The more you see, the less you understand: Reflections on the Boko Haram question in Nigeria (1)

Introduction

THESE are not heady days for Nigeria. Heralded at independence in 1960 as a promising giant at both regional and global levels, given its huge resource endowment – human and material-, the country has not only failed to actualise its potentials, but also appears to have effectively squandered its opportunities for greatness, ignominiously seated at the very nadir of development. 

   While the problem is multidimensional, encompassing a variety of issues that have been generally codenamed the national question, the most troubling element would appear to be directly correlated to its security conundrum, holistically defined from both the strategic and non-strategic perspectives. Over the last couple of years, especially beginning from the onset of the fledgling democratisation process since 1999, Nigeria’s national and international security environment has changed dramatically. The increasing spread and radicalisation of the Global Jihad Movement (GJM), the phenomenon of international terrorism,global financial crisis and rising inequality, volatility of the international oil price regime, bad governance, excruciating corruption and missing dividends of democracy, among others, have conspired to reduce the majority of the people to mere clients, instead of the primary stakeholders of politics and development. The security implications of these developments are easily discernible. The nexus between security and development is so strong that some have argued that security is a development question and vice versa. 

   The Nigerian experience since 1999, on the surface, offers a good laboratory for the confirmation of the security-development nexus thesis. Recent months in particular have witnessed increasing turmoil in the land with the escalation of the Boko Haram Insurgency (BHI) insurgency, among other security challenges. Indeed, Boko Haram (BH) has become one of the most talked about phenomenon in Nigeria in the security, advocacy, human rights, media, academic and public policy domains, both domestically and internationally. It is such that in the last one year or thereabout, hardly would a day pass without some sad commentaries on the BH. If it is not about new attacks and casualties, it would be about what the government is doing and/or not doing to deal with the problem. At some other times, it is about different people pontificating about what should be done to tame the monster of the BH. In short, there is already in circulation a huge body of knowledgeon the BH –some general and some others focusing on specific aspect of the Boko Haram Question (BHQ).

   Despite these advances and increasing attention to the BH at home and abroad, Nigerians and its international allies remain confounded about the BHQ. So far, the academic and policy literature on BH has been trapped in the pitfall of what De la Calle and Sanchez-Cuenca (2011: 452) call ‘lexicographic debates’, leading many commentators on the BH to embark on an indiscriminate classification of the subject, without specifying the logical criteria of classification. In other words, there is not yet an organised body of thought on what BH actually represents. Errors in diagnosis constitute an open invitation to high risks of designing and administering inappropriate treatment (Adekanye, 2007: 217). By logical extension, inappropriate treatment will always yield undesired result.

   The latest official responses to the BH question in Nigeria, particularly the Amnesty proposal, the declaration of a State of Emergency in three northern states and eventual official proscription and characterisation of BH as a terrorist group by the federal government of Nigeria have further underscored the imperative of addressing Boko Haram Diagnosis (BHD) and the administration of treatments in a serious manner. This is the main concern of this study, the primary aim of which is to critically engage the BHQ, namely what exactly is BH – a terrorist group or what? What does it really stand for ideologically speaking: criminality, politics and/or religion? How is it organised and funded? After a careful reading of contending perspectives on these and related questions, the paper offers a reinterpretation of the BH. Essentially, the paper argues that the scholarly and policy ambiguity, or better still, confusion over the BH, derives in part not only from poor diagnosis, the latter stemming from a poor reading of the trend of GJM, but also from the seeming disconnect from crucial contextual issues, particularly the history of religious extremism in Nigeria. A fairly accurate answer to the BHQ, amounting to appropriate diagnosis, is a sine-qua-non to designing and administering effective therapy to the problem.

