EXAMINE THE EXTENT TO WHICH INTERNAL DISCONTENT INFLUENCES AND PROMOTE TERRORISM
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Violence and the threat of it have been noted as constant associate of human existence. It dates back to the biblical account about the killing of Abel by Cain. This is because human existence and activities on earth are notably social events that are prone to agreement and disagreement. It is also an established fact that as peace is concomitant with agreement, disagreement engenders anarchy and conflict.
That is why it is difficult to eliminate conflict and crisis in human affairs and interaction. This also accounts for why it was not possible to sustain international peace after the cold war. At the end of the cold war, hopes were high that the international polity would once again witness peace and security following the disintegration of Soviet Union and the emergence of a Uni-polar International System.
Unfortunately, this hope was dashed in what Viotti and Kauppi (2009:256) refers to as “preeminent post-cold war threat”, when on 11 September, 2001 U.S was attacked by al Qaeda in a very devastating form, hitting major targets, the World Trade Centre (WTC) Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
The above accounts for why the U.S President George Bush vowed to fight terrorism head on and quickly formed a coalition of other nations, especially North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members and some super powers, in order to ensure a successful and total routing of this new enemy. Nations that responded immediately to that call were Great Britain, France and Spain, as well as Germany, Russia and China (Konecky and Konecky, 2008:631).
He called on all peace loving nations to join him and ensure that terrorists, their sponsors and custodians are successfully brought to book. He then declared that, “Americans should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign unlike any other ever witnessed” (Woodward 2002:108).
This is because, the planning, execution and, in fact, the sequence of the 9/11 events as well as the casualty rate was such that can make every reasonable mind to see terrorism as something worse than war. That attack remains the height and most devastating in the history of international terrorism, which shocked the entire world.
It shook the foundation of the international community not just because of the weapon used but also the perfect planning and execution as well as the casualty rate. Konecky and Konecky (2008:630) noted that: “In New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville Pennsylvania over 3,000 people lost their life. The attacks involved the hijacking of four passenger jets that had made morning departures from Boston’s Logan Airport, Washington’s Dulles Airport and Newark Airport in New Jersey”.
At 8:45am, American Airline flight 11 with 88 passengers and crew members crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in New York, while at 9:02am, United Airline flight 175 with 59 passengers and crew members crashed into the second tower of the WTC.
Within less than two hours of these crashes, the twin towers imploded and in the process destroyed five other buildings of the WTC as well as four subway stations, resulting in over 2,650 deaths including about 350 firefighters who were deployed to assist the estimated 25,000 persons in the twin towers.
At about 9:43am, the third jet, American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon killing all the 59 people on board and 125 persons on the ground. The fourth airplane, United Airlines flight 93 could not hit the target which was to be the white house in Camp David presidential Estate.
The failure to hit this target was as a result of the heroic actions of the passengers who had already been informed through phone about the New York episode and who as a result, mounted strong resistance to the hijackers plan of steering the plane towards the white house but which eventually crash landed in a field near shanksville Pennsylvania killing all the 40 passengers and crew.
At the end of the horrendous and unfortunate episode, it was discovered that al-Qaeda, an Islamic fundamentalist group led by Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the heinous and atrocious act. It was seen by analyst as not just a repeat but a continuation of the previous attack on the same WTC on 26 February 1993 and which led to the death of six persons. It is believed that it was the low level of impact recorded in the first attack via bombing that led to the extensive planning of the 9/11.
The 26 February 1993 attack was carried out by Ramzi Yousef, who, according to Martin (2006:19), “detonated a bomb in a parking garage beneath tower one of the World Trade Centre in New York City”. He had initially planned with his master Bin Ladin to make the bomb a chemical one in order to record high death toll.
Some experts claimed that he had incorporated toxic sodium cyanide into the bomb, intending to create a toxic chemical cloud. This position is however unsubstantiated, though some analysts contend that he did attempt to procure chemical agents before the attack but was unable to do so (Parachini, 2000:186-187).
