The more you see, the less you understand: Reflections on the Boko Haram question in Nigeria (2)

GOALS and Activities of Boko Haram

If the activities of BH are easily discernible and less controversial, it is not the same with its goals, which has been (and may continue) to be shrouded in controversy. However, following the lead of Collier and Sambanis (2005), Oyeniyi (2013a) suggests any one desirous of knowing the real objective of any insurgency should look beyond the publicly avowed intentions to accommodate other inferential objectives of the group.  This is important because, as he argues, drawing from the popular work of Collier and Sambanis (2005), ‘while a group’s stated objectives may point to a certain level of grievance, their activities oftentimes, reveal their unstated or inferential objectives’ (quoted in Oyeniyi, 2013a). It is these activities and other objectives, rather than the group’s stated objectives, that constitute the real objectives. 

   Such an argument reifies the whole essence of the greed-grievance debate in civil wars. It ignores new and empirical body of knowledge on African insurgencies that warn against a unidirectional frame of analysis that rejects alternative narratives, especially those that see African insurgents as rational actors (for example, Boas and Dunn, 2007). Granted that the real goal of an insurgency may truly be concealed, the logic of inferential analysis can produce conflicting results, depending on the ideological leaning and intellectual standing of the analysts.

   Be that as it may, it would appear, from the declarations of BH itself, that its primary objectives were ‘the restoration of Islam and Islamic practices to its original, pristine state based on the Quran and Hadith of Prophet Mohammed, and the enthronement of the Sharia in Nigeria’ (Oyeniyi, 2013a). As an expression of the important it attached to this goal, the sect demanded that President Goodluck Jonathan convert to Islam as one of its important conditions for dialogue and negotiation. For BH, the contradictions associated with Islam cannot be dissociated from those ofwestern civilization, allegedly responsible for the contamination of pure Islam and attendant societal vices such as official corruption. Thus the primary objective of BH can be expanded to include working against western education, or better still, western civilization, which it considers to be ‘sinful, sacrilegious or ungodly and should therefore be forbidden’ (Adesoji, 2010: 100). However, following the murder of its second leader, Muhammed Yusuf, its objectives transmuted to include (i) the release of its members held in different police custodies and prisons; and (ii) the prosecution of the police officers responsible for the extra-judicial killing of its members in July 2009, including its leader, Muhammed Yusuf, who was murdered while in police custody (Anonymous, 2012, quoted in Oyeniyi, 2013).

    Certain observations can be made from these stated goals. One, the goal of Islamising Nigeria, despite the constitutionally guaranteed secular nature of Nigeria is, to say the least, unrealistic and unconstitutional. Two, no reasonable government will fold its arms and condone such a destabilizing and divisive tendency. Three, reforms of Islam and the purification of its alleged contamination should, ordinarily, be treated as internal affairs. Holding the country hostage on such grounds, therefore, smacks of a hidden agenda.

   If the stated goals are dismissed as unrealistic, then we are left with the inferential objective of BH, which can be gauged through its activities. Like other insurgencies, the BH has relied heavily on the deployment of various forms of violence, including guerrilla and terrorist tactics (Onuoha, 2012c; Walker, 2012; Zenn, 2012a, 2012b, 2011). As revealed by the timeline of its activities as detailed in Appendix I, the BH launched its first recorded attack on 24 December 2003 when a group of about 200 members of the Nigerian Taliban attacked police stations in towns of Kanamma and Geidam in Yobe State.  It is, however, important to note that the threats of BH assumed a frightening dimension in 2004 when some students of higher institutions in Borno and Yobe states, two core northern states where the group is firmly established, acting under the influence of the philosophy of Boko Haram, abandoned schools, tore their certificates and joined the group for Quaranic lessons and preaching (Onuoha, 2012b; 2010). The sect launched four attacks on security agents that year. This was followed by a period of relative inactivity between 2005 and 2008.

   The sect, however, regained its attacking instincts in mid-2009. Ever since, the BH has never looked back in its violent assault against the Nigerian state, its institutions, public buildings, utilities and civilians (Omotola, 2013; Zenn, 2012). For example, on 26 July 2009 when the current wave of uprising erupted, the sect attacked the Dutsen Tanshi police station in Bauchi, resulting in the death and arrest of over 40 and 200 members of the sect respectively. In another rampage between 26 and 27 July 2009, the sect attacked the state police headquarters, the prison and other government offices in Bornu state, killing a sergeant, a prison warden and five police officers; burnt more than 30 vehicles, churches and mosques; and the inmates of the prison freed. In a similar attack on 27 July 2009, against police area command, Federal Road Safety Commission and others in Damaturu and Potiskum, both in Yobe State, Boko Haram killed three policemen, a fire service staff, and seven other policemen sustained serious injuries; they also freed suspects in police custody. On 6 October 2010, Boko Haram freed 732 inmates in the Maiduguri prison, including at least 150 of its suspected members. Also on 17 March 2011, it attacked the Bauchi central prison; set it ablaze and freed members of the group who were jailed there following 2010 unrest (Onuoha, 2010).