   Following this introduction, the study is organised into six sections. The first engages the dilemmas of appropriately classifying BH into the correct insurgent group: terrorism, guerrilla, militia, etc? The second situates the study within a historically grounded approach, underscoring the relevance of the history of religious fundamentalism in northern Nigeria to the understanding of the BH. The third explores BH’s goals and operations, including strategies, attacks and casualties. The fourth section critically reflects on contending perspectives and readings of both the BH. This is followed by an analysis of state responses/counterinsurgency strategies in section five. The final substantive section offers an alternative interpretation of the BH. The concluding section recapitulates the central thesis and arguments of the study, before tendering its alternative interpretations of the BHQ in Nigeria. In the final analysis, the study submits that existing readings of the BH have so far tended to be ambiguous and misleading, leading to ineffective, if not completely wrong solutions. In order to remedy the anomaly, the study suggests the need to refocus analysis on a more holistic, historically grounded approach that accommodates not only the internal contradictions of the Nigerian state, but also appreciate the dynamics of the global geopolitical environment within which it has to operate.

Boko Haram, Insurgencies and the Dilemmas of Classification

   Classification is the foundation of comparison and by logical extension, the scientific enterprise. While classification is a matter of ‘either or’, comparison is a matter of ‘more or less’; but the latter is impossible without the former. The logical criteria of classification, as carefully articulated by Arthur Kalleberg include, most notably, joint exhaustiveness, mutual exclusiveness and parsimony (Kalleberg, 1966). Exhaustiveness requires that the entire domain of subject of investigation be covered, without excluding any case; exclusiveness demands that no single case should fall into two categories at the same time; and parsimony insists that the resultant typology must be limited to manageable space, especially in terms of the number of boxes. Despite serious criticisms of misrepresentation, including what DeFelice (1980:119) calls ‘methodological nonsense in comparative politics’,  Kalleberg’s framework remains widely acceptable for the purpose of ordering variables.

   The relevance of Kalleberg’s framework to this study is borne out of one of the most difficult and controversial issues in the BHQ, which has to do with identifying its specific type of insurgent movement: terrorist or guerrilla, among others. This point underscores the problem with the classification and measurement of insurgencies. It is the lack of such a template that made several studies run the risk of a haphazard and inconsistent classification of insurgent groups. We must avoid falling into the same pitfall if we will ever be able to design and administer an effective response strategy to the BH.

   Basically, insurgency refers to ‘a protracted political and military activity directed towards completely or partially controlling a state through the use of irregular military forces and illegal political organisations’ (Malaquias, 2001: 314). Whereas the popular maxim that ‘no two insurgencies are identical’ remains valid, it is also often claimed that ‘no insurgency is also unique in all aspects’ (U.S. Government, 2012: Preface). However, most insurgencies also ‘share some combination of characteristics, tactics, and objectives. Most pass through similar stages of development during their life cycle’ (U.S. Government, 2012). The common characteristics of insurgencies is that they often have a dominant political character, which is that ‘they are precipitated by real or perceived government breakdown, manifested in unwillingness or inability to meet the demands of important social groups (Malaquias, 2001: 315). Boas and Dunn (2007) underscores this point with respect to African guerrillas when they stress that they are ‘best understood as rational responses to the composition of African states and their polities’, and that they ‘seem more like the manifestations of rage against the “machinery” of dysfunctional states, their equally fragmented and corrupted institutions and the uneven impact of a globalized modernity (2007: 5; also quoted in Boyd, 2007: 525). The U.S. Government (2012: 3) identifies the common characters of insurgencies to include their desire to:

• Undercut the ability of the government to provide the population security and public services, including utilities, education, and justice. An insurgent group may attempt to supplant the government by providing alternative services to the people, or it may be content to portray the government as impotent;

• Obtain the active or passive support of the population. Not all support has to be –or is likely to be- gained from sympathizers; fear and intimidation can gain the acquiescence of many people;

• Provoke the government into committing abuses that drive neutral civilians toward the insurgents and solidify the loyalty of insurgent supporters; and 

• Undermine international support for the government and, if possible, gain international recognition or assistance for the insurgency. 