The 9/11 attack made not just U.S but the entire international comunity to realize that terrorism is more dangerous than war, and its potency and capability as a global human eliminator more devastating than world war, judging from the nature of weapons which the advancement in technology has placed in the hands of terrorists. And as encapsulated by Nye and Welch (2011:2):
“The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 (9/11) has illustrated how technology is putting into the hands of nonstate actors destructive powers that once were reserved solely for governments”. Many experts immediately came to the conclusion that with the mastery and precision of the attack, the use of weapon of mass destruction cannot be ruled out in the subsequent attacks, and as such were of the view that terrorism should be checkmated before it is too late.
Falk (2003:52) while analyzing the mastery exhibited by the terrorists and damages done during the 9/11 attack, observed that, “never in the history of terrorism had an operation of such stunning proportion been pulled off”. It was seen by many analysts as a turning point in the history of political violence, and roundly referred to it as the emergence of a New International terrorist environment.
It was argued in Martin (2006:3) that within this new environment, terrorists were now quite capable of using – and very willing to use – weapons of mass destruction to inflict unprecedented causalities and destruction on enemy targets. These attacks seemed to confirm warnings from experts during the 1990s that a New Terrorism, using ‘asymmetrical’ methods, would characterize the terrorist environment in the new millennium.
With this mind set, world leaders expressed great support and solidarity with America. There was an avalanche of solidarity messages from international community, world leaders and allies to U.S. Many countries cancelled their various national engagements to commiserate with the government and people of America.
Russia for instance, had to suspend its strategic bombers maneuvers over the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Antarctic Oceans, which was initially scheduled for that week to avoid possible misinterpretation and or being mistaken for an enemy.
It rather directed its foreign intelligence service in a very rare spirit of comradeship to collaborate with its counterparts in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East to forestall any further attacks. The European Union (E.U), also in response, though through its police arm (EUROPOL), immediately established a 24 hour crisis centre to cushion and counter the threat of terrorism(Combs and Slann, 2007).
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) on its part, dispatched surveillance planes to patrol U.S skies, conducted naval show of force in the Mediterranean in addition to opening up its bases and airspace to American aircrafts and combat troops. A Counter Terrorism Unit was set up in the EUROPOL by member states of European Union and mandated to immediately liaise with the U.S government to ensure water tight security in the regional bloc.
European Union ministers on their part immediately took measures to ensure that banks were prevented from the generation and transfer of terrorist funds. And to show the extent of impact the attack had on the psyche of the global community and the readiness of nations to fight the scourge, as was recorded by Carter (2003:20): eighty-one nations joined the international coalition effort against terrorism by freezing the assets and accounts of individuals and organizations that participate in terrorist activities or hobnob with terrorists.
Terrorism is a violent oriented activity targeted at unsuspecting members of a particular society, with the aim of traumatizing and psychologically defeating them, in order to score a political point or record socio-economic advantage.
It is a violent situation in which only the aggressors know and see their victims while their victims neither know nor see them. Terrorists donot fight or engage in war, rather they engage in a guerrilla like surprise attacks which are mostly aimed at civilians and unarmed population or the military during dormancy. The above reasoning gives credence to why experts often refer to terrorism as an asymmetric warfare.
The present Nigerian security challenges are traceable to two broad sources namely politics and religion. These two fire points, though present in the geographical location known today as Nigeria before the arrival of the white colonialist, were ignorantly, or out of poor knowledge of the environment or otherwise, mishandled by the invading imperial lords.
The British colonizers, on arrival, met several tribes made up of people with different languages, cultures, religions and socio-political orientations. The socio-political atmosphere then was such that would have qualified or earned each of these tribes a nation.
But unfortunately, the colonialists following their apparent economic interest were impatient to study the socio-political cum religious life of the people before adopting a suitable political structure for them. Rather, it hurriedly imposed the European model of nation state on the people not minding their diverse social, economic, political and religious backgrounds, by jacking these various and distinct ethnic nationalities into one nation via her ‘Union Jack’.
