PROFESSOR IAN LINDEN
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • Online Books
    • Emirs, Evangelicals and Empiress
    • May You Live in Interesting Times
  • Publications
  • Articles
  • Contact

Latest Blogs

NIGERIA'S TERRORIST THREAT

27/8/2019

4 Comments

 
​Most people if asked which country was placed third last year in the world ranking for terrorist activity would guess Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.  It’s Nigeria. The Global Terrorism Index (GBI) uses a  broad definition of terrorism:  “threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence” by non-state actors not only for religious or political ends but also for “economic or social goals”.  Killings by Northern Fulani Muslim cattle herders in conflict over land use with non-Fulani growing crops who may be Christians, and the agriculturalists’  violent retaliation, can end up being reported as terrorism, “ethnic violence” or “religious conflict”.  Such violent conflicts become lumped together with the very differently motivated killings of Boko Haram (western education forbidden) – incidentally mainly Kanuri and neighbouring groups not Fulani.  This is confusing, a symptom of varying degrees of ignorance about Africa’s most populous country.
The BBC World Service website covered in Pidgin English the GBI 2018 Report; it  “blame di “increase of ‘terrorist deaths’ (in Nigeria) unto Fulani extremists”.  Note the BBC’s cautionary inverted commas and the use of that catch-all ‘extremist’.  The Times on 10 August also cited GBI in a book review focussing on Christian persecution and Boko Haram (BH), condemning “ethnic Fulani cattle herders, who are linked to Islamists”.  The Fulani had become “the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world”.   Inverted commas were notably missing as was detailed knowledge of Nigeria.  Newspaper reports on Africa, even about such a potentially important country as Nigeria, rarely dig deep  beneath stereotypes and into detail.
Nigeria is such a large country that very different political conditions exist in its different geographical areas.  Violence in the disorderly world of Central-North Nigeria is a different story from that in the North-East. Through terror Boko Haram has dominated the life of the states in the north-east.  It was so extreme BH split off a breakaway group in 2015-2016 which sought to prioritise recruitment rather than attacks on local Muslims.  Both factions pledge allegiance to Daesh, but only the faction led by Umar al-Barnawi, known as ISIS-West Africa, is actually recognised by Daesh.  BH’s other faction, led by the infamous Abubakar Shekau, is known for its capture of the Chibok girls, as well as its massacres.  Its multiple abductions, mass killings, and house burnings over the last ten years have caused the displacement of some two million people. The religious motivation for the worst violence in Central Nigeria is negligible.
Another mistake when looking at Nigeria is only to see tensions between the north and south of the country in religious terms.  Picturing a “Muslim North” distinct from a “Christian South”, with a mixed and ill defined “Middle Belt” in-between, is simplistic. In reality large Muslim Yoruba-speaking populations live in the south-west and, owing to the great third missionary wave of Pentecostals dating from the 1960s, significant numbers of Christians live in the northern states.  In the Middle Belt, religion is not the principal cause of clashes. It is the population movement and age-old conflict between cattle-herders and farmers.  So-called indigenous – settled - communities, mixed ethnically, compete with pastoralists and other settler incomers for scarce resources.  The “indigenous” often have different religions - mainly Christian – to incoming pastoralists - mainly Muslim - but land-use is the big problem.
Nor do the two dominant religions in Nigeria form simple blocks.  There is much intermarriage between Muslims and Christians in the south, where Islamic practice has a distinctly African flavour. The political dimension of Islam is still evident in the reformist North with emirates and important religious leaders, such as the Sultan of Sokoto, in the north-west, and the Shehu of Borno, a rival in the north-east. But BH’s terrorism has undermined such traditional figures’ leadership and sharpened the existing Christian-Muslim divide with growing distrust.  The danger is that religious differences might, in some parts of the country, become coterminous with political ones. When this happens conflicts become non-negotiable.
BH is a recognisable relative of Daesh/ISIS but has its own Nigerian character and history.  It grew from the bitter observation that both Muslim and Christian elites’ were utterly indifferent to people’s poverty. This social perception found explanation in conservative salafi thinking that importantly sees only its own cohorts as true Muslims and a takfiri approach – ( ‘excommunication’ and death for apostasy) - to all who do not pledge allegiance, bayat, to increasingly well - equipped war bands and their leaders. An Islamic account of injustice mutated  into calls for jihad – though BH violence was in practice more akin to the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and equally contrary to Muslim precepts for war. Extra-judicial killing of the BH founder, Imam Yusuf, in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri and associated killings of their members by armed police in 2009, accelerated descent into terrorism.
Nigeria’s military incompetence and corruption under former President Goodluck Jonathan allowed BH war bands led by Imam Abubakar Shekau to gain in strength and barbarity after 2012.  In April 2014, the world woke up to the danger posed by Shekau and his followers after the Chibok abductions in Borno State.  But girls and women had been abducted before and, indeed, continue to be captured. What is clear is that for young recruits whose poverty condemns them to a single life - because they cannot afford bride-price - the promise of wives is an important recruitment tool.  So are a fighter’s pay, one meal a day and the power coming from the barrel of an AK-47.
President Muhammadu Buhari has tried to eradicate BH from the north-east.  But the claim that Boko Haram is defeated is false. Christians and Muslims continue to live lives of frightening insecurity in the states bordering Cameroons to the East and Niger in the North-East.   BH proclaimed itself as a caliphate and an affiliate of ISIS in March 2015; its spread into Chad, Cameroons and Niger, with raids in Nigeria beyond the north-east, provoked a more concerted and multi-national military counter-insurgency effort with as yet limited results.
When the high quality of reporting of the Middle East and Russia is considered, a post-colonial condescension at work in the way Africa is generally reported becomes detectable. Nigeria has a population of probably 185 million.  Jihadists have taken note of its importance. Perhaps we should.
POSTCRIPT
Where did these tensions, and array of potential and real conflicts, religious, ethnic, economic and political, all so easily misinterpreted, come from?   There are many reasons.  My on-line book Emirs, Evangelicals & Empire may shed some light.  It is about the beginnings of British imperial rule in the North, the emirates, and the origins of the Christian community in Hausaland. Here are two ways of reading it: (1) On this Microsoft website. Go to Home or Blogs and click on online book (top right).  Or: (2) You need an Apple laptop or i-phone then google  https://apple.com/us/books/id473753122  It’s next to Ian Rankin…
See TheArticle  “Terrorists have taken time to understand Nigeria. We should too”.
 
