Faceless Terrorism In Nigeria: A Day After

By Benedict Ahanonu

First, let me state that terrorism is not just a peculiar Nigerian problem; it is a global problem. It is also not an exclusive Islamic problem as extremists who engage in terrorism are to be found in all religions. Neither is it just a northern problem as there are also groups in the south that do or had engaged in acts of terror.

In a country like Nigeria with such magnitude of ethnic and religious diversity, cleavages can easily be exploited by unscrupulous elites and politicians to inflame latent tensions, leading to inter-communal violence.

Nigeria is therefore not any different from other multiethnic developing societies where the privileged political elite and certain selfish individuals often prefer to exploit what Crawford Young calls “politics of cultural pluralism.”

Since independence, violence has featured prominently in Nigerian politics. Some analysts posit that the root of this tradition of violence goes back to the colonial era, which thrived on violence. But the tradition so established seemed to have sneaked into the post-independence period, from the ‘Agbekoya riots’ in the Western region in the 1960s to the skirmishes between the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and the Northern Elements’ Progressive Union (NEPU) down to the post-election violence that followed the April 2011 presidential elections and presently the menace of Boko Haram
Some analysts are of the view that external influences are also major factors in terrorist activities, particularly in countries such as Nigeria. When Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, was alive, he was accused of financing certain extremist groups in Nigeria. There is also anecdotal evidence that Iran and Saudi Arabia have provided considerable financial support over the years to Islamic groups in Nigeria. Some claim that not all the money has been used for building mosques, schools and clinics. It is also interesting to know that Saudi Arabia has over the last 30 years been spending an annual average of US$2.5 billion on Islamic activities across the world. The Islamic Republic of Iran of late is having undue interest in Nigerian politics. There is though no clear and substantiated evidence that Saudi Arabia and Iran are financing terrorist activities in Nigeria. However, the discovery in October 2010 of 12 containers filled with highly sophisticated arms that were linked to Iran heightened suspicion.
According to the United States Department of Defence, terrorism is “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological”. Inherent in this definition are the three key elements of violence, fear, and intimidation. All three elements coalesce in instigating terror in the victims or those at the receiving end. The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on its part, defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”. The U.S. State Department, on the other hand, sees it as the deployment of “premeditated politically-motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience”.
But Haviland Smith, a retired CIA Station Chief thinks otherwise. According to him, George W. Bush, did everything possible to muddle up the true meanings of the terms terrorism and insurgency. Preferring the former, largely because of its emotional post-9/11 impact on the American psyche, Bush spokespeople and the president himself consistently used the terms insurrection and terrorism interchangeably, indiscriminately, and inaccurately.
This has not simply been a case of intellectual carelessness, Smith notes. It has been a conscious effort to label any group that threatened any status quo of which they approved as a “terrorist organization,” without any thought to the origins of or reasons for the struggle being waged. Thus, in a moment of warm and fuzzy presidential friendship with Vladimir Putin, with American concurrence, the Chechen rebels officially became terrorists rather than insurrectionists trying to break free from centuries of Russian oppression. As terrorists, they were far less acceptable outside Russia.
The moral here is that it has not been advantageous to become involved in any insurrection or national liberation movement against any country that is friendly to the United States opines Smith. In doing so, you will be branded a terrorist, and that brings with it certain moral, emotional, and legal consequences.
According to Smith, from a historical point of view, it has been easier to deal with terrorism than insurgencies. When terrorist movements are left to run their course, they tend to last around a dozen years. The good news about them is that, unlike insurgencies, which seldom lose, terrorism rarely seems to win. Terrorism, properly and intelligently confronted, is a short-term, dramatically violent irritant and not much more. It is certainly unworthy of having war declared against it.
A recent Rand Corporation study examined 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006. During that period, 398 of those groups have ceased to exist. Forty-three percent (171) of those that ended were absorbed into the political systems of the countries in which they operated, while forty percent (159) were defeated by police activities. It is most significant to note that only seven percent (28) of those groups were defeated by military action.
By its nature, terrorism cannot depend on support from the local population. If the general populations are actively opposed to them, they are faced with the difficult task of operating entirely underground.
