The Boko Haram Phenomenon and Terrorism in Nigeria, a masterpiece by retired Air Commodore Darlington Egbunu Abdullahi, is the most recent and assertive deep-thinking book on the activities of the dreaded Boko Haram sect in Nigeria. It is, of course, an open-secret that the insurgency that befell Nigeria took the country’s leaders unawares, and since its inception, the solutions to it have been proffered but none seems efficacious; rather they have been more of conjectures.
Abdullahi’s book is a thought-provoking security, incisive and intelligence write-up that reveals, educates, and tells point-blank all about the Boko Haram sect and why the activities of the sect have been sustained despite various efforts by the government and the international community in combating the trend. The book at the same time indicts Nigeria’s political, religious and social leaders for remaining learners of the procedures of the sect despite its recurring decimal.
Boko Haram Paradoxes
Paradox in the literary context is equivalent to irony. It simply means doing the opposite of what one says, or one’s ignorance of one’s Unconscious. The sect, whose main agenda is to wipe out western education, at the same time uses products of the same western education in its operations. The internet, of course, is one of them. Again if the agenda of the sect is to Islamise Nigeria, the puzzle is: why does it irrationally attack Islamic clerics and adherents as well as non-Muslims? Why does it attack mosques? Abdullahi writes that “At the beginning, it was an Islamic agenda with a call for the Islamisation of Nigeria and (former) President Jonathan converting to Islam’ (56). The terrorist group however contradicts its agenda by being the agent of destruction of the same institution that it tends to recreate. At the same time, Islamic clerics, including President Muhammadu Buhari, have openly stated that the group’s agenda is anti-Islam. It has also been established that no religion preaches violence; after all it is the creation of the Almighty. Then the activities of the Boko Haram sect need re-defining before a permanent solution could be found. And that is the main focus of the book under review.
Before Boko Haram, Islam was in Nigeria, courtesy of Othman dan Fodio. Abdullahi’s account shows that Boko Haram is evolutionary. Incidentally, Nigeria’s political and security structures failed to read the writings on the wall early enough until the monster became an institution. The journey began with pockets of militant groups bearing various names and their clandestine agenda. They were treated with kids’ gloves by the Nigerian authorities until the kids matured to face their father. The conglomeration of these underlying groups provided the platform for the formation of the first official terrorist group in Nigeria by outlawed Cameroonian Mohammed Marwa. He founded Maitasine in Nigeria around 1945, and groomed it until around 1980’s when the sect began to manifest its deadly agenda. Mr Marwa, whose ideologies couldn’t thrive in Cameroon, found Nigeria a potent ground to actualise them and those of his cohorts. His goal, according to Abdullahi, was the proclamation Jihad as enthroned by Othman dan Fodio. He was allowed naively to inculcate his ideologies into the consciousness of susceptible Nigerians, mostly from the Northeast, before the Nigerian institution became aware that a cancerous growth had overwhelmed its immune system. Subsequent efforts by the country in combating this became belated. Unlike the mission of Othman dan Fodio, whose descendants preached and proclaimed peace, Marwa’s own was radicalised and systemic as if a mysterious being was playing the music.
The Boko Haram Phenomenon and Terrorism in Nigeria brings many issues to the fore. All of them are germane to Nigeria’s peaceful co-existence, although it requires a superman, according to philosopher Nietzsche, to execute them. The issues include terrorism and global insecurity where he outlines the impact of terrorism in the society, the earth-breaking battle between Al-Qaeda and the US, and various terror attacks in the US, the UK, France, Australia, Canada, Syria, Indonesia, Middle East and Africa, and then narrows it down to Nigeria. By so doing he is able to establish the fact that terrorism is a global phenomenon but peculiar to societies and individuals. The didactic aspect of the book is the need to adopt a system that can checkmate the excesses of terrorism depending on the setting. By implication, although terrorism is a global phenomenon, the approach in tackling it depends on the geopolitical location. The type the US uses, for instance, may not work in Nigeria because of Nigeria’s peculiarities.
Other aspects the book discussed are the concept of terrorism and its growth in Nigeria, the Boko Haram strategies, kidnap and killing cases in the country, fate of refugees as a result of the activities of the insurgency, legal perspectives, and the international dimensions in combating terrorism. The book also identifies some solutions to ending the activities of the insurgents in Nigeria. Specifically identifying its peculiarities is a rudimentary way of tackling it.
Evolution of terrorism in Nigeria
According to Abdullahi, “Unchecked proliferation of small arms and light weapons in the country made it easier for these groups to achieve their objectives…” It is therefore the unchecked proliferations of pockets of covert terrorist groups that built the consciousness of insurgency in Nigeria. The journey of the group began with the Maitasine through the Nigerian Taliban before it graduated into Boko Haram. Maitasine’s leader Mohammed Marwa was not taken seriously when he began the teachings of his doctrines. He was arrested many a time but always found his way out of detention. When he was eventually killed, Mohammed had had an avalanche of followers. At worst, the report of the committee set up by the Shagari regime to unravel the mystery of the sect was not implemented, which has become a generational flaw in Nigeria.
Maitasine metamorphosed into the Nigerian Taliban, and was led by one Mohammed Ali. His agenda was a total implementation of a purer form of Sharia in Nigeria, which invariably is a continuum of its mother sect. The group, initially described as peaceful by some Islamic scholars, in disguise continued rebuilding the Maitaine network both locally and internationally until it went into a total confrontation with the Nigerian society. That was when the government realised that once again its security nonchalance had taken it unawares. Many lives and property were destroyed in the fight and reprisals. Abdullahi writes that the surviving members of the Nigerian Taliban, after the clampdown, in 2004, relocated to Borno where they sustained their fight against security operatives. It is the Taliban members who survived the government onslaught that later joined a movement founded by Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri, and succeeded in launching Boko Haram into a full force. Similarly the same non-proactive approach was used on Yusuf’s Boko Haram until it became an institution with international networks.
The book reveals some thought-provoking and indicting rhetoric. First the leaders of Maitasine, Nigerian Taliban and Boko Haram have a homogenous relationship. Nigeria’s government has always approached the movements with the same stereotyped attitudes. Reports of committees to tackle the insurgency have never been fully implemented. The Nigerian legal system has its defect in prosecuting the suspects.
The book is multifaceted and deserves a serious attention if Nigeria is to get the fight against Boko Haram and other insurgencies right. The book calls on Nigerian leaders, security operatives, and relevant institutions to sit up. The demands of the evolving sects are treasonable, and still nothing tangible has been done in the fight. It has been a case of ‘sit down dey look’.
Abdullahi in this book succeeds in creating the enigmatic posture of Boko Haram because the book is speculative on its funders, membership and the real agenda. However the book should be given the credit for stating the best approaches to solving the problem through the author’s system called: Darlington National Crisi Loop. That the sect has found its best conducive base in the North-East, that its followers are mainly deranged members of society and so on are pointers that Abdullahi is sending a message to Nigeria’s political class.