As noted by Omoweh and Okanya (2005:301),the British administration imposed the nation-state model on Nigeria to serve one major purpose, to bring various ethnic nationalities with different social, economic, political and security systems into one country, in order to facilitate its exploitation.
It not only destroyed the traditional production systems thereby compounding the economic, social and political insecurity of the people and their society, it created an alien system that negates the traditional socio-political institutions. The result of the non-recognition of the above prevailing factors by the British while imposing the nation state model on Nigeria, is the country’s security crisis both in the colonial period and after.
The various ethnic nationalities did not waste time in resenting this imposed merger and artificial nation state, which manifested in the early emergence (in 1948-51) of regional rivalries and of parties expressing them” (Post, 1999:331). This constituted a threat to the security of the colonial Nigerian state. And, of course, that situation never changed even in this post-colonial period.
Concomitantly, the religious concerns of the people were not left out in the bourgeoning European imperialistic sequestration and adventurism. As with the pre-colonial socio-political, economic and traditional institutions, attention was not also paid to the people’s divergent and plural religious inclinations, when the various ethnic nationalities were being jacked and tinkered into one super nation.
Before the amalgamation which was the legal instrument that bound the Northern and Southern Nigeria together prior to independence, two major religions, Christianity and Islam were already being practiced by the people in addition to the Traditional African Religion which was aboriginal to Nigeria before the advent of Christianity and Islam.
Interestingly, apart from the African Traditional Religion which could be said to be universal due to its age, the two major religions – Christianity and Islam -were practiced virtually based on geographic and ethnic lines.
It is worthy of note therefore, to observe that the practice of these two religions based on geographic and ethnic lines is precipitated by their route of entry into Nigeria.
While Christianity entered Nigeria via the Southern coastal line through the European merchants and missionaries, Islam on the other hand entered through the Northern Nigeria via trade contact with the Arabs of North Africa as well as through Islamic Jihadists.
Thus, while the Northern Nigeria is predominantly made up of Muslims, the Southern part is predominantly inhabited by Christians. This therefore accounts for why attaining statehood through the marriage of North and South was fraught with unhealthy mutual distrust, suspicion, and antagonism.
According to Muhammad (2006:292), the different origins of the two religions coupled with their being rooted within separate geographical localities, as well as the differential pace of socio-political and economic developments between the localities typified by the North and South during the colonial era are what sowed the seeds for a discordant relationship between them after the country’s independence.
The diversities of ethnic and religious groups in Nigeria evidently gives the country a heterogeneous character, which have often constituted itself as the source of the perennial conflicts and violence bedeviling the entity called Nigeria. And which is associated with the distrust and mutual suspicion among the ethnic groups.
This situation was strategically managed by the colonialist through the aid of the same superior power which enabled them to jack the nationalities into one, but soon after independence, the realities of this heterogeneity stared Nigerians in the face through an unbridled wave of violence.
It started as a political violence but later degenerated and manifested as an ethnic conflict, which eventually snow balled into a military over throw of the democratic regime. This gave birth to the first military regime led by General Aguiyi Ironsi.
Though, the political violence affected only the Northern and Western regions, the military had to wade in, by taking over the political leadership of the country, due to the magnitude of carnage recorded in those two regions, as well as what the coupists termed ‘political corruption’.
The coupists who claimed they toppled the democratic government due to the wave of violence which swept across the country in turn embarked on state terrorism via serial assassination of top Nigerian political leaders. It was during this period that the Niger Deltans saw the inherent marginalisation, injustice and lopsided structure of the Nigerian socio-political environment, and attempted to secede through the legendary effort of Isaac Adaka Boro. And shortly after, following the high level of violence, insecurity, high handedness and distrust on the part of the military leadership, civil war broke out.
The Easterners especially the Ibos not only saw glaringly the very nexus of what prompted Isaac Boro to take up arms to defend his people, but felt endangered following the magnitude and frequency of violence targeted at them in the Northern axis of the country. There was no other choice therefore than to react to what seemed to be state terrorism aimed at not only marginalising and dominating them but total extermination of the race.