   However, all these amount to a child’s play when compared to two other devastating attacks on the Police Headquarters and the UN building, both in Abuja, the FCT. In the former, which occurred on 16 June, 2011, Boko Haram ‘demonstrated a significant and ominous tactical and operational upgrade in its capabilities when it launched a suicide attack using a vehicle-borne IED’ on the Police Headquarters (Pharm, 2012: 4). Whereas the casualty figure was low, killing only two bystanders and destroying a few police cars, the suicide bombing, nevertheless, ‘showed that far from being a spent force, Boko Haram had adopted one of the deadliest instruments in the jihadist arsenal and had demonstrated that it was now capable of carrying out attacks far from its usual areas of operation’ (Pharm, 2012: 4). It was, however, the attack on UN building on 26 August 2011, where twenty-five people were killed and at least 80 others wounded that was the most devastating. That singular incident puts Boko Haram on the radar of international terrorist groups that have successfully attacked UN targets. Other notable attack by the Boko Haram include the 4 November, 2011, assault on Damaturu, capital of Yobe State, which involved suicide attacks on various police stations and other Christian dominated residential areas, leading to the death of about 150 people; the Christmas morning bombing outside the Catholic church in Madalla, near Abuja, which killed at least 32 as they exited Mass; and the coordinated January 20, 2012, attacks in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest metropolis and the Muslim North’s economic, political, and cultural hub, which left more than 185 people dead (Pharm, 2012: 4). The gradual regionalization, if not transnationalization of the Boko Haram, is epitomized by the fact that about 100 members of the group reportedly supported the 2012 coup in Mali, constituting part of insurgents who laid siege to the Algerian consulate in Gao (Copeland, 2013: 4).

   More recently, BH has also launched some devastating attacks in northern Nigeria. On 21 January, 2013, for example, the convoy of the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, was attacked. Though he escaped unscathed, six people were killed in the attack. In March 2013, the BH also undertook a failed attempt to blow-up the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, Nigeria (Oloja, 2013). Also on 18 March 2013, BH bombed a luxurious bus at a motor park in Sabon Garin area of Kano, killing over 60 passengers, visitors and others. On 25 April 2013, BH attacked Bama Divisional police station, killing six and kidnapped the Divisional Police Officer (DPO); and again on 28 April attacked security agents on patrol in Baga, a small community in Borno state, killing two military officers. The attendant reprisal by the military led to the death of about 288 people and the burning of over 2000 houses.

   What does this series of insurgent activities, coupled with attendant security complications at both the strategic and non-strategic levels, suggest to us about the motive of Boko Haram, stated or inferred? At a general level, insurgents are known for the deployment of violence in the pursuit of the goals. The nature of insurgency, or better still, form of violence deployed is usually connected to the kind of insurgent actors on parade, be they terrorists, guerrillas or militias. This is not to say there is a neatly delineated boundary between/among various forms of insurgencies. By implication, insurgent actors of a particular genre can interchange its actions and tactics/strategy with those of another category of insurgency. 

   With specific reference to the BH, these activities/attacks reveal some measure of inconsistency in goals, making it hard to appropriately place it either as a terrorist, guerrilla or militia. That said, it is obvious that the attack on the UN building in Abuja constitutes a furtherance of its own publicly avowed intention of rejecting western civilization, of which the UN represents one of its most prominent symbols. Abubakar Shekau described the UN as as a ‘common enemy’, who along with the Nigerian government and the United States, is ‘infringing on the rights of the Muslims’. For him and his cohorts, therefore, the UN is nothing but ‘the forum of all the global evil’ (Zenn, 2012: 21). Unfortunately, the BH has, so far, been prosecuting its war with products of western civilization, most notably cars and information technology. 

