Boko Haram: How Nigeria got here and how it can get out
Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honor; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it. — Jeremy Bentham in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
The object of this essay is to render thoughts on Boko Haram and answer the following questions: what can Nigeria and Nigerians learn from Boko Haram’s insurgency? And what is the future of the terror group?
The rise of Boko Haram perfectly sympathizes with the maxim that we may all know when a war started, but no one will ever know when it will end. When this now famous terror group started in 2009 as only a dissident group, only few people — if any at all — thought that not only would the group continue to grow stronger to the point where it would become world’s deadliest terror group but also would continue for more than 11 years. And the sorrowful fact is that even till now, there is nothing that shows hopefully that the group would be drubbed any short time from now.
Perhaps, what is more than the power of Boko Haram is how it has been shrouded in mystery and various conspiracy theories and even genuine theories over time. One theory says Boko Haram is financed and armed by foreign oil companies and the government of their home countries for oil exploration reasons; another says it was created and supported by some members of the Northern Nigeria elite; another theory has it that it was created by the West. Everyone seems to know that there is more to the group than meets the eye but no one seems to know what the “more” is.
For now, we may not know what is more to Boko Haram but what created Boko Haram is there for every keen observer of northern Nigeria and Nigeria to see. It is of utmost importance to talk about what created Boko Haram so we can learn from it as a nation, if we wish to. Three things rolled into one to create this monster that has littered its path with the body of over 100,000 innocent people for about ten years: the utterly blind religious fanaticism and mass illiteracy in northern Nigeria and the injustice of the Nigerian state.
Police and army brutality, unlawful detention, extra-judicial killings and public torturing of unarmed civilians because of little offenses, are some examples of the injustice that Nigerian security personnel perpetrate time and again and yet go unpunished. This was what led to the killing of Muhammad Yusuf in 2009. The extra-judicial killing of Yusuf and the prevailing religious atmosphere in the north are what created Boko Haram. Let’s flesh it out.
At the risk of appearing to be making stereotypical claims, it has to be said that a careful objective study of Islam in northern Nigeria shows that unlike in other parts of the country, a considerable percentage of northern Muslims is fanatically, religiously intolerant. The fanaticism and the intolerance are themselves, evils that are supported by some pages of the historical religious text of early northern forbears and Islamic leaders. This explains why many Northern Muslim clerics and their votaries seem to have a completely warped understanding of Islam; this explains why even before the emergence of Boko Haram, there have been many religious uprisings and violence in northern Nigeria: from Maitatsine to blasphemous killings and hundreds of religious riots that usually start as religious hate crimes.
Before Muhammad Yusuf was killed, he already had in place, all what is necessary to start Boko Haram: illiterate, religious fanatic followers who had made him a cult figure. After Yusuf’s death, starting Boko Haram was an effortless task for Shekau; he had an army of religious soldiers who were ready to avenge Yusuf. That was how it all started.
It is unfortunate, however, that Nigeria has not learned from all the incidents that led to the creation of Boko Haram. In 2015, Zakzaky (another religious cult figure who has an army of fanatic votaries more than Muhammad Yusuf and who Yusuf himself was once his disciple) was maimed, arrested and till now, he is still in army detention. Six of his sons were also murdered by the soldiers of the Nigerian Army. One would have thought that a nation that is yet to win its almost-a-decade war against Boko Haram would understand the power of religious cults and the power the leaders of these cults wield over their illiterate idolaters, and never again try to travel down the road that led to the creation of Boko Haram. But that, unfortunately, is not the case.
If the government refuses to learn, Nigerian citizens can learn and should learn from this Boko Haram phase of our national story.
Northerners are the first Nigerians in the line of lesson because Boko Haram is a northern problem and the north has suffered terribly — and is still suffering seriously — from Boko Haram’s vampiric menace; all Boko Haram’s attack are in the north. Northern youths that are supposed to be the future and glory of the region are being radicalized and turned into Boko Haram’s army; northern females that are supposed to be future mothers and home makers are being kidnapped, married off forcefully and even used as suicide bombers; the progress of education in the region has been sabotaged and young people who were not radicalized or kidnapped are being murdered in cold blood on a daily basis. Even if Boko Haram is defeated today, it will take the region long years of toiling to recover from the great havoc that the insurgency had wreaked.
