In the longer term, the Nigerian state should devise a sound socio-economic strategy that not only meaningfully addresses the problem of political corruption aimed at the control of the state machinery for private/sectarian interests, but also incorporates development, security and respect of the human rights of the citizenry. Unless this happens, sustainable peace and unity will remain elusive in Nigeria, with grave consequences for millions of suffering people in that beleaguered country.

By Daniel Egiegba, Agbiboa

The author is a PhD scholar in the School of Sociology, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University. His research interests are in African development, particularly its intersection with corruption and conflict.