   Conversely, the attack on the Emir of Kano, one of the most formidable institutions of Islam and sharia in Nigeria, whose cause and reformation BH claims to be committed, was a negation of its stated goals. Could it be that the BH identified the Emir of Kano as one of the ‘collaborators’ with the ‘enemies’ of Islam in Nigeria, particularly the federal government of Nigeria, in betraying it? Such a poser is crucial given that in a five-minute video, Abu Shekau assured civilians that Boko Haram would not harm them, revealing that their target was the government, its security forces and anybody the group regards as a collaborator. As he puts it: ‘We are just fighting those who are fighting us, soldiers and police and the rest; and anybody, even if he is a learned Muslim teacher, if we confirm that he exposes us to the government, his children will become orphans and his wife will become a widow, God willing. That is our way’ (quoted in Zenn, 2011: 9). Beyond the Emir, many more Islamic clerics so considered had suffered similar fate (see Appendix I).

Contending Perspectives on Boko Haram

   What then is Boko Haram? What exactly does it stand for, if any? The attempt to answer this question has generated a schism in the academic and public policy domains. For many, BH is simply ‘an Islamic sect that believes politics in northern Nigeria has been seized by a group of corrupt, false Muslims… to create a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia law (Walker, 2012: 9). Several other studies label BH simply as a radical Islamic group indulging in sectarian rebellion (see LeVan, 2013; Hill, 2013). In this sense, BH is a movement for the propagation and consolidation of an Islamic theocratic state.

   Even in Nigeria’s policy and political cycles, the definition of BH remains controversial and fluid. General Muhammadu Buhari, a former Nigerian military head of state and leader of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), there are three categories of BH, namely the original, the criminal and the most lethal of them all, the political, namely the federal government. As Buhari puts it in a press conference responding to his nomination by BH as one of its representatives in a proposed negotiation with the federal government: 

   As we have stated in an earlier communication, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), as a corporate entity, is the harbinger of the insecurity travails of the Nigerian People for the sole reason of ensuring perpetuity in governance. From recollection of events of the last two years, there are three variants of the Boko Haram: the original Boko Haram that is at daggers drawn with the Nigerian authority for the extra-judicial killing of their leader; the Criminal Boko Haram that is involved in all criminality for economic reasons and of course, the most lethal of all, the Political Boko Haram, which this PDP-led Federal government represents.

   It continues:

The President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had once alerted the Nation of the ubiquitous presence of Boko Haram in his government – a fact aptly amplified by his erstwhile National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi. Undoubtedly, the latest revelations by the State Security Services (SSS) on the complicity of the top echelon of the PDP leadership in Boko Haram activities aptly bear testimony of the noxious subterfuge to extirpate the essence of our nationhood (Fasakin, 2012).

   Interestingly, why many Nigerians recognise and even privilege the political interpretation of BH over other explanations, they do not do so in the Buhari’s sense. Rather, they do so in relation to the deeply divisive and vituperative nature of Nigeria’s politics of succession 2011. The whole saga over the late President Yar’Adua’s health crisis, including the eventual cabalisation of the transfer of power, resulting in a needless constitutional crisis over the elevation of then Vice-President Jonathan to the position of Acting President (Omotola, 2011), set the tone for the acrimonious nature of succession politics. The attendant decision of President Jonathan to run for the presidency, following the death of Yar’Adua, contrary to the ruling party’s principle of rotational presidency between the north and the south, and attendant political intrigues, only served to complicate the problem. It was, however, the victory of Jonathan, against a northern candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in an election considered by many northern elites as not free and fair that allegedly triggered the post-election violence. Many reached this conclusion in the light of the claims to make the country ungovernable if a northern candidate did not win the presidential election credited to some northern political elites. For instance, Alhaji Lawal Kaita, a close associate of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said:

   The North is determined, if it happens, to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan or any other Southerner who finds his way to the seat of power on the platform of the PDP against the principle of the party’s  zoning policy. Anything short of a Northerner president is tantamount to stealing our presidency. Jonathan has to go and he will go. Even if he uses incumbency power to get his nomination on the platform of the PDP, he would be frustrated out (Anya, 2012: 2).

   In related statements, Buhari said: 

There may be no Nigeria. I draw parallel with Somalia so many times (Somalisation of Nigeria). I am scared about that. Somalia, they are one ethnic group, one religion, Islam, but for 18 years, Somalia became so selfish, so corrupt, so undisciplined and they have wrecked the country. 

   Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was also quoted to have said that ‘those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable’ (quoted in Anya, 2012). It is this form of political connections, most aptly summarised by Professor Wole Soyinka that Nigerians meant when they talk about political BH. As Soyinka surmises: 

   Much play is given, and rightly so, to economic factors – unemployment, misgovernment, wasted resources, social marginalization, massive corruption – in the nurturing of the current season of violent discontent in Nigeria. To limit oneself to these factors alone, is an evasion, intellectual and moral cowardice, and a fear of offending the ruthless caucuses that have unleashed terror on society, a refusal to stare the irrational in the face and give it its proper name – and response. This horde has remained available to political opportunists and criminal leaders desperate to stave off the day of reckoning. Most are highly placed, highly disgruntled, and thus highly motivated individuals who, having lost out in the power stakes, resort to the manipulation of these products of warped fervor. Their aim is to bring society to its knees, to create a situation of total anarchy that will either break up the nation or bring back the military, which ruled Nigeria in a succession of coups between the mid-1960s and the late ’90s […] Again and again they have declared their blunt manifesto—not merely to Islamise the nation but to bring it under a specific kind of fundamentalist strain (Newsweek, January 16, 2012, emphasis mine).

   This political reading of BH approximates, to a very large extent, the class analysis of BH. The difference, however, is that while the former focuses on intra-class struggle, the latter emphasises inter-class competition. For those who share this perspective, therefore, BH is nothing more than a product of ‘an unending class struggle implicit in the hidden structures of oppression and structured contradictions of global capitalist system. The antagonistic class relations between the ruling class and the lumpen class translate into state and individual terrorism that has featured prominently in the recent times’ (Ogunrotile, 2013: 27).

   Yet, some studies have made bold claims in classifying BH as a terrorist group. In his class analysis of BH, Ogunrotile (2013) qualifies it as a terrorist. Similar qualifications abound in the work of Onapajo, Uzodike and Whetho (2012) that stresses the international dimensions of BH terrorism; and Agiboa’s (2013a) which, drawing on identity theory, describes BH as a religious terrorist group. 

   For many others, BH represents all of the above and probably many more. John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, expresses this sentiment when he claims that BH connotes several things at once.    As he argues, ‘Boko Haram “writ large” is a movement of grassroots anger among northern people at the continuing depravation and poverty in the north… It is also a core group of Mohammed Yusuf’s followers who have reconvened around Abubakar Shekau and who are exacting revenge against the state for their treatment… there is another aspect to the group that is often overlooked. The group could also be seen as a kind of personality cult, an Islamic millenarianist sect, inspired by a heretical but charismatic preacher (quoted in Walker, 2012: 9).

   The attempts to rationalise its emergence is no less controversial than those of its definition and classification. In the extant studies, prominence is often accorded to the greed-grievance explanations, underscoring the politico-economic softness of the state and attendant deprivations, including rising poverty, unemployment, excruciating corruption (Agbiboa, 2013a, 2013b; Ajayi, 2013 Onuoha, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). This is what Salaam (2012: 147) calls ‘risk factors in the absence of protective factors, which make vulnerable young people turn into religious radicals or fanatics when seeking answers to the inadequacies in the polity and society at large’. The thesis also alludes to the temptation of opportunities for profiteering in chaos. Chabal and Daloz (1999) stress this latter perspective in their famous, but widely critiqued book, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Readings as this have tempted to influence policy prescriptions that simply submit that the perfect antidote to BH is to embark on ‘significant governance and political reforms, geared at reversing the historic social and economic imbalance in northern Nigeria’ (Sampson, 2013). 

   Some others have admitted the difficulty, if not impossibility, of appropriately defining and classifying the sect, particularly in its current form and character. Raufu Mustapha, a respected Nigerian political economist of Oxford University’s Department for International Development explicates why this has been so: 

   Throughout its existence, the organization has constantly morphed and changed its nature as it has gone through various incarnations. This evolution has made it difficult for observers to pin the organization down and define it. Clarity has been obscured because contact with the organization is difficult. When there has been contact with the outside world, the organization has proved elliptical. It has made announcements about its goals that are contradictory, not really achievable, or unrealistic. The water has been muddied further by the number of interpretations of motive and causation that observers attribute to anything that happens in Nigeria, and the conspiracy theories that flow from them (quoted in Walter, 2012: 8).

   Without any doubt, Mustapha’s submissions are very instructive and helpful. Yet, we cannot surrender in our search for an appropriate definition of BH, without which appropriate remedial measures cannot be designed and administered. Before shifting attention to an alternative reading of BH, it is apposite to reflect briefly on official responses to BH. 

TO BE CONTINUED