The African Union (AU) Convention on Prevention and Combating Terrorism 1994 defines terrorism as “any act which is a violation of the criminal …which may endanger the life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to any person, any number or group of persons or causes or may cause damage to public or private property, natural resources, environmental or cultural heritage and is calculated or intended to: (a) intimidate, put in fear, coerce or induce any government, body, institution, the general public or any segment thereof, to do or abstain from doing any act, or to adopt or abandon a particular standpoint or to act according to certain principles; or (b) disrupt any public service, the delivery of any essential service to the public or to create a public emergency; or (c) create general insurrection in a State.
Globalization and the technologies associated with the increasing internationalization of production, capital and markets has facilitated the capacity of terror groups to mobilize, network and implement their violent projects across nations and communities, a good example is the Islamic State or IS in Iraq and Syria.
According to the Washington Times, following the fall of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, it was discovered that a gigantic cache of advanced antiaircraft rockets were missing from a raided storage space in Tripoli. Among the missing weapons are the most advanced Russian surface-to-air missile, the SA-24, and an earlier version called the SA-7. The highly accurate, heat-seeking weapons are easily launched from a shoulder or a truck bed and are able to take down low-flying aircraft. This confirms fears that the Gaddafi regime’s weapons might have been smuggled into neighbouring Niger, Mali or Mauritania by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
There is no denying that sociological factors deriving from rapid urbanizations and modernization can and do contribute to spurring alienation and, ultimately, political violence says Dr Obadiah Mailafia.
The French sociologist Emile Durkheim identified anomie as a major psychosocial malady in industrializing societies. The sprawling slums in cities such as Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos and Maiduguri have easily become cesspits of crime, prostitution and violence. When youths drift to cities and lose the traditional anchors that provided meaning to their lives, they could fall easy prey to extremist ideologies. Experts estimate that in Northern Nigeria there are over 9.5 million Almajiris (itinerant youths who attend traditional koranic schools).
President Goodluck Jonathan administration has gone a step further in rehabilitating the Almajiris with the building of Almajiri schools that incorporate both western and koranic studies in their curriculum, but whether they are availing themselves of this wonderful opportunity is another crucial question.
Most of such children are the cannon fodder for ethno-religious conflicts that do spring up from time to time, according to Mailafia.
Nigeria’s rather long history of civil strife makes it more understandable why terrorism could easily thrive in the country. Over the last decade alone, more than 20,000 people have died as a result of ethnic and sectarian conflict in Nigeria. Nigerians are beginning to accept random violence as their lot and destiny.
In November 2001, barely two months after the attack on the Twin Towers, the late French philosopher, sociologist and intellectual Jean Baudrillard, in an influential article, “The Spirit of Terrorism”, argued that contemporary terrorism has its roots in the contradictions arising from the global system that has emerged with America’s Atlantic hegemony. Baudrillard pointed out, quite correctly, that the Bush administration, as late as the summer of 2001, had been fully in touch with the Taliban. He also noted that Washington had over the years provided support to Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. He sought to proffer an anti-intellectual antidote to the blind nationalism and wholesale demonization of terrorists that greeted the 9/11 attacks.
Nevertheless, the economist and historian Alain Minc, saw this view as being in itself a form of ‘intellectual terrorism’.
In a highly influential 1994 article, the American journalist and public intellectual Robert Kaplan identified West Africa as the signifier in his premonition of a future of chaos and global disintegration. Kagan believes that “West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real strategic danger.” He points to trends such as disease, uncontrolled population growth, criminal violence, resource scarcity, refugees and the “increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders” as factors likely to speed up the inevitable process of societal collapse in Africa. Kaplan makes references to Nigeria as one of those countries destined to fail, prophesying, in effect, that terrorist groups and criminal bandits are likely to fill the political vacuum that will emerge.
This erudite scholar right might not be right?
Peter Lewis undertook a fascinating comparative study of economic development in Nigeria and Indonesia and discovered that although both countries began with the same initial conditions in 1960 and both experienced instability and military dictatorships, Nigerian elites bled dry their country while the equally corrupt elites of Indonesia made the critical choice of investing at home. It is clear that poverty is a major factor explaining the current wave of terrorist insurgency.

But Is poverty and youth disenchantment the main causes of terrorism?

