Immanuel James: Why Boko Haram may never be defeated (Y! FrontPage)

by Immanuel James

When I read the news that Nigeria’s worst nightmare, Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group, had confided in an Australian churchman, Rev. Stephen Davies, concerning the group’s well-guarded secret, one which the world has been struggling in vain to unravel, I felt something was amiss. No, not because of Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, over whom I could incur charges of tribal solidarity. It was my inability to understand what the group had to gain by exposing the very mystery that has sustained its campaign over the past five years. I mean, why would Boko Haram disclose such information, and to no less a person than a fellow who represents everything the group is up against? Did Boko Haram set out to deceive and confuse the world?

The world is a strange place. Perhaps some illumination will be shed on that curiosity upon further investigation.

For starters, Boko Haram reportedly told the Australian Reverend that former Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, and former Governor of Borno State, Alimodu Sheriff, are the terror group’s sponsors.

The Ihejirika theory is not the first alarming speculation on the Boko Haram criminality. Ibrahim Babangida, Mohammadu Buhari, Goodluck Jonathan, the APC, the PDP, The End-Times, etc., have all been implicated in the matter at one time or the other, with varying degrees of topicality and credibility. Remove the whiteman insignia from the Ihejirika allegation and it’ll become a hollow, tombo-bar rant.

There is one major reason the Nigerian terror puzzle is different from its counterpart in Somalia, Kenya, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. In these nations, Islamist terrorism has hardly enjoyed the blessing of empty talk and political recriminations. These nations have recognised the phenomenon for what it is: a religious war – a sprawling jihadist movement.

The way it is now, people in these sectors can even cooperate with Boko Haram under duress, aware that the Nigerian state cannot protect them against attacks, seeing how unstoppable Shekau has become. These are the areas on which to beam Intelligence, when we are tired of politicisation and the trading of accusations.

Not a single piece of serious evidence supports that Boko Haram is a political menace. What sort of political activism will make a Nigerian blow himself up? Just how do you explain a Northern Nigerian being politically persuaded to destroy his own region and economy; kill fellow Muslims; cheer at the butchery of women and children, sometimes including his own terror-hating relatives; live perpetually in the forest; rape innocent little girls? There have been reports of Boko Haram members returning from terror camps to their homes, shooting their wives and relatives, who refused to join them do “the work of Allah”. When did political martyrdom in Nigeria reach such proportions of self-destruct?

Even the group’s killing pattern – no, scratch that, there’s no pattern even,  if that word is to mean fidelity to some kind of order – the group’s killing pattern incriminates everyone else apart from themselves and their religious sympathisers. No one has been spared, not even hardline Muslims perceived to have the faintest ‘contamination’ from secular or ‘infidel’ association. Did Shekau not kill his lieutenants who had shown interest in dialogue? Man cannot negotiate for the God of Abubakar Shekau.

The are only two senses in which political motivation can be adduced to Boko Haram. First, the failure of government, over the years, to address poverty and illiteracy in sections of the North – a lapse that has made the ground fertile for the cultivation of terror-friendly humanity. Critics can argue that the Boko Haram terror betrays sophistication – and by implication, education;  that some middle-class elements, free from poverty and illiteracy have, on occasions, been arrested  as masterminds of particular attacks. Let me clarify that the North does not appear to lack the penetration of education as believed. The point is that education there is mainly Arabic and religion-based, not secular. And, religious education is naturally subjective, dogmatic and contemptuous of thought divergent from the prevailing religion’s fundamental ideology. So at the end of the day, even the very ‘educated’ Boko Haram actors are not really educated in the true sense of the word.

The second – and in my books the last – reasonable permutation supporting political undertones in the Boko Haram evil, is the fact that certain Northern politicians had actually sponsored and armed militia groups in the North, for electoral purposes. They allegedly – and there are valid reports for the credibility of such allegations – they allegedly lost control of the militiamen, who found application in Mohammed Yusuf’s new creation.

But in the name of political correctness, the government of President Jonathan; the opposition; and many social commentators have deliberately refused to call things by their proper names, choosing throat-clearing over emphatic speech. Jonathan does not want to be hated by Muslims so he cannot say Boko Haram is religious – it makes more sense for him to badger at an amorphous opposition – the very reason he’s got no one to arrest. The opposition cannot implicate religion for political reasons; neither do ordinary non-Muslim Nigerians want to hurt the inflammable sensibilities of their Muslim friends and relatives. Yet the fact remains that while the majority of Muslims are not Islamists, it is the minority Islamists in their fold, aided by the former’s virtually inaudible protests against the bad eggs in their midst, that are indeed the ones to be hated, not the outsider who speaks the hard truth. It is understandable, this mincing of words, given Nigeria’s potential for religious tension and fighting. But for how long shall we deceive ourselves, dropping name after name, while butcher Shekau consolidates on his new five towns in Borno State, planning to annex more geographical space for his Islamic Caliphate?

The Boko Haram of Shekau Abubakar is not some politically motivated affair, unless by political motivation, you mean the group seeks its own political power and order. It is a jihadist movement that despises even governments headed by Muslims, so long as such governments do not operate a Sharia blueprint. His sponsors are more likely to be closet Islamists, who would do the same even if a Muslim were the President, unless a Sharia system is entrenched. By the way, the movement began even when Musa Yar’Adua, a Muslim, was the President of Nigeria.

Foreign Islamist groups, especially in the Arabian axis, who fanatically favour a global Islamist order, are also likely sponsors.

One might wonder, what do they have to gain? Heavenly largesse and Divine nepotism promised in the Qu’ran, benefits considered much greater than the juicest of worldly favours! Jonathan-hating politicians do not seem to be in control of that machinery of beasthood called Abubakar Shekau. That creature is even too intoxicated with blood and Islamist idealism to pander to secular political theatrics. I repeat, no serious evidence supports that calculation. I stand to be corrected!

But even these likely sponsors would need people in at least two strategic sectors to succeed in their plots: arms dealership/customs; and in finance, especially offshore transfers. The way it is now, people in these sectors can even cooperate with Boko Haram under duress, aware that the Nigerian state cannot protect them against attacks, seeing how unstoppable Shekau has become. These are the areas on which to beam Intelligence, when we are tired of politicisation and the trading of accusations.

Chances are that we will continue to drop names backed by wild narratives, for that is the option in line with political and social expediency. And nothing probably guarantees Abubakar Shekau’s sadistic chuckles like watching a nation persist in the exuberant chase of shadows.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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