Boko Haram: Islamism, politics, security and the state in Nigeria

285 Pages·2014·1.21 MB·English

Boko Haram:
Islamism, politics, security
and the state in Nigeria

African Studies Centre (ASC)
Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA)

West African Politics and Society Series, Vol. 2

Boko Haram:
Islamism, politics, security
and the state in Nigeria

Edited by
Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos
Published by:
African Studies Centre
P.O. Box 9555
2300 RB Leiden
[email protected]
www.ascleiden.nl

French Institute for Research in Africa / Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique
(IFRA-Nigeria)
University of Ibadan
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
www.ifra-nigeria.org

Cover design: Heike Slingerland

Printed by Ipskamp Drukkers, Enschede, Netherlands

ISSN: 2213-5480
ISBN: 978-90-5448-135-5

© Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, 2014
Contents
Figures and tables vii
Foreword viii

1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1
Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos

PART I: WHAT IS BOKO HARAM? SOME EVIDENCE AND
A LOT OF CONFUSION

2 THE MESSAGE AND METHODS OF BOKO HARAM 9
Kyari Mohammed
3 BOKO HARAM AND ITS MUSLIM CRITICS: OBSERVATIONS FROM
YOBE STATE 33
Johannes Harnischfeger
4 TRADITIONAL QURANIC STUDENTS (ALMAJIRAI) IN NIGERIA:
FAIR GAME FOR UNFAIR ACCUSATIONS? 63
Hannah Hoechner
5 CHRISTIAN PERCEPTIONS OF ISLAM AND SOCIETY IN RELATION TO BOKO
HARAM AND RECENT EVENTS IN JOS AND NORTHERN NIGERIA 85
Henry Gyang Mang
6. FRAMING AND BLAMING: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE BOKO HARAM
UPRISING, JULY 2009 110
Portia Roelofs

PART II: BOKO HARAM AND THE NIGERIAN STATE:
A STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

7. BOKO HARAM AND POLITICS: FROM INSURGENCY TO TERRORISM 135
Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos
8. BOKO HARAM AND THE EVOLVING SALAFI JIHADIST THREAT IN
NIGERIA 158
Freedom Onuoha
v
9. BY THE NUMBERS: THE NIGERIAN STATE’S EFFORTS TO COUNTER
BOKO HARAM 192
Rafael Serrano & Zacharias Pieri
10. BODY COUNT AND RELIGION IN THE BOKO HARAM CRISIS:
EVIDENCE FROM THE NIGERIA WATCH DATABASE 213
Gérard Chouin, Manuel Reinert & Elodie Apard
11. BOKO HARAM: A CHRONOLOGY 237
Manuel Reinert & Lou Garçon

Annexes
1. The charter of Jama’at Ansar Al Muslimin Fi Bilad al-Sudan 246
2. One of the first videos of Ansaru, available on 1 June 2012 259
3. Islam and Western education in Nigeria: Between accommodation
and confrontation 266
4. Islam and political parties in the Sudan 269
About the authors 273

vi
Figures and tables

Figures

1.1 Map of Shariah-compliant States and the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria x
4.1 The divisions of CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) 98
7.1 Hypothetical organisational structure of Boko Haram under
Abubakar Shekau 162
7.2 Locations of Boko Haram’s attacks and suicide bombings in Nigeria 171

Tables

7.1 Samples of suicide bombing modes mounted by Boko Haram
(June 2011–November 2012) 174
8.1 Comparison of militants and security forces killed in selected conflicts 206
8.2 Comparison of arrests with kills 207
10.1 Faith affiliation of deceased victims in the Boko Haram crisis (2009-2012) 225
10.2 Relative proportion of Muslims and Christians recorded during the 1952 and 1963
censuses and projected onto the 2013 administrative map of Nigeria 228
10.3 Low-end estimate of percentage of Muslims in selected states 229
10.4 Minimum and maximum estimated % of Muslims in states
affected by the Boko Haram crisis 230
10.5 Estimation of the percentage of Muslim and Christian believers among the civilian
victims labelled as “faith unknown” in the Boko Haram conflict 231
10.6 Estimated faith affiliation of deceased victims in the Boko Haram crisis
(2009-2012) 233

