Something is Rotten in the State of Borno
The terror of the Islamic organisation Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria gained worldwide media attention with the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in April. But both national political leaders and international media coverage conceal the structural causes that ensure Boko Haram's persistence. The group is not new; the kidnapping of the schoolgirls are just one tragedy in a long list of killings and abductions. A policy of neglect and corruption, mixed with a general acceptance of political Islam, provides the terrorist's breeding ground. Winning the war against Boko Haram means fundamentally reforming Northern Nigeria.
By Pascale A. Müller
It is still dark on the early morning of the 3rd of June, as dozens of all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles pour into the village of Attagara, in the north east of Nigeria. The men that come in them wear military uniforms. The villagers see them coming and believe that the Nigerian army has finally heard their call for help. As the uniformed men get off their bikes, they command everyone to gather near the church in the center of the village. They say the village is safe now. The church building is damaged from a recent Boko Haram attack that left 20 inhabitants of Attagara dead. The men tell the people not to run away. They say they came to rescue them.
In reality they are Boko Haram fighters that have returned to seek revenge for their casualties in the church attack, disguised as soldiers. The villagers stand still and wait, among them women and children. Someone screams “Allahu Akbar” into the silence. Then Boko Haram opens fire. Most of the people die immediately. Others start running, trying to escape into the bushes, into the nearby hills of the Mandara Mountains, but the killers are closing in on them. Some hide in caves were they are found and executed by the terrorists. Others are left to die in the wilderness, bleeding to death from their wounds. Within hours the village of Attagara is burned to the ground, leaving dead bodies and survivors roaming the ashes of their houses.
Boko Haram's daily terror
On the same day that Attagara was raided, Boko Haram invaded three more villages and killed the inhabitants: Goshe, Agapalwa and Aganjara, all of which are located in the province of Gwoza. Local tribesmen estimate the number of victims to be more than 400. A local member of parliament, Peter Biye, told the BBC that “nobody can estimate the death toll, as it is impossible to travel to the region. The zone is being controlled by the insurgents.” Attacks such as the one in Attagara happen regularly in Northern Nigeria.
International media was outraged when the group kidnapped nearly 300 Chiboki schoolgirls in late April 2014. But Teju Cole, an American-Nigerian writer, is not convinced by the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls that followed. “Boko Haram killed more human beings yesterday than the total number of girls they kidnapped three weeks ago. Horrifying, and unhashtagable,” writes Cole on Twitter. Looking at the figures, Cole is right.
On June 1st Boko Haram killed 40 people by a bomb planted on a football field. On May 20th a twin bomb explosion killed 118 people in the town of Jos. In the night from the 4th to the 5th of May, Boko Haram attacked the towns of Gamboru and Ngala in Borno State. The death toll of the massacre has been set at 336. In the same night, Boko Haram abducted eight teenage girls from North East Nigeria. On February 16th 106 people, mostly men and boys, were murdered by Boko Haram in what became known as the Izghe massacre. This bloody list could be continued backwards until the beginning of Boko Haram's deadly anti-government campaign in 2009, which left 800 people dead.
A recent report on Nigeria by the International Crisis Group states that “Boko Haram’s four-year-old insurgency has cost more than 4.000 lives, displaced close to half a million, destroyed hundreds of schools and government buildings and devastated an already ravaged economy in the North East, one of Nigeria’s poorest regions.” How is it possible that this organisation can act so freely in the state of Borno?
The poor and neglected
One argument of Boko Haram's stronghold is poverty and neglect. Even though Nigeria is Africa's most powerful economy, the GDP per capita ($2.490 in 2012) remains low and inequalities within Nigeria are on the rise. In the northern regions, such as Borno, most people live of less than 1 US dollar a day; the oil money never made it there. While the rise of Nigeria took place in the urban center of the southern states, the north was left out. But the disregard of the ugly stepchild of Borno is not only of an economic nature. Is Boko Haram therefore a product of underdevelopment and frustration? A group of criminals that tries to blackmail the government in Abuja to obtain their piece of the cake? Leo Igwe, a Nigerian human rights activist and researcher, is not convinced. “We cannot find a phenomenon like Boko Haram in the neighbouring Benin or in Burkina Faso with similar poverty rates. I do not agree that poverty and neglect by the government led to the problem of Islamic terror.” If poverty is not the solution to the Boko Haram riddle, what is it? A journey back in time might help to find an answer.
Sharia and impunity as a breeding ground for Boko Haram
We find ourselves in the year 2011. Borno state is heading towards the elections for the governor. Boko Haram is already known but not very active. By now it is clear that the modernisation of the northern states is failing, and only a small young elite of newly rich Nigerians is profiting from the growing economy. As they want to transfer their economic advantage into political power, they team up with the local clerics. The clerics assure them votes and expect money in return, but not only that. Sharia should become law of the state. “Suddenly the imams were driving motorcycles, even cars. Before they only had bicycles,” says Bergstresser, German researcher at the GIGA institute for regional and area studies. Nigeria is a federal state, the government in Abuja is powerless against the introduction of Sharia. “The southern elite looked at the introduction of Sharia as a joke,” says Bergstresser. They might look at it differently now.