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who attempted to bring down a plane on US soil on Christmas Day 2009 came from a wealthy background. His father was a former minister and Chairman of a commercial bank in Nigeria. Most of the young men who hijacked the planes during the 9/11 attacks were articulate people from privileged upper and middle class homes. Poverty in this case could not have been the direct trigger for terrorism. Indeed, it has also been pointed out that the 19 poorest countries in the world have no recorded incidences of terrorism. A more credible explanation is that the prevalence of poverty makes it easier for extremist groups to mobilize disenchanted youths in pursuit of their own political goals. There is the added factor of youth unemployment, especially within the growing number of university graduates. When people are pushed to the lowest levels of desperation and hopelessness, they can fall easy prey to religious demagogues who offer them a sense of belonging.
Dr Obadiah Mailafia further postulates that it is equally true that unjust and corrupt governments provide a fertile ground for terrorism. Some would argue that non-democratic governments breed conditions that terrorists can exploit in furtherance of their own objectives. While this is highly probable, social science provides no evidence that undemocratic governments necessarily lead to proliferation of terrorists. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case. The likelihood of terrorism surfacing in countries such as North Korea, China and Cuba is quite remote.
According to Dr Mailafia, what seems obvious is that in fledgling democracies where corruption is rife and institutions are weak, there is a higher likelihood of terrorist activities emerging. And if a particular section of the country feel short-changed politically in the context of a state apparatus that is considered weak as well as corrupt – and where there is widespread social alienation due to poverty – terrorism can explode.
Another theory that has been put forward is that of the “alienated intelligentsia,” says Mailafia. Terrorist movements are always led by well-educated and, in some cases, highly privileged people. Osama bin Laden hailed from an affluent Saudi background, studied economics and engineering at university. His deputy, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is a qualified surgeon from an illustrious Egyptian family of intellectuals. Hassan al-Turabi who had invited the late Osama bin Laden to set up base in Khartoum is a celebrated Muslim philosopher and jurist, with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. Mohammed Atta, the kingpin of the 9/11 plane hijackers, studied architecture in Germany and wrote a supposedly brilliant thesis on conflict between tradition and modernity in urban planning in the medieval Syrian city of Aleppo.
Nevertheless, state failure provides a good excuse for terrorist groups to question the legitimacy of the state and to seek to impose an alternative vision of political order. In a country that does not offer its citizens any hope and denies its youth all the opportunities, it is no surprise that extremists such as late Mohammed Yusuf can mobilize such a formidable following, but the good news is that the President Goodluck Jonathan through the YouWin project and other youth economic empowerment programmes is creating jobs for the youths and getting them meaningfully engaged.
Equally important is the politics of competitive ethnicity and the dynamics of inter-group relations within the Nigerian federation. The structure of the Nigerian federation, places much powers in the centre. This makes the Presidency the most coveted political prize of all; a zero-sum game in which the winners view state power as an opportunity to corner the nation’s wealth for themselves and their small coterie of acolytes.