Despite these commonalities, different categories of insurgencies can be identified by their goals, organisational structure and methods employed, size and territorial control (see Crosson, 2010; Martin, 2009). For example, using the goals of an insurgency as a unit of analysis has led to the emergency of a multiple typologies, namely anarchist, apocalyptic utopian, egalitarian, pluralist, commercialist, preservationist, reformist, separatist and resistant insurgencies. According to Crosson (2010: 171), the first four groups - anarchist, apocalyptic utopian, egalitarian, pluralist- are revolutionary insurgent groups that hope to significantly alter a current political system. Anarchists consider all authority patterns to be unnecessary and therefore should be destroyed without replacement; apocalyptic utopian groups are religious cults with political aims that transcend the confines of the state (O’Neill, 2006). The last four, namely commercialist, preservationist, reformist, separatist all have specific goals. While a reformist group, for example, does not aim to change the existing political order, but instead, seek to compel the government to alter its policies or undertake political, economic or social reforms, separatist insurgencies seek independence for a specific region. The primary goal of a commercialist group, however, are motivate by the acquisition of wealth or material resources, where political power is simply seen as a means for seizing and controlling access to the wealth (U.S. Government, 2012, Crosson, 2010), as popularised by the expansive literature on the new political economy of civil war, particularly greed (see Collier and Sambanis, 2003; Kalyvas, 2006; Weinstein, 2006; Tarrow, 2007).

   In terms of strategy, an insurgent group can opt for a military focused, conspiratorial, urban warfare and simple fear strategies. A military strategy focuses mainly on military force instead of having an added emphasis on gaining popular support; a conspiratorial strategy is a coup often led by military officers or civilians who seek to overthrow the ruling government due to corruption, inefficiency or legitimacy crisis; urban warfare strategy contains a series of actions developed by insurgents in highly populated areas with an aim to turn political crisis into armed conflict, believing that by performing violent actions, they will force the government to transform the political system into a military dominated situation, which may lead to the alienation of the masses, who will in turn revolt against the government to the benefit of the insurgency; and a simple fear strategy aims to eliminate or induce fear into specific targets thereby stopping the group from their ultimate objectives (Crossen, 2010).

   What the foregoing theoretical exposition reveals is that ‘placing an insurgent group into a specific category can also be highly debatable and is not definitive’ (Crosson, 2010: 172). As slippery as the terrain may appear, and despite identifiable commonalities, each category of insurgency also has its unique features. Take terrorism for example, which is intrinsically ambiguous without a universally acceptable definition (Omotola, 2003: 285). The ambiguity is because, as De la Calle and Sanchez-Cuenca (2011: 451) demonstrate, of ‘the coexistence of two senses of the term, the action and the actor sense, which are not fully congruent’. Following a robust discussion of contending perspectives, using the most comprehensive dataset on terrorist incidents, the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and selected case studies, De la Calle and Sanchez-Cuenca (2011: 451) submit that:

  Terrorist groups are underground ones with no territorial control. Even the two criteria meet, the core of terrorism exists: coercive violence perpetuated by underground groups. The ambiguity that surrounds terrorism is caused by two other possibilities: actors with some measure of territorial control adopting coercive tactics and underground actors adopting military tactics.

   Whereas, terrorism is generally seen as ‘the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation’ (Lafree and Dugan, 2007: 184), the foregoing analogy reveals that a terrorist actor may not necessarily adopt terrorist tactics such as hostage taking and kidnapping, assassinations, plane hijackings, selective shootings, bank robberies and destruction of property and life through Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the same way a non-terrorist actor may opt for a terrorist tactics. This point is pertinent to differentiating terrorist insurgency from other forms of insurgency. The analogy also reveals other essential nature of a terrorist group, including its underground character and absence of territorial control. The size of terrorist group, measured in terms of the number of insurgents and it deployment of heavy weaponry is usually very low compared to those of other kinds of irregular warfare operations characteristic of guerrilla warfare (De la Calle and Sanchez-Cuenca, 2011).