The acceptance of Sharia is a milestone. All of a sudden crimes in the name of Islam are harder and harder to punish. “Boko Haramism began with the culture of impunity on religious 90 grounds,” says Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian writer and winner of the Noble prize for literature. It is important to understand that the state is one side of political Islam in Northern Nigeria, the other one are groups like Boko Haram. It seems inappropriate to compare them but the former makes it possible for violence in the name of religion to go unpunished by the legal system. For the inhabitants of Borno it went downhill from there.
Rather than using the allowances from the government in Abuja to invest into education and infrastructure, the money is being spent on the construction of mosques and to cover travel costs for hajj. Despite poverty and marginalization, the state of Katsina spends “an annual donation of 300 Saudi Riyals [around $80] to each pilgrim.” “The former president of Nigeria said in an interview that you cannot oppose Islam and succeed politically in Northern Nigeria”, says Leo Igwe.
The spirits that I've cited
What came next was just a coercive continuation. As a local politician in Borno was seeking to out-rule his opponent he reaches for the help of Boko Haram in 2013. He made a pact with the devil. “Paying the group large amounts of money to campaign for him, the governor finally came to power,” says Bergstresser. After the election the governor wanted to get rid of Boko Haram, an organisation too controversial to team up with. But Boko Haram and his leader Abubakar Shekau had already tasted the sweet fruit of power and wanted more. They started attacks against the governor and the state. “Everything came out of a local intrigue in the state of Borno,” says Bergstresser.
One of the main reasons why Boko Haram can continue its killings so freely has been laid out in 2013, by corrupt politicians and a state that bases its law on religion. “It should not surprise anyone if the politicians in Borno state align with Boko Haram. Because they know that sometimes the easiest way to get power is to play the Muslim politics or to get a Muslim group on your side,” says Leo Igwe.
Corruption of the military
These power plays matter little for the people who lost their relatives in Gwoza. It has by now been almost 10 days since the raid happened, still no military help has arrived in the rampant villages. Ngoshe, the biggest of the fours towns, has been destroyed completely. The mosques and all 300 houses have been burned down. Nothing is left from the life that has been here since Boko Haram came there. All villages are deserted; only ashes are left after the people quickly packed up their belongings to flee over the border to Cameroon. Communicating with the border region is difficult, as the Boko Haram fighters destroyed mobile phone towers. A question that many there ask is: “Where is the army?” “There is no security presence in this area. All those villages were unprotected,” says Biye. The army argues that providing security in these areas is difficult, but suspicion has been raised that Boko Haram does not only team up with local politicians. There is evidence that the military knew about the attack in Gwoza but did not respond to it, because thy have a deal with Boko Haram. One of the village leaders in Gwoza asked for protection days before the raid. The commander answered him that they would first need to pay the soldiers, says the man, who wants to stay anonymous because of security reasons. “There is this information that Boko Haram is having ties to the military and the police and we have reasons to believe that this information is valid. When attacks happen the security forces are often far away, or even not ready to intervene at all,” says Leo Igwe.
The poor salary of simple military commanders makes Boko Haram a lucrative business partner. Rampant corruption has left the state unable to deal with security concerns, especially along porous borders through which Boko Haram receives immense support. Besides the miraculous absence of military during the terror attack, a look at one of their videos reveals an immense amount of weaponry that is not only costly, but very difficult to obtain. But high-level corruption and financial opacity breeds larger-scale funding and supports opportunities for Boko Haram, contributing to illicit financial flows facilitated by banks and corrupt individuals. Of course this system of corruption and personal enrichment not only pays Boko Haram's terrorism but also destroys all options for development and reform in Northern Nigeria. This vicious cycle of corruption, marginalisation and religious violence will, if not interrupted, ruin Northern Nigeria and bring about a regional crisis.
Nigeria needs leaders that tackle the problem politically
Gwoza has once again shown that the government of Jonathan Goodluck has no strategy on how to tackle the problem of Boko Haram. His response in this case, an airstrike on the region, is a desperate move that exposes the government's helplessness with the situation. But Boko Haram is not a spontaneous, temporary and isolated problem that can be solved by temporary means. “It is a product of decades old political tactics,” says Wole Soyinka. Unless issues of bad governance and systemic corruption are addressed vigorously, all other measures of dealing with Boko Haram will be nothing but stop-gaps.
Above all, the country needs to readjust its attitude towards political Islam on which Boko Haram is drifting and on which legal grounds the group escapes conviction. “Secular and human rights activists have to find a way to stop the indoctrination of young Muslims,” says Igwe.
After the attacks in Gwoza the problem of Boko Haram risks reaching Niger and Cameroon. These countries are too poorly equipped to combat a radical Islamist armed group. Boko Haram is both a serious challenge and manifestation of more profound threats to Nigeria’s security. “Unless the federal and state governments, and the region, develop and implement comprehensive plans to tackle not only insecurity but also the injustices that drive much of the troubles, Boko Haram, or groups like it, will continue to destabilise large parts of the country,” warns the International Crisis Group in their recent report. Yet, the political will to do more than dropping bombs on Boko Haram is entirely lacking.
Pascale A. Müller is a freelance journalist writing at the intersection of MENA politics, terrorism, women's rights and political Islam. Find her @MllrPascale and
http://www.clippings.me/pascalemueller.