vii
Foreword

This is the first volume entirely dedicated to the analysis of a violent confronta-
tion which has escalated in north-eastern Nigeria since the mid-2000s, between
federal forces and an Islamic sectarian movement which gradually transformed
into a radical jihadist armed rebellion. Commonly known as ‘Boko Haram’, the
movement was unknown to most people outside Maiduguri before 2009, when
federal forces launched a military offensive against its headquarters. Extremely
violent, the crackdown eventually resulted – in addition to several hundred vic-
tims hastily buried in mass graves – in the transformation of a limited in scale but
well-structured Islamic sectarian movement into an underground, clandestine
armed organisation with possible connections to the ever-changing jihadist scene
in Africa and beyond.
Writing about Boko Haram is a difficult task, as researchers have very limited
access to first-hand information. Indeed, foreign and national researchers find it
almost impossible to conduct fieldwork in north-eastern Nigeria, where their
security cannot be guaranteed. Recently, as the core of the conflict has seemed to
be moving away from Maiduguri, capital of Borno, to the confines of Nigeria,
the shores of Lake Chad and along the Cameroonian border, available infor-
mation on the conflict has become even scarcer.
Such difficulties contrast with the pressing demand of the Nigerian public and
the international community alike for intelligible analyses of the situation. Nige-
ria is the demographic and ideological centre of gravity of a very large part of
West and Central Africa. The area we know today as northern Nigeria has long
been a source of new ideas and knowledge that fed Islamic practice, thinking,
and teaching far beyond its colonial borders. As such, the violent, poorly-
managed, spiralling confrontation between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a
seemingly well-entrenched, widespread, armed Islamic movement can generate
only considerable anxiety among regional stakeholders, who fear the general un-
rest of a large part of West and Central Africa.
The response of the academic community to such pressing demands has been
largely disappointing, simply because the context is unfavourable to the produc-
tion of reliable knowledge. The fear of violence and reprisals against scholars
living in exposed areas, the ideological biases or political correctness which para-
lyse many channels of thought when dealing with Islam and terrorism, and the
lack of available data – all have contributed to a relatively repetitive and shallow
academic production on the Boko Haram crisis.
viii
In this volume, edited by a leading French specialist on Nigeria, we have at-
tempted to adopt an original standpoint in publishing a limited number of essays
which, taken together, are an attempt to renovate the way we produce scholarship
on such an underground movement. We have brought together a large variety of
scholars, many of them related to the French Institute for Research in Africa
(IFRA-Nigeria) in a one way or another, from Nigeria, France, Germany, the UK
and the US. Some immersed themselves in fieldwork a few years ago, when this
was still possible. They brought back outstanding data on northern Nigeria that
can no longer be collected today. Others used discourse analysis or existing data
on violence in Nigeria in ways never attempted before. Some are well-known
scholars in the field, while others have signed here their first scholarly publica-
tion.
Far from being an univocal assemblage of papers, the book fosters debate in
constructive ways. With this book, we hope to be able to stimulate new scholarly
discussions on the fast-replicating emergence across the Sahelian belt of a series
of movements that cannot be satisfactorily described only in simple terms as vio-
lent, terrorist or jihadist. For a movement such as Boko Haram to mutate from a
sectarian group splitting away from the Izala movement to a full-grown rebellion
threatening the integrity of the most powerful state in West Africa, you need
more than religious fanatics, violent Salafist ideology, and intolerance. The in-
gredients that fuel the fire spreading across north-eastern Nigeria are yet to be
fully described. Some are to be found within the existence of a political elite used
to buying off the settlement of insurgencies and social crises and incapable of
responding to a new type of threat, ideological in nature, otherwise than through
the use of blunt force. Other elites among security forces also hide their own
secret agendas, as sustained violence legitimates accrued budgets and assists
them secure new lucrative markets for themselves, in ways inherited from the
pre-1999 era.
This book is not a cookbook. All the ingredients of the crisis are not identified,
and it does not pretend to provide recipes to solve current issues. It merely offers
a variety of glimpses into the Boko Haram phenomenon and fosters a better and
more nuanced understanding of a crisis that threatens to destabilise a large part of
Africa.
Boko Haram has redefined the way(cid:3) jihadists challenge the post-colonial
state in Africa. The probabilities are high that this model will soon be exported
outside Nigeria. This book is timely.

Gérard Chouin
WAPOSO Series Editor
Assistant Professor of History
The College of William & Mary
Virginia, USA ix
Figure 1.1 Map of Shariah-compliant States and the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria