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: B OKO 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 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 1 Introduction and overview Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos As I write this introduction in November 2013, Boko Haram is making the head- lines. Paradoxically, it is seen in the media as clandestine and invisible, accord- ing to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who said he would not negotiate with “ghosts”. The sect of Mohammed Yusuf was not always famous, however. When I began to investigate the so-called Taliban on the Niger–Nigeria border in 2005, no academics had written anything on Boko Haram. At that time, security analysts focused on violence in the oil-producing Niger Delta, and very few paid attention to a marginal group of extremists in remote Borno and Yobe states. Since then, the sect has become a fashionable topic of research as well as an international issue. More so than the Maiduguri uprising of July 2009, the attack on the UNDP office in Abuja in August 2011 attracted much attention.