   In his widely cited piece, ‘terrorism as a strategy of insurgency’, Ariel Merari (1993: 224) underscores the differences between terrorism and guerrilla warfare as strategies of insurgency. According to him, the most basic difference between the two is that ‘unlike terrorism, guerrilla tries to establish physical control of a territory’. Territorial control, according to De la Calle and Sanchez-Cuenca (2011: 458), implies the ability of the insurgent group to be able to attain one or all of the following conditions:

• Set up camps or bases in which they store weapons, train recruits, and so on, within the country’s border;

• Establish stable roadblocks, disrupting the flows of goods and persons within the country, to finance the insurgency; and

• Rule civil populations in the localities they seize (e.g., extracting rents, administering justice). To be recognised as the new authority, insurgents may wear uniforms and carry arms in the controlled areas (Emphasis mine).

   Although BH may not have entirely captured and exercised direct control over clearly designated Nigerian territories, its activities in the northern part of the country, particularly in Borno and Yobe states, suggest the proclivity toward such a tendency. As recently revealed, Sambisa, a forest enclave that spreads over a distance of 300sq km from Damboa up to Gwoza, Bama and the Cameroon border, has been discovered to be the hideout and training camp of the BH (Audu, 2013). This represents a form of territorial control.

   Drawing on this submissions, and as will be amply demonstrated in successive empirical sections, it debatable if BH can be classified as a terrorist group. Rather, it shares more of the attributes of guerrillas deploying terrorist tactics.

Background, Evolution and Metamorphosis of Boko Haram

   It will be ahistorical to treat the BH as an episode in Nigeria’s political development. In other words, any proper treatment of the evolution and metamorphosis of the BH must, of necessity, pay adequate attention to important contextual factors, not only the history of religious fundamentalism in the country, but also the shadow of religion on Nigerian government and politics in general (see, Omotola, 2009, 2010; Omotola and Aderinto, 2009). 

   Historically, religious fundamentalism in Nigeria, according to Oyeniyi (2013a), can be traced to ‘the jihad and the proselytizing work of Uthman Dan Fodio, which settled and established Islam across the Sudan’. However, in its contemporary manifestation, radical Islam in Nigeria can best be traced to the proselytizing works of Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzakky (Muslim Brotherhood), Ahmad Gulan (Ahmadiya Movement), Nasir Kabara (Khadiriyya), Abubakar Gunmi (Izala), Isiaku Rabiu (Tijjaniyya) and Dahiru Bauchi (Tariqqa) (Suleiman, 2009; quoted in Oyeniyi, 2013a). These men, at different times, founded and led different groups with Shitte Islamic inclinations across northern Nigeria. Although different, the groups claimed to be following the paths prescribed by Allah in the Quran and Hadith of Prophet Mohammed. The two components of these paths are leading a pious, religious life and the enthronement of an Islamic government.

   Oyeniyi (2013a) identifies Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzakky, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was inspired by the Islamic activism in the Middle East, especially Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan where there were age-long agitation to establish an Islamic state, as the most influential of these Islamic clerics. The core of the Brotherhood’s teaching was that Muslims should live according to the dictates of the Quran, and to shun immoralities. Some members were so carried away with their beliefs that they torn their certificates upon graduation from the university, the same way some BH members has done (Onuoha, 2010). El-Zakzakky, the leader, although a first class student, never used his certificate. He worked for Islam instead. Similarly, El-Zakzakky also toyed, unsuccessfully though, with the idea of implementing the Sharia in Nigeria after the1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (Suleiman, 2009), as BH has also been doing.

   The history of Islamic fundamentalism in Nigeria must accommodate the Maitatsine revolt of 1979, which goes down in history as one to first really polarize Nigeria along religious line. Led by Muhammad Marwa, Maitatsine was primarily a movement against the alleged corruption of Islam in Nigeria by modernization (Isichi, 1987). Like the BH today, north eastern Nigeria constituted its stronghold. In a similar vein, Maitatsine also directed its assaults/attacks against government and religious institutions such as the police, churches, Christians and moderate Muslims. Also like the BH, Maitatsine fed on the economic softness of the Nigerian state, particularly rising poverty and youth unemployment in the northern part of the country. Finally, the leader of Maitatsine, like that of the original leader of BH, Muhhamed Yusuf, who was extra-judicially executed in 2009 by security agents, was also killed by the military in 1980 (Adesoji, 2011; Danjibo, 2010).