4 Comments
bruce kent link
27/8/2019 17:50:26

Fascinating and illuminating--- thank you
But perhaps you could also make a brief reference to the million plus starved to death by a blockade made possible with British and other weapons 50+ years ago
So there is a pedigree


Reply
ivan kish
27/8/2019 23:04:40

By any 'reasonable' ( European ! ) measures of a country's potential ,Nigeria would seem to appear a solid candidate as a future Switzerland of sub Saharan Africa. In reality nothing could be further from the truth!

Situated in a largely failed Continent of Africa ( as the Chinese are now discovering in spite of their 'long term' geo-political strategies),
Nigeria does indeed have, on paper at least, the parameters to become the richest country of the Continent.
It has a good level of Western educated University Intelligetsia, it has the legal and governmental infrastructure example of post Imperialist Britain,( from which post 1948 India learnt a great deal!;) it has vast underdeveloped mineral and petrochemical wealth, of which the latter represents nearly 90% of its exports.

BUT....the worms in the woodpile are the chiefs and managers in position of decision and power, who, seeing a small window of opportunity to make some money infest the totality of the infrastructure with corruption at every level. In such cases the battle of Christian versus Muslim is put aside whilst the money is being made by the few and any religious blood letting is left to the various militias of various 250 ethnic groups which inhabit the country as a kind of smouldering war by proxy.
It must be a well worn joke to read in the Nigerian Constitution that Nigeria is defined as a "domocratic secular state." Almost like saying that Stalin's gulags were the People's holiday camps!
The religious divide does indeed divide and the rough 50/50 division between the Muslims and the Christians will not admit any proritisation of one over the other. A very fertile ground for many little or great civil wars yet to come.
Is this not reminiscent of the ex Yugoslavia, its constant internecine battles and wars and its mix of Muslim, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and any other beliefs you care to name. Nigeria could never quite find a Tito of its own to act as a catalyst and for a few 'minutes' a year or three back,there was hope that Yugoslavia just might survive as a modern state within the nascent idea of a united Europe. That was not to be and today we all hope that the last war to be faught on European continent was the ethnic war 1991-2001 with its huge mix of contributory reasons and that the ex Republics of Yugoslavia finally find peace and prosperity as good neighbours.

The future for Nigeria and indeed Africa however is rather more bleak. History would seem to indicate that a country with as many disparities as Nigeria does not stand the proverbial snow drop's chance in Hell of peaceful co-existence between its various rivalries..... but hey......I have been wrong before!

Reply
Matthew
28/8/2019 21:23:15

Thanks, Ian. Have also written and spoken on this. The stereotyping and narrowing of conflicts to the binary lenses of religion and ethicity has taken hold of western narratives.
I am glad to note that Bruce Kent is still active. He can't remember me, but I was involved with Pax Christi in those days as a Student in Bradford and SOAS.
Have printed out a copy of the book.
Thanks again.
Bishop Kukah

Reply
Bishop Abiodun Ogunyemi link
3/11/2019 16:33:25

My summary of this write-up as I have always believed is that corruption is not the greatest problem in Nigeria. Religious bigotry and tribalism/ethnicity are the two major problems. The two evils actually promote corruption; whenever Nigerian are privileged to occupy any significant office, it is assumed that God has given them opportunity to steal as much as possible for their gods and their tribes. In fact, an average religious Nigerian believes that once he/she can build a place of worship, the gods will forgive him/her. Until and unless we deal with these two evils, the country can never make progress. It is the same for Africa generally and the Arab world. It is true to a large extent that religion is the opium of the people. That is why I do not believe that true Christianity is a religion. Any way this is a different subject altogether.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • Online Books
    • Emirs, Evangelicals and Empiress
    • May You Live in Interesting Times
  • Publications
  • Articles
  • Contact