Theories of Boko Haram insurgen 

It is common knowledge that a problem whose origins we have not taken enough pains to trace is often difficult to solve. It is like treating the symptoms of a disease, without running adequate diagnostics to identify the precise triggers of the symptoms. This is especially true of political problems, including the ongoing security crisis for which the Boko Haram terrorist group is held largely responsible. The urgency to solve this problem has been heightened by the recent waves of terrorist activities, including the audacious abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State.

Given the public outcry over the government’s enduring failure in effectively dealing with Boko Haram’s insurgency, questions must now be raised about the origins, motives, objectives, sponsors, and targets of Boko Haram’s terrorist activities. Unless and until these questions are satisfactorily answered, ad hoc responses to Boko Haram’s terrorist attacks would be analogous to merely treating the symptoms of a disease.

A first step is to understand the history of the North-East zone, encompassing Borno, Adamawa, Bauchi, Yobe, and Gombe states, in which Boko Haram’s operations are rooted. This zone was central to the Bornu Empire, which operated as a sovereign Sultanate run according to the principles of the Constitution of Medina. With a majority Kanuri population, the Bornu Sultanate maintained its distinction from the Sokoto Caliphate of the Hausa/Fulani to the west, even after the two came under British control in 1903.

The people of the zone resisted colonial authority as much as they resisted the influence of the Sokoto Caliphate. The Kanuri were particularly suspicious of Christian missionaries who used Western education as a tool for proselytisation. Increased dissatisfaction among them and others in the zone gave rise to many fundamentalists, whose opposition went beyond Western education. Mohammed Marwa, also known as Maitatsine, was such a fundamentalist. The riots he instigated in 1980 resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. Some analysts view Boko Haram as an extension of the Maitatsine riots.

Founded in Maiduguri by Muhammed Yusuf in 2002, Boko Haram was organised as a more radical and fundamentalist group than the Muslim Youth Organisation, which he took over from Mallam Lawal. Two apparent contradictions must be understood about Boko Haram from its inception. First, its founder, Yusuf, had a graduate education, spoke fluent English, and lived a lavish lifestyle (he even drove a Mercedes-Benz). But this did not prevent him from proscribing interaction with the Western world, because he viewed Western education, democracy, and Western theories, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as inimical to Islamic teaching.

Second, the group opposes the Muslim establishment, partly for its participation in the government of Nigeria, partly for its tacit support of Western education, and partly for its inability to impose Sharia law on the states. That’s why political leaders and Muslim clerics, who criticised Yusuf’s teachings, became easy targets of attack.

Hoping to establish a Shari’a government in Borno State, Yusuf set up a religious complex in Maiduguri that included a mosque and a school, where many poor families from Nigeria and neighbouring countries enrolled their children. Abject poverty in the region, which also houses the largest group of out-of-school children in the country, provides ready recruits for Boko Haram. The rapid radicalisation of the youth followed the movement of the complex to Yusuf’s home state of Yobe. In no time, the youth became jihadists and were prepared to do anything for whatever causes were designed for and assigned to them.

Following the group’s coordinated attacks on police stations and other government buildings in Maiduguri in 2009, which led to hundreds of deaths, the government ordered security forces to crack down on its headquarters. Yusuf was captured and eventually killed while in police custody.

However, its fighters regrouped under a new leadership, and attacked a prison in Bauchi State in 2010, setting free hundreds of the group’s supporters. The group’s new leader, Abubakar Shekau, described by the BBC as “part intellectual and part gangster”, further radicalised and militarised the group. Its terrorist mission expanded gradually and escalated after President Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration in 2011. Today, Nigerians are gripped by fear of Boko Haram.

Why and how did this happen? There are at least four theories. First, it is argued that Boko Haram truly hates Western education, which it considers as haram (forbibben) to Islam, and it is fighting to resist it by all means. The series of attacks on churches and schools are viewed in service of this objective. So are attacks on selected Muslim critics of its mission.

The recent abduction of innocent schoolgirls may appear to have diluted Boko Haram’s mission. But then, the abduction brings together the group’s attacks on Western education and on the state: the victims are predominantly Christian and they were abducted from a government secondary school.

Question must be raised, however, as to how Boko Haram came about sophisticated weapons, including AK-47 rifles, explosive bombs, and suicide bombing techniques. What about the army uniforms that some of its fighters sometimes wear? How expansive is Boko Haram’s recruitment? How, for example, did Ansaru, based in Mali, come into the picture at one point? This leads to the “international” theory of the Boko Haram insurgency.

There are two related strands of this theory. One sees Boko Haram as an expansion of the “Sahelian Spring”, a chain of resistance to the power structure, stretching from the northern fringe of West Africa through the Magreb to  Somalia and Yemen. It is here that the connections with al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab find ready explanations, as proposed by an American intelligence report.

The second strand of the international theory was propounded by Jonathan himself, when he blamed “powerful nations” for the development challenges in Africa, suggesting that these countries are behind the crises that have bedevilled Africa and holding her from “progressing like her developed world counterparts”. He further suggested that Western weapons, such as AK-47 rifles, used by poor young terrorists in Nigeria, may have been supplied by some “external forces that don’t want Africa to grow”.

Finally, there is what The Guardian editorial calls the “Regime Theory”, which emphasises the Jonathan administration’s vested interest in continued conflict in the North-East. The Guardian quotes The International Crisis Group ‘s allegation of “suspicions (that) the ruling PDP and President Jonathan, who is expected to seek a new term, are trying to suppress ballots in the region, which is largely controlled by the newly-formed opposition party, the All Progressives Congress.” This suspicion is reinforced by the infamous letter to Northern Governors’ Forum by Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State.

Whatever theories are advanced to explain the Boko Haram insurgency, four things are clear. First, Boko Haram is a reality as are its attacks on various targets. Second, its resistance to the power structure follows a long-standing historical trajectory of Kanuri resistance tradition. The defection of most of the region’s governors to the rival APC may well be an extension of this tradition. Third, terrorism by Boko Haram or any other group is Jonathan’s albatross.

However, ad hoc solutions may not be effective or sufficient against Boko Haram. Solutions must go beyond the ongoing insurgency to its historical foundations as outlined above. This will require the cooperation of the region’s leaders and a set of solutions acceptable to them.