In this post we will be looking at history of Boko haram insurgency in Nigeria, Nigerian statehood, reasons for insurgencies in Nigeria and Nigeria’s Security Tactics against Boko Haram.
INTRODUCTION
Nigeria has had a long and unfortunate history of communal conflicts and ethnoreligious violence. For example, in Plateau state, in Nigeria’s “middle belt,” there have been many outbreaks of bloody violence between different communities since the return of democracy in 1999. There have also been riots in the urban centers of Kaduna and Kano, and for several decades there has been a simmering conflict in the Tafawa Balewa district of Bauchi. When viewed from outside, it can appear that these conflicts boil down to religious differences, tensions between blocs of Muslim and Christian inhabitants. When one looks deeper, however, one finds that politics—more precisely, control of government patronage—is the primary cause of many of these conflicts. Election disputes have also led to breakdowns along Muslim and Christian lines, as was seen in the most recent polls in 2011, when youths went on the rampage in southern Kaduna state. When violence erupts in these circumstances, the genesis is usually in one group asserting control of the apparatus of government over another group or groups in a very heterogeneous and ethnically diverse part of Nigeria. There is also a history of Muslim sects growing in the cities of northern Nigeria. In the 1980s, for example, the Maitatsine sect, which heretically claimed Muhammad was not the messenger of Allah, established itself in the slums of Kano. The sect was wiped out very brutally, with women and children of the sect attacking heavily armed military and police forces with bows and arrows and knives. The group scattered and was fully eliminated over the course of a decade. A weakness in the institutions of politics and the security services has created a political situation where such threats to stability are not dealt with until violence is a certainty. Only when a politician in control of a state is convinced that such a threat cannot be bent to his advantage will he order any action be taken against it. Such is the weakness of security institutions; their only method of dealing with any such threat is with violence. Boko Haram was created under these circumstances.
HISTORY OF BOKO HARAM INSURGENCY IN NIGERIA
The Boko Haram insurgency began in July 2009, when the militant Islamist and jihadist rebel group Boko Haram started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria. The conflict takes place within the context of long-standing issues of religious violence between Nigeria’s Muslim and Christian communities, and the insurgents’ ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region. Boko Haram’s initial uprising failed, and its leader Mohammed Yusuf was killed by the Nigerian government. He began the group in the year 2002, with the view to make his followers hate western education. He was arrested at his parent’s inlaws house by the Nigerian Military and subsequently handed over to the Nigerian police. He was survived by four wives and 12 children one of which was Abu Musab al-Barnawi who in the year 2016 wanted to lead the group. The movement consequently fractured into autonomous groups and started an insurgency, though rebel commander Abubakar Shekau managed to achieve a kind of primacy among the insurgents. Though challenged by internal rivals, such as Abu ‘s Salafist conservative faction and the Ansaru faction, Shekau became the insurgency’s de facto leader and mostly kept the different Usmatul al-Ansari Boko Haram factions from fighting each other, instead focusing on overthrowing the Nigerian government. Supported by other jihadist organizations including al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, Shekau’s tactics were marked by extreme brutality and explicit targeting of civilians. After years of fighting, the insurgents became increasingly aggressive and began to seize large areas in northeastern Nigeria. The violence escalated dramatically in 2014 with 10.849 deaths, while Boko Haram drastically expanded its territories. At the same time, the insurgency spread to neighboring Cameroon, Chad, Mali, and Niger, thus becoming a major regional conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, Shekau attempted to improve his international standing among jihadists by tacitly aligning with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in March 2015, with Boko Haram becoming the “Islamic State’s West Africa Province” (ISWAP). The insurgents were driven back during the 2015 West African offensive by a Nigeria-led coalition of African and Western countries, forcing the Islamists to retreat into Sambisa Forest and bases at Lake Chad. Discontent about various issues consequently grew among Boko Haram. Dissidents among the movement allied themselves with IS’ central command and challenged Shekau’s leadership, resulting in a violent split of the insurgents. Since then, Shekau and his group are generally referred to as “Boko Haram”, whereas the dissidents continued to operate as ISWAP under Abu Musab al-Barnawi. The two factions consequently fought against each other while waging insurgencies against the local governments. After a period of reversals, Boko Haram and ISWAP launched new offensives in 2018 and 2019, again growing in strength.