This reaction came by way of secession, which as argued, was meant to protect the Easterners from the escalated pogrom meted out to them. According to Adeniran (2002:102), it was the pogrom that sparked off the Biafra War. Soyinka (2006:101) while corroborating and in expatiation of the above states that:
“It would be a distortion of history and an attempt to trivialize the trauma that the Igbo had undergone to suggest – as some commentators have tried to do – that it was the lure of the oil wealth that drove them to seek a separate existence. When people have been subjected to a degree of inhuman violation for which there is no other word but genocide, they have the right to seek an identity apart from their aggressors”.
Ezeani (2013:46), while concurring with the above too, quoted major General Philip Effiong’s 1970 end of war surrender broadcast thus: “Throughout history, injured people have had to resort to arms in their self defense where peaceful negotiations failed. We were no exception…we have fought in defense of that cause”. The resulting effect of this attempt to secede therefore, was thirty months Nigerian Civil War.
Emerging from the civil war experience, the Nigerian civil populace who were already beginning to be politically conscious as well as conscious of their environment, discovered that they were being led by politically greedy and economically avaricious military class, who have no regard for the rights and welfare of the people. This brought another level of agitation and violence into the Nigerian polity, which was aimed at getting rid of the military rulership.
Attempts made by the political elites to ensure the country returns to democratic politics were rebuffed by the military oligarchy. As the civilian populace were fighting to return the country to democracy, the military leaders fought back to suppress them in a manner that could best be described as state terrorism. This reaction-counter-reaction situation eventually brought to Nigeria another wave of violent agitations which could be said to be the grand parent of today’s regionalised violent militia groups such as Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), Odua Pepoles Congress (OPC), Arewa youths, Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) etc.
The militancy in the Niger Delta for instance is said to have been ignited by the mismanagement of the oil wealth generated from that region, and the total neglect of the welfare of the owners of the land by the military leadership. While analyzing the causes of the Niger Delta violence, Ibeanu (1999:166) opines that the
“Central causal variable in the growing problem of internal population displacement in Nigeria…is state violence, i.e. aggressions of the state toward certain groups that appear as inter group conflicts. The socio-economic and political basis of state violence is located in the military rule, crude oil production, and communalism”, which also have been identified as closely related to the issues generating conflicts in the Niger Delta.
The level of concern for the problems of the Niger delta exhibited historically by the Nigerian government through her actions and inactions have been a critical factor in the emergent surge of resentment, disenchantment and discontentment which eventually gave rise to the crises in the region.
Many of the indigenous people were of the belief that though; the international Oil Companies (IOCs) contributed to the problem of their area socio-politically, but that the IOCs are only able to get away with that which the government allows them to get away with.
This therefore means that the problem of welfare of the people of the region and or the neglect of it is the total responsibility of the government. The general understanding in Niger Delta is that the activities of the IOCs were reflections of the government’s sense of responsibility to the host communities of these companies. This mindset is captured in the “Niger-Delta Manifesto” (Darah, 2003).
In the opinion of this manifesto, the resources from the region have been subjected to deliberate and systematic abuse and misuse by the IOCs in active conspiracy with the Nigerian government, through the instrumentality of the repressive federal laws, which aimed at central control of the oil wealth. The result of this was that apart from environmental and other related issues, the struggle became that of resource control. This, in fact, served as the basis for what may be termed the Niger-Delta ideological struggle, and of course, the ideological fulcrum of the insurgency.
According to Biakolo (2012:18-19) the Niger Deltans were of the belief that the resource of the Niger Delta belong to the region; that since independence the people of Niger Delta have not enjoyed the benefits of their God-given resources; that a political context existed where these resources have been literally seized from them. Besides, the resourcesare deployed to the benefit of other parts of the federation.
Therefore, the entity called the Nigerian state was, if anything, a hostile neighbor which was in partnership with other industrial exploiters in expropriating from the Niger Delta the surplus value of what have been produced from their land. This consciousness was also accompanied by a natural desire to right the wrongs in the area. In a move reminiscent of the classical dialectics of oppression, awareness, transformed consciousness and revolutionary action by the deprived, through a series of indoctrinations by the vanguard, more recently epitomised by Ken Saro-wiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the ordinary people of the Niger Delta – including displaced farmers, fishermen, the bewildered market woman, and perhaps most dangerously, the unemployed youth, all bought into the agenda of resistance of and emancipation from the Nigerian state and its agents and associates.