Therefore, it behooves northern Muslims, who know the true and genuine Islam, to start mass sensitization campaigns against warped Islamic teachings that promote intolerance and justify violence; they should call out clerics who turn scriptures upside down; they should work hard to stop the circulation of those religious writings that amplify the military teachings of Islam and call for Jihad or Islamic State. To ensure that there is no army for religious cults in future, northern Muslims who know what Islam truly means must place high premium on education and work hard to abolish the almajiri system.
Due to the religious rivalry and competition between the Muslim-dominated north and the Christian-dominated south, some Muslims in the north believe that openly challenging the askew Islamic teachings that is prevalent in the region and speaking against the heavy religious intolerance in the region is equal to ridiculing Islam and putting the region to shame. Because of this, they live in stubborn denials and refuse to face the problems head-on. But this is not the way forward and it, in fact, shows that they are yet to learn from what is going on and are not willing to make the tables turn.
For adherents of every faith, Boko Haram is a lesson that religion without reason is disaster; religion and reason are compatible; we should never discard one for the other. When clerics twist religious text for personal reasons and gains and ask us to hate and kill, it is the voice of reason that will tell us to do otherwise.
If we are to make inferences based on the current situation, it is only logical to conclude that the future of Boko Haram is “bright”. This is because there are no indications that the Nigerian government will trounce the group anytime soon. The corruption in the polity has turned the fight against Boko Haram into a racket: army chiefs and elites of our defense board are smiling to the bank with money budgeted for the purchase of weapons to fight Boko Haram. Millions of defense funds were embezzled under Jonathan’s administration and even under the current administration, defense budget is being inflated and with no corresponding defense services that match the inflation. A recent example is the Tucano fighter jet scandal. The February 2018, BBC report that says that soldiers were about to capture Shekau but received a call from “above” that they should retreat, is a clear sign that apart from corruption, another reason Boko Haram will not be defeated anytime soon is that there is a higher power in government that is working as the godfather of the terror group. Long before the BBC report, there are popular stories of how military checkpoints are suddenly disbanded by high-ranking military officers so that Boko Haram would pass freely. Who are the people in government that are holding the military back in order to protect Boko Haram? Until Nigerians start asking this necessary question and forcing the government to speak up, Boko Haram would continue to grow stronger because of the help of its godfathers in government circles.
Boko Haram’s kidnapping of civilians is another reason it will not be ultimately defeated anytime soon. With civilians in its lair, it forces the government to pay ransom, requests that its captured members are released and it limits blitzkrieg from the Nigerian army; knowing that civilians are in its abode, the Nigerian army becomes cautiously careful of how it attacks the group’s lair. Boko Haram’s ability to consolidate this tactic is how it gets money to buy weapons, pay its fighters and ensures its longevity. One of the steps to defeat the terror group is to sabotage this tactic by ensuring that it no longer captures civilians.
Given that recent schisms in the group led to a couple of decisive victories for the Nigerian government, a considerable percentage of the public believes that the group might be defeated anytime from now. But a careful thought on this recent development would inform that the schism in the group might not be the end of the group; it will only lead to the creation of more groups. Al-Barnawi’s breakaway has set a precedent for any strong group member, who has his own idea of what the Jihad should look like and the necessary support, to go rogue. This another possible future trajectory of the group.
Boko Haram is a monster that the institutional, systemic, cultural and religious failure in the Nigerian state has created, and is raising. We all know how it all started but now no one knows when it will end. It’s not just that we don‘t know when it will end, the saddest thing is that we know it isn’t going to end anytime soon, since army chiefs have turned it into a huge military-budget-gulping racket.
*I wrote this essay in 2018 as an entry for a writing competition. It hasn’t been published anywhere since I wrote it, so I feel it isn’t wrong to publish it here.