   The killing of the two leaders yielded different practical outcomes. Whereas the death of Muhammad Marwa brought an end to the Maitatsine revolt, the killing of Muhammed Yusuf only served to reinvigorate the BH in all respects, including its expansionist drive and execution of deadlier attacks. Elkaim (2013: 10-11) attributes the difficulty in dealing with BH, following the death of its leader, as was the case with Maitatsine, to the proliferation of new information technology such as cell phones and the internet. These resources, according to Elkaim (2013), enables BH to network and coordinate its members and activities, relatively undetected, as well as allow them to raise and transfer funds, with relative ease, for their activities.

   This contextual background underscores an important point, which is that the BH is not entirely new to the country. It fits well into the history of Islamic fundamentalism in Nigeria, and even shares some commonalities with its notable predecessors such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Maitatsine. If anything, it is a matter of degree, not of kind. This implies that BH may possess its own unique history and character, which cannot be completely dissociated from the past.

   In specific terms, Onuoha (2012a: 162-168) periodized the evolution and transformation of BH, as an Islamic fundamentalist movement, into four phases. The first is what he called the incubation stage, spanning 1995-2002. During this period, as Freedom Onuaha documents, BH began as a harmless sect in Borno state, known as Ahlulsunna Wal’jama’ah Hijra sect under the leadership Abubakar Lawan, who later left the country to study at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia (see also Oyeniyi, 2013b). Its primary aim then was to moderate orthodox Islam, but never resulted to any violent strategy. The second phase, following the exit of Abubakar Lawan, was what Onuoha called the militant moblisation stage between 2003 and 2009. This period witnessed some major shift in the organization of the BH, especially following the emergence of Muhammed Yusuf, a secondary school drop-out who acquired Quranic education in the Chad and Niger republics, as its new leader. The main features of BH then included the demand for the implementation of sharia in northern Nigeria; declaration of BH’s intentions to dislodge and take over the Nigerian state for its corrupt and anti-people’s dispositions, as well as the first time the BH took up arms against the state. The first attack took place on 24 December, 2003 in attacks against police stations and public buildings in Yobe states, where it hoisted the flag of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement over the camps.

   The third stage, according to Onuoha (2012a), was the Islamic Insurgency stage of August 2009- May 2011 under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau. This followed the killing of Yusuf and was characterized by guerrilla warfare tactics, involving ‘targeted assassinations, driven by shootings and planting of IEDs’, increased level of attacks on government and public institutions, as well as spread into other states such as Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Plateau, Adamawa, Bauchi and the Federal Capital territory (FCT). The final phase identified by Onuoha (2012a) was the domestic terrorism stage, which commenced from June 2011 to date. The distinguishing features of this period include the forging of connections with transnational terror groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is also known as al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb [AQLIM]) and the Al Ittihad Islam, Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahedeen, otherwise known as Al Shabaab (see also Omotola, 2013); and the recourse to suicide bombing, as witnessed in the Police headquarters and the UN building, both in Abuja, Nigeria’s FCT.

   As informative as Onuaha’s periodisation is, it is somewhat confusing and violates the logic of classification. First, Onuoha fails to specify the criteria upon which his classificatory scheme is predicated. Second, an attempt to infer same only adds to the confusion, leaving an impression that his ultimate criteria were the goals, leadership and operational strategy of BH under the various phases. Third, even if this inference is accepted to be valid, the typology only leaves us with considerable overlap across the various criteria and phases. For example, a common goal across the various phases was essentially to challenge western civilization as evil, portraying it as the root of moral decadence and corruption in society, thereby providing a justification for its insurgent acts. Again, the tactics attributed to phases two, three and four are mutually reinforcing and actually interchangeable under different insurgencies, depending on prevailing realities. Moreover, the various phases reveal, in bold relief, the low educational background of the leadership of BH across board. At least its first known leader, Lawan, only went for university education after he vacated the post. Yusuf, his successor, never had university education. Finally, the operating environment of the BH across the various phases was essentially the same, leveraging on the economic softness of the state, its weak institutional foundations and changing geopolitical realities.

TO BE CONTINUED