The Niger Delta region which is the centre of Nigeria’s oil wealth has been in turmoil for some decades now due to oil exploration, extraction and expropriation. The situation sometimes becomes violent against the repressive tendencies of the Nigerian government on the one hand and the recklessness, exploitative and environmentally unfriendly activities of international oil companies (IOCs) on the other hand. As noted by Ogundiya (2009:31), such violent agitations have claimed thousands of lives; many other thousands displaced, and inestimable properties destroyed. In economic terms, millions of dollars have been lost to youth restiveness, disruption of production, pipeline vandalisation, hostage-taking, assault, bombing of oil installations and similar violent situations. Such use of terror strategies by disenchanted groups to fight against real and perceived injustices and deprivation have often attracted global condemnations; attention and a re-focus on resources distribution policies of the government.
However, it is noteworthy to observe that global oil wealth has always been a source of both international and local conflict. It is generally noted as a natural circumstance in socio-economic views, that every wealth generation, distribution and acquisition attracts some level of conflicts. But what is not normal, which calls for worry, is the volume and propensity of conflicts associated with oil wealth since the discovery of oil globally. This made Monica (cited in Spin Watch 2004) to note that ever since oil was discovered in the wake of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, as a veritable source of energy, man’s appreciation, value rating, and demand for this product has reached a worrisome level. This unbridled appetite for the black gold, competing with human blood for first position in man’s needs has led to so many wars, as many nations are outdoing one another for the control, protection and acquisition of oil generating territories. Similarly, Ikporupo (1996:159) while appraising the general positive and negative sides of oil discovery, observed that since the great gold rush, which informed and characterised the voyages of discovery and expedition in the new world (the Americas), no resource natural or otherwise has attracted so much attention, and generated so much boom, and yet so much conflict as petroleum. This assertion is authenticated by the various inter and intra state conflicts in and around the oil producing regions of the world including Nigeria.
In the Nigerian case, the conflict is neither interstate as in dispute over land or location of oil well nor intra state as per communal land dispute over oil wells. It is a reaction which is an expression of resentment, disenchantment and discontent over accumulated injustice, marginalisation, deprivation and undue domination of the host communities of these oil activity areas, through active and unwholesome conspiracy of the Nigerian State and the multinational oil companies, whose environmentally degrading activities and nonchalant attitude towards the plight of the subjugated natives, are the sources of the conflict in the region.
These natives consider as obnoxious and archaic those laws/decrees, which put the oil producing communities at a disadvantaged position, and prevent them from exercising total control over the resources in their land. Their lands were confiscated without rent or commensurate compensation. This situation is however worsened by the ecological problems and environmental impacts of oil exploration. The marine life was destroyed along side crops and trees: water, land, and vegetation as well as natural air polluted, in addition to the roofs of their houses that were destroyed by the gas flare. Yet such remedial actions as provision of portable drinking water and good health delivery system were not put in place to palliate the situation. This situation not only rendered the regions inhospitably uninhabitable, but also significantly hampers human capacity to develop.
Some measures were however, put in place by the Federal government to address the peculiar developmental needs of the region. Some of these includes the creation of some special agencies and commissions such as the moribund Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) in 1966, Shagari’s administration’s 1.5 percent derivation formulaCommittee,Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). It was the inability of these agencies to effectively carry out the job for which they were created as well as the authoritarian, oppressive, suppressive and repressive stance of the government while dealing with the natives that gave rise to armed conflict in the region.
However, to curb the militancy in the Niger Delta region which was the burning furnace of Nigeria’s political environment as at that time, more effective palliative measurers were advanced in addition to the NDDC by the Federal Government. Amnesty was granted to the warring youths in addition to the various training and rehabilitation programmes. Ministry of Niger Delta was also created to support the existing NDDC in tackling the problems of the region, supported with special infrastructural fund through the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P).
