This year’s edition of the Murtala Mohammed memorial lectures should serve as a veritable food for thought especially given mounting security challenges stretching the nation to capacity.
Not only is the title “Managing the Boko Haram crisis in Borno State: Experiences and lessons for a multi-party, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Nigeria” relevant to contemporary realities, it could not have had a better speaker than Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno State.
He wears the shoes and should know where they pinch most. His take-off point was a recent statement by his predecessor, Ali Modu Sheriff in which he implied that at the time he handed power over to Shettima in 2011, Boko Haram had asserted territorial control and carried out its atrocities within Maiduguri only. Sheriff went further to assert that Boko Haram was not in control of any local government area then.
But Shettima smelt a political shot to reverse or obliterate the true turn of events in respect of that uprising. He catalogued events that led to the birth, nurturing and maturation of the Boko Haram terror group during the period Sheriff held sway, disputing the claim that Boko Haram did not metastasize beyond Maiduguri while Sheriff was on duty.
Here is his case: in July 2009 when Boko Haram launched its first concurrent attacks in Maiduguri, its cells also carried out similar attacks at Damasak, headquarters of Mobbar local government of the state. Cells yet to become active existed alongside visible followers in other local government. He said Boko Haram which had spread from Borno to Bauchi and Yobe states attacked targets in these states within the same July 2009 and that the terror group was by this time everywhere in Borno State. This was before he became the governor.
He said he had restrained from blaming his predecessor for inaction that provided fertile ground for the spread of the terror group. But by failing to intervene in the crisis between some members of the armed forces and the insurgent group known then as Yusufiyya over the use of crash helmets, Sheriff cannot in all honesty, escape culpability for the turn of events that escalated the crisis.
In 2010, a more vicious and radical Abubakar Shekau emerged on the scene as a catalyst and threatened reprisals that have left this nation in its current pass. Shettima wrapped up his narrative thus “the transformation from Yusufiyya to Boko Haram under Shekau, dispatch of outposts outside Maiduguri in Borno State to Yobe and Bauchi, all planned and coordinated from headquarters in Borno had become contrived fait accompli under governor Ali Modu Sheriff”.
We have gone this far to put in perspective some of the issues that have been traded regarding the genesis of the Boko Haram insurgency. It is not for this writer to give an opinion between Shettima and Sheriff who is right or wrong. The issues canvassed are in public domain. If Sheriff is not done with them, the floor is still open.
Perhaps, the import of the sequence of events highlighted will become handy after appraising the second strand of Shettima’s discourse – conspiracy theories and the praxis of inaction. In this, Shettima gave account of how emerging theories regarding the raison d’etre for the Boko Haram insurgency, its possible sponsors and overall objectives led to inaction on the part of the Jonathan administration culminating in the escalation of the conflict with dire consequences for lives and property.
He said Boko Haram grew from strength to strength after the 2011 elections due to conspiracy theories that followed its attacks of the police headquarters and the UN building in Abuja all within the first three months of Jonathan’s swearing-in. Then, there arose a conspiracy theory that Boko Haram was set up by the ‘Muslim-majority northern leaders’ to target Christians and make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan.
This theory latter changed from all northerners using Boko Haram to undermine Jonathan to a narrower theory of northerners in opposition using Boko Haram to destabilize the Jonathan administration. He said it provided an alibi for the federal government to justify its inability to take prompt measures to quell the rising insurgency.
The same conspiracy theory was equally at play during the abduction of the Chibok girls. He said federal government’s initial response was that the abduction was a ruse. It was later reversed to the effect that the abduction was masterminded by the opposition to discredit the Jonathan regime. For Shettima, these were the issues that impeded quick response by the government and culminated to the monumental losses in human lives and damage to property of inestimable value.
Shettima’s account of these conspiracy theories and their net effect on the overall fight against terrorism may not be in doubt. But he appeared to have skewed the theories disproportionately against the side of the Jonathan regime. That is not a proper representation of all there is to it. There were also more devious and invidious strands of similar theories from the northern elite including inaction and ambivalence that combined to produce the same situation he complained about.
A few examples will drive this point home. The then governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako had in a letter to northern governors titled “on-going full-fledged genocide in northern Nigeria” floated the theory that the so-called Boko Haram war was a subterfuge by the Jonathan regime to depopulate the north. Among other very damaging, unpatriotic and tendentious claims by Nyako was that the government was killing citizens and attributing it to the ‘so-called Boko Haram’.
Nyako even sought his colleagues’ support for all those adversely affected by Boko Haram to ‘sue the federal government to court for full compensation for any loss of live and property’. The Northern Elders Forum also toed this line when it claimed most conflicts in the north were being engineered to weaken the north both economically and politically by interests who want to exploit them for political advantage.
There was also the equivocation of the northern establishment in coming out clearly to condemn the murderous escapades of the insurgents. All these complicated the situation and adversely affected the prosecution of the war. How do you proceed with a war a serving governor had dubbed a subterfuge to massacre people of northern origin? That was the big question. Curiously, Shettima did not factor these in his conspiracy theories and praxis of inaction that followed.
Even the Nigerian Army during the current regime, came out with its version of the theory when it sent a “very strong and serious final warning to some prominent individuals and political groups from Borno State in particular and North-east in general” for planning to undermine and scuttle the fight against terrorism. That was the army speaking and they were heard loud and clear. So the issues are not as plain as Shettima would make us believe.
The point to note from Shettima and Sheriff’s narratives is that Boko Haram is a home gown radical religious ideology. It was born, nurtured and allowed full maturation due to errors of omission or commission by the Borno State government. It was neither engineered from the outside nor a contrived agenda to depopulate the north as events have shown.
Admittedly, emerging conspiracy theories as unproven as they remain, imposed serious constraints to the overall prosecution of the war. But they cannot be entirely dismissed as the warning from the army had reinforced. More of the blame for the lethargy that followed should be laid at the shoulders of the northern elite for failing to unequivocally condemn the insurgency; and for actions and inactions that fuelled suspicion as to their tacit support for the group.
It is gratifying Shettima came to terms with these realities when he declared “quality and affordable education is for me, the number one roadmap to addressing the Boko Haram insurgency”. That is the way to go rather than seek escapism in imaginary enemies.
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