NIGERIAN STATEHOOD
Nigeria amalgamated both the Northern and Southern protectorate in 1914, about a decade after the defeat of the Sokoto Caliphate and other Islamic states by the British which were to constitute much of Northern Nigeria. Sir Frederick Lugard assumed office as governor of both protectorates in 1912. The aftermath of the First World War saw Germany lose its colonies, one of which was Cameroon, to French, Belgian and British mandates. Cameroon was divided in French and British parts, the latter of which was further subdivided into southern and northern parts. Following a plebiscite in 1961, the Southern Cameroons elected to rejoin French Cameroon, while the Northern Cameroons opted to join Nigeria, a move which added to Nigeria’s already large Northern Muslim population. The territory made up much of what is now Northeastern Nigeria, and a large part of the areas affected by the insurgency. Boko Haram is an Islamic sect that believes northern politics has been seized by a group of corrupt, false Muslims. It wants to wage a war against them, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria generally, to create a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia law. Since 2009 it has been driven by a desire for vengeance against politicians, police, and Islamic authorities for their role in a brutal suppression of the group that year. But the group has proved itself to be very adaptable, evolving its tactics swiftly and changing its targets at the behest of a charismatic leadership. The group leapt onto the world’s agenda in August 2011, when it bombed the United Nations compound in Abuja, killing twenty-three people. Some observers say Boko Haram has reached out to find allies in other global jihadist movements in the Sahel. The speed at which the group developed the capability to produce large and effective improvised explosive devices and enlist suicide bombers to deliver them suggests outside help. But thus far there remains no evidence to say the group’s intentions are to confront and attack Western interests inside or outside Nigeria.
REASONS FOR INSURGENCIES IN NIGERIA
- Injustice, such as inequity, persecution, discrimination, marginalization and denial of rights
- Illegitimacy of the regime, as when it comes to power through seizure of power, electoral fraud, tyranny or corruption
- Longing for freedom and self-determination
- Poverty, especially when the regime is deemed to be weak and incompetent and incapable to protect the poor masses in the midst of plenty.
- Weakness of government
- Ideological influences
- Militarisation of the society due to a long reign of the military
- Lack of employment opportunities for the ever-teeming school leavers
- Increasing circulation of small arms and light weapons (SALWs).
NIGERIA’S SECURITY TACTICS AGAINST BOKO HARAM
Tactics employed by government security agencies against Boko Haram have been consistently brutal and counterproductive. Their reliance on extrajudicial execution as a tactic in “dealing” with any problem in Nigeria not only created Boko Haram as it is known today but also sustains it and gives it fuel to expand. The police’s tactics have also made Boko Haram members harder to catch. The people of Maiduguri and Kano are, for the most part, more scared of the police and the army than they are of Boko Haram. Ordinary people would not now go to the police to report suspicious activities in their neighborhoods. Campbell reported that a contact of his encountered preachers loyal to the organization openly gathering people to preach Yusuf’s teachings in the streets of Kano. Roadblocks set up to prevent militants from moving arms around are quickly turned into opportunities for police to extract bribes. Once in the queue of traffic—which can last hours in some places—drivers dare not turn around for risk of being fired upon. There are frequently shootings by police at major roadblocks. These incidents are very disrupting to normal life but not as dangerous as the way the police actively go after the group. The main technique currently used to fight Boko Haram is mass arrest at the site of attacks. The police round up as many people they can at the site of an attack, often long after gunmen or bombers have fled. Instead of questioning these people, they are intimidated and money is extorted from them. Any information about Boko Haram hideouts they do receive is acted Tactics employed by government security agencies against Boko Haram have been consistently brutal and counterproductive. on in a very heavy-handed way. The police and army descend on the supposed hideout, all guns blazing, with innocent passers-by often caught and killed in the line of fire. Intelligence gathered by the police is done haphazardly. Virtually the only contact the police have with the community is at the level of the roadblock, with officers casting guilt on those who flee. Other tactics include holding family members of people believed to be members of Boko Haram as hostages. Human Rights Watch has reported that, in cases of extortion outside the Boko Haram context, the police have killed people they have held who were unable to secure money for their release. It is reasonable to suspect the same is happening in northeast Nigeria with respect to families of Boko Haram members. An important way to improve the situation is to promote fundamental police reforms that incorporate ideas of community policing strategies. Increasing the police’s contacts within the community, and making the police more accountable, will enable the police to gather more intelligence about the activities of the group. Reform of the police might also go some way to placating the group itself, but it remains to be seen whether the group can be won over at all, especially having come this far with its militancy.
CONCLUSIONS
Now that the group has expanded beyond a small number of mosques, radical reforms in policing strategy are necessary if there is to be any progress in gaining intelligence about where and who the group is. Indeed, widespread radical reform of the police is long overdue throughout Nigeria. As a first step, jailing a number of police officers responsible for ordering human rights abuses might go some way to removing a key objection of the group. Community policing and a more accountable police force would undoubtedly be a step forward in not just northern Nigeria but also Nigeria as a whole. However, it should not be expected that such reforms would be enough to persuade the group to give up its arms entirely and to rejoin civil society. Although Boko Haram can be classified as a sect, a radical branch of an established religion trying to advocate a return to a “pure” form of Islam, it also has many attributes of a messianic personality cult.