Such issues as marginalisation, domination, injustice whether real or perceived, power imbalance, and poverty have been central to the emergence of armed militia in the Nigerian polity. Apart from the Niger Delta question, other segments of the country were equally affected by the same socio-political anomy. For instance, the emergence of Odua Peoples Congress (OPC), which is the military arm of the Pan Yoruba socio-cultural group-Afenifere, has been noted to be closely related to the misrule, and the perceived marginalisation of theWest by the Hausa-Fulani military oligarchy. As was noted by Onah (2005:296), OPC was formed in 1994, after the annulment of the 1993 presidential election which Chief M.K.O Abiola, a Yoruba, was presumed to have won. The original aim was to fight the seeming marginalisation of the Yoruba in Nigeria at that time, but as the events of the annulment receded, the body assumed other roles, and also increasingly became militant.
Unfortunately, as the insurgency in the Niger Delta region was being addressed through the above programmes especially the amnesty programme, which was embraced by the militants who accordingly, not only laid down their arms, but surrendered same to the Federal Government, another round of violence erupted in the Northern part of the country, the Boko Haram insurgency. The timing of the emergence of Boko Haram insurgency, whose activities were discovered to be more deadly and devastating than the Niger Delta militancy left analysts with so many questions as to the real cause(s) or reasons for its emergence.
While some analysts saw the emergence of Boko Haram as an ingenious contrivance whose sole aim was to attract similar federal government attention to that of the Niger Delta militants, others saw it as a political script targeted at the regime of Goodluck Jonathan. Though these two schools of thought may look distant from the real issue, they would not be dismissed completely, as such may be related or intricately interwoven with the secondary impetus to the group’s activities.
A close study of the Northern region and its inhabitants however, has shown the existence of historical socio-economic disequilibrium, alienation and dislocation with the attendant perennial disquiet in the area. This disquiet is not unconnected with the various cases of real and/or perceived injustice, deprivation, undue socio-economic domination and imbalance, poverty, marginalisation, historical ethno-religious conflict and intolerance. The above though, may be at variance with the general surface view and the group’s pronounced reason, it is discovered to be the root and the undercurrent factor that gave propensity for the insurgency.
From the group’s claim and public view, one can easily decipher sectarian religiosity and global Islamism as the real reason for the emergence of Boko Haram. Yes it is, as overtly put forward by the group through its first leader late Muhammad Yusuf, western education, culture, life and anything Western is against Islam and therefore sinful. Thus, if any form of knowledge is not in the Qur’an or sanctioned by Ibn Taymiyyah, then it is “Haram” (forbidden) to Yusuf and his followers. According to Yusuf as quoted by Adamu (2012:50), the current Nigerian education system, “…is Haram based on its structure, because the content matter contradicts the oneness of Allah. It is haram because they combine males and females in the same place. It is haram because they honor Christian days. It is haram because they teach things that question the very nature of Allah”.
Yusuf was a strong follower of Ibn Taymiyyah school of thought, and all his teachings, preaching and writing draws inspiration from same philosophy. And, in most of his sermons, condemned the acquisition of western education, knowledge, participation in government employment, and elective or democratic electoral process. This is why in one of his writings in 2009 “Hazihi Akeedatum Wa Minhaju Da’awatuna” (this is our Manifesto and Our Advocacy), which was translated and quoted in Adamu (2012:53), he passed a message in which he stated thus:
I am warning you about the troubles of our modern times especially on democracy, infidel, modern idol to whom its followers worship. We will not accept, interact, or partake in this democracy because it is the path of infidels; following it, interacting with it and using it is following the path of infidels. It is prohibited for any Muslim to be in it, or to elect an infidel under the system of democracy.
With this mind set, Yusuf and his “radical” followers (Boko Haram) saw themselves as existing and operating outside the frame work of the Nigerian system and its policies. As a result,they became antagonistic to the government and law enforcement agencies. For instance, crash-helmet law was made in Borno State in 2009, and enforced by a police task force, Operation Flush Out II, Yusuf and his followers adamantly refused to obey the law. Unfortunately, the very further attempt to enforce this law and ensure its obedience by all and sundry was the catalyst and progenitor of this present Boko Haram insurgency.