Ethno-Sectarian Divide

With the widespread misery occasioned by the Structural Adjustment Reforms and the ensuing repression and political decay in the 1980s, Nigerian ethnic communities began to seek succour in new primordial associations. Regional and ethnic militias became the order of the day. Notable among these were groups such as the Movement for the Actualization ofr the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Egbesu Boys and O’Odua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) in the West, Niger-Delta Volunteers Force, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and the Ijaw Youth Organisation in the Niger Delta. Complicating matters further has been the so-called politics of ‘resource control’, as groups in the Niger Delta resorted to violence and kidnapping in their struggle to ensure ‘resource control’, in addition to participation in oil bunkering valued at over US$3 billion annually. The military administration of Sani Abacha responded with a heavy hand, sending the likes of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues to the gallows and drawing worldwide condemnation in the aftermath. It was under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua that an amnesty programme was brokered in 2008 and the region witnessed a gradual return of peace and stability.
Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Dioceses in Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria; thinks that the specifically religious dimensions of social conflict, has made northern Nigeria remain the most troubled region in the country. For much of Nigeria’s history since independence, northern elites have found it expedient to use religion as a means of consolidating their power and ensuring their ascendancy.
According to Bala J. Takaya and Sonny Tyoden, the shadowy group which came to be known as ‘the Kaduna Mafia’ was seen as the vanguard and protector of northern interests, which were essentially defined in terms of elite access to patronage, public appointments and other forms of preferment. J.I. Onu and F.Y. Okunmadewa, in an article titled, “What Does the Conduct of the Cotton Market in Nigeria Reveal?” think that the Northern Nigerian Development Company (NDDC) and affiliates such as the former Bank of the North were the economic legacy institutions that provided the financial base for the northern ruling class. During the days of the northern commodity boards, the Middle Belt, which is the bread basket of the country, felt increasingly short-changed as the commodity boards monopolised the marketing of commodities, imposing prices that amounted to creaming off the profits accruable to local farmers. Rightly or wrongly, the peoples of the Middle Belt felt increasingly treated as second class citizens by the northern oligarchy, leading to embitterment and alienation.
Sometime in the 1980s, the northeast, like the rest of the North, fell under the sway of the Maitatsine sect. Thousands were killed and considerable properties and infrastructures were destroyed during months of mayhem perpetrated by Maitatsine followers.
Equally, the re-introduction of Sharia criminal law in several northern states between 2000 and 2001 yet again provoked widespread unrest.
Ricardo René Laremont, in his book Islamic Law and Politics in Nigeria, said that during the constitutional debates in the late 1970s, the controversy over Sharia had almost threatened to scuttle the political transition process. Protests by minority Christian communities over Sharia led to violent confrontations in Kaduna and other northern capitals, leading to the death of thousands of people. For many, the issue is not whether or not Sharia should operate, but that the manner of its operation could lead to implicit discrimination and harassment of non-Muslims. The then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, had dismissed it as a form of ‘political Sharia’ which would ‘fizzle out’ in no time.
But did this happen? Instead, it has become increasingly entrenched and has effectively divided Nigeria into two separate jurisdictions; the one governed by Islamic Sharia and the other by the common law tradition says Ruud Peters.
Rotimi Suberu, in Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria, thinks that ethno-sectarian conflicts have continued to characterize the political landscape. Examples include the conflicts between Ife and Modakeke in the West to the Aguleri-Umuleri conflict in the East and the fight between Tiv and Jukun in Taraba State. In the northern part of the country, the outbreak of the Maitatsine riots in Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Yola in the ‘80s were the precursors of all sorts of violent unrest based on religious millenarianism.
They were the precursors of the sort of rampaging violence that has turned the North into what the social activist Shehu Sani has described as “the killing fields”.
According to Shehu Sani, in The Killing Fields: Religious Violence in Northern Nigeria; one of the most troubling of these conflicts was the Zangon-Kataf crisis between the Kataf people and the Hausa-Fulani in May 1992. While it was alleged to be mainly about land rights; the violent conflict was equally about a sense of historic injustice as a result of being ruled under an emirate system by people they perceived as alien minorities. These so-called ‘religious riots’, including the Sharia riots in Kaduna State and religiously inspired killings in Kaduna, Maiduguri and Bauchi have taken the lives of probably 35,000 Nigerians between 1999 and 2011.
Further complicating the situation has been the emergence of state-sponsored vigilante groups that were purportedly set up to prevent armed robbery and other forms of violent criminality says Dr Obadiah Mailafia. Some of these groups often resorted to extra-judicial methods of tackling crime and in meting out summary justice to alleged criminals. Among such groups were the Bakassi Boys in Abia State, the Onitsha Traders’ Organization and the Anambra State Vigilante Service. The proliferation of these armed militias reinforced a culture of violence and lawlessness as these groups capitalized on legitimate grievances to justify bank robberies, assassinations and kidnapping.
Rasheed Olaniyi, in Hisba and Sharia Law Enforcement in Metropolitan Kano, posits that another key feature of the culture of violence is that, under the pretext of keeping the common peace, vigilantes and groups such as the ‘Hisba’ in the Shari’a States have sometimes served as enforcement agents for powerful elements in pursuit of narrow selfish ends. Some of the activities of the occasionally overzealous yan Hisba Sharia law enforcers in places like Kano and other Sharia States have caused concern among Christian communities who feel they are being compelled to subscribe to religious tenets that they cannot identify with. From Maitatsine in the 1980s to Boko Haram in 2011, some State Governors have allegedly been patronizing religious teachers with potentially extremist views. Often, although it might be wrong, the belief is that the Nigerian political culture does not exert a cost on those who perpetrate acts of political violence.