It became the detonator of already bottled up social explosive, as the resultant confrontation and the after effect made him to declare war on the Federal Government of Nigeria. Adamu (2012:54) also noted that: on 11 June 2009, he released a video titled “Budaddiya Wasika ga Gwamnatin Tarayya” (Open Letter to the Federal Republic of Nigeria) and declares thus:
We have stopped listening to their saber-rattling. Our brothers do not hate you, it is not because you are in PDP or in ANPP (main political parties in Borno State, the home turf of the movement) that they hate you. We did not do anything to them to make them hate us. They only hate us because we have faith in Allah and because we do not accept government of democracy. They don’t hate us because we love Allah, no, no, no, only when he slights them. Why do they not attack other citizen-only us who believe in Allah and His Prophet.
Whose property have we ever destroyed? Who is it we slaughtered like a ram? Who is it did we enter their houses and ransacked them? Just because we (sic) Allah said, and the Prophet (Muhammad) said, then they detest us because of our turbans-and yet this is not enough, they have to shoot us with their guns.
This is my explanation. We will no longer listen to anyone (for mediation); their time is up. We will no longer accept invitations for mediation from anyone. We will not accept the shooting of 20 of our members, and we will not let it go, and we will not listen to anyone anymore. You gave the soldiers the order to shoot us…
The above was therefore an open call for war which the members responded to with gusto,superlative enthusiasm and zeal. Ironically, the call was not hinged on Jihadism or Islamism, but on what he perceived as injustice and deprivation of his freedom of assembly, association and worship.
Boko Haram does not only dislike and condemn Western culture, education, civilization and democracy but possesses aggressive disposition towards any of such that is western inclined. This is not just because they see them as being at variance with the Quaranic injunctions, but that they are the source of the corruption and poverty bedeviling Nigeria, especially in the North.
They saw strict application of Islamism as a panacea to the problem.
The above is however seen as an overt aggression towards the frustration from the Nigerian society whose root causes lay in poverty, unemployment, religious intolerance and fundamentalism, socio-economic imbalance, injustice and marginalization. It was a reaction towards a society that is unjust and unfair to its citizens. On comparative bases, the Northern Region is economically poorer than its Southern counterpart.
One of the reasons for this is because the youths of the Northern Region were not exposed to Western education which was seen as a basis for employment and wealth creation, unlike their Southern counterparts. The reason is partly found in the historical socio-cultural practices of class stratification in the region, as well as the colonial legacy of denying the region of Western education. According to Fafowora (2013:8)
The sect is the product of a political and social process that failed to ensure an even development in the country, with the North lagging far behind the South in economic and social development. The insurgency in the North is a symptom of a deep seated malaise going back to the colonial era during which colonial policies adopted led to the North, …falling behind the rest of the country in virtually all respect.
Boko Haram is the direct consequence of the failure of Northern leaders to invest in the education of their people. It is this failure, and not mere religious differences, that accounts for the deep seated grievances of the Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. The process and pace of modernization in the North have been much slower than in the South. This situation creates frustration among the Northern youths who find themselves unable to compete with their Southern counterparts in all respects.
This may account for the group’s hatred for western education. A close study of the group would show that 99% of the adherents is illiterate while the remaining one percent is made up of those who were brain washed into abandoning their academic pursuits at various levels of education with the simple indoctrination that it is sinful (Haram) to acquire western education (Ajayi, 2012:105, Olojo, 2013:7, Akinfala, Akinbodo, Kemmer, 2014:118).
The result is that the members of the group do not only see themselves as a different race but as creatures from a different universe who were sent and mandated by their creator to come to the universe, wipe away the inhabitants and occupy it. The reason for this is a combination of inferiority complex, ignorance and jealousy. This in turn is the result of what Giddens (2006:1034) termed “social exclusion”.
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