The Boko Haram Sect

Sanusi Aliyu, in a thesis presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 2009 traced the origin of Boko Haram to 2001 when a Muslim cleric, Mohammed Ali, succeeded in attracting a large following at his mosque in the north eastern city of Maiduguri. They had decided to move to neighbouring Yobe State because they found Maiduguri to be too decadent and corrupt. In 2003 the group was involved in a local dispute which led to a shootout and the death of its leader, Mohammed Ali and several of its members. Known as ‘the Nigerian Taliban’, on account of their Puritanism, the group later moved back to Maiduguri under the inspiration of their new leader, a charismatic young man by the name of Mohammed Yusuf. The group acquired a piece of land in the northern part of Maiduguri previously owned by Yusuf’s father-in-law Baba Fugu Mohammed. The new mosque became known as Ibn Tamiyyah Masjid, in honour of the medieval Arab theologian Sheik ul-Islam Ibn Tamiyyah (1263—1328 AD).
Thinkers like Franz Fanon and Maurice Duverger have understood that conflict is endemic in human society and violence merely reflects the existential dilemmas of the human condition itself.
According to Farouk Chothia, of BBC Africa Service, Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it “haram”, or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society. This includes voting in elections, wearing shirts and trousers or receiving a secular education.
But is this possible in the present times?
Boko Haram regards the Nigerian state as being run by non-believers, even when the country had a Muslim president. The group’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”.
Since the Sokoto caliphate, (which ruled parts of what is now northern Nigeria, Niger and southern Cameroon), fell under British control in 1903, there has been resistance among the area’s Muslims to Western education. Many Muslim families still refuse to send their children to government-run “Western schools”, a problem compounded by the ruling elite which does not see education as a priority. Against this background, the charismatic Muslim cleric, Mohammed Yusuf, formed Boko Haram in Maiduguri in 2002. He set up a religious complex, which included a mosque and an Islamic school. Many poor Muslim families from across Nigeria, as well as neighbouring countries, enrolled their children at the school. But Boko Haram was not only interested in education. Its political goal was to create an Islamic state, and the school became a recruiting ground for jihadits to fight the state.
In 2009, Boko Haram carried out a spate of attacks on police stations and other government buildings in Maiduguri. This led to shoot-outs on Maiduguri’s streets. Hundreds of Boko Haram supporters were killed and thousands of residents fled the city. Nigeria’s security forces eventually seized the group’s headquarters, capturing its fighters and killing Mr Yusuf. His body was shown on state television and the security forces declared Boko Haram finished. But its fighters regrouped under a new leader and in 2010 they attacked a prison in Bauchi state, freeing hundreds of the group’s supporters.
Boko Haram’s trademark has been the use of gunmen on motorbikes, killing police, politicians and anyone who criticizes it, including clerics from other Muslim sects and Christian preachers. The group also staged several more audacious attacks in different parts of northern Nigeria. These include the 2011 Christmas Day bombings on the outskirts of Abuja and in the north-eastern city of Damaturu, a 2010 New Year’s Eve attack on a military barracks in Abuja, several explosions around the time of President Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration in May 2011, followed by the bombing of the Force Headquarters and the UN headquarters in Abuja.
The April 2014, bombings in Nyanya, Wuse, Jos and several other cities and locations in Nigeria that claimed so many lives are engraved in memories. One will not also forget the kidnap of Chibok school girls that sparked international outrage.
As the military chiefs strategize, one thing they must realize is that the effectiveness of the military approach against terrorists depends entirely on the accuracy of intelligence and weapons.
In addition, the security agencies must work more closely together and should be more proactive in their thinking and action. The Federal Government also has to work with its ECOWAS neighbours to prevent terrorists from penetrating into the country through its porous borders. The bold action in defeating terrorism, must be sustained. It also requires expanding the frontiers of welfare while widening the democratic space for popular participation.
Ultimately, it is about reinventing and repositioning Nigeria as a compassionate country; a purpose-driven nation with a clearly defined vision. A country of great men and women poised to take its rightful place as the greatest African country and the most powerful voice of resurgent Africa in a vociferous world.
According to Dr Obadiah Mailafia, a generation of Nigerians, tempered by war and tutored by hard and bitter peace, should appreciate more than any other that civility and restraint are the only true course for the survival of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy. Terrorism is a negation of all civilized values, encouraging as it does such contempt for human life. There can be no illusions about it: the apostles of extremism are the enemies of liberty — in the memorable words of George Kennan — malignant parasites that feed on diseased tissue. They must be stopped at all costs.

God bless Nigeria.

Benedict Ahanonu, who writes from Abuja, can be contacted via: 08033944198 or email: bahanonu@yahoo.co.uk