Who can stop Boko Haram?

It was Friday, January 20th, 2012, in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s predominately Muslim north, and prayers at mosques had drawn to an end. Residents of the crowded and ancient metropolis were returning home. At police headquarters in the neighbourhood of Bompai, Wellington Asiayei wrapped up his work for the day and took the short walk back to his room at the barracks to prepare his dinner.

When the 48-year-old assistant police superintendent reached his room he heard explosions. “Everybody from the barracks was running for their dear lives,” Asiayei said three days later.

As he went to lock the door of his room he noticed a young man – he looked to be in his 20s – dressed in a police uniform and with an AK-47 in his hands. “I saw him raising the rifle at me and that was all I knew,” he said. The bullet damaged Asiayei’s spine and lung; he survived but was unable to walk afterwards.

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A man injured in a suicide bombing in northeast Nigeria this month. Photograph: Aminu Abubakar/AFP/Getty

In this unprecedented siege of Nigeria’s second-largest city, dozens or perhaps hundreds of young men swarmed neighbourhoods throughout Kano with no remorse for their victims. The explosions became difficult to count. The attackers, who included at least five suicide bombers, travelled on motorbikes, in cars and on foot. Gunshots crackled, corpses were piled on top of one another in the morgue of the city’s main hospital, and bodies were left in the streets.

The official death toll was 185. It was the deadliest attack yet attributed to the Islamist extremist group that had become known as Boko Haram.

Viciousness laid bare

Boko Haram’s viciousness was laid bare to the wider world only in April 2014, when it kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school in Chibok, deep in Nigeria’s remote northeast. To understand the organisation, though, it is important to know what occurred in Kano. To understand that, one must look further back, at the formation of Boko Haram, and, further again, at the complex history of

Nigeria

, Africa’s biggest oil producer, largest economy and most populous nation.

In a video from 2009, two and a half years before the attack in Kano, a charismatic, baby-faced man named Mohammed Yusuf addresses an approving, roaring crowd. He describes a confrontation between security forces and his followers at a funeral, accusing the soldiers and police of shooting members of his sect. "It's better for the whole world to be destroyed than to spill the blood of a single Muslim," he says in the video, obtained by my colleague Aminu Abubakar.

Yusuf was thought to be 39 at the time and the leader of Boko Haram. Some had considered him a reluctant fighter, but the brutality of the security forces and pressure from his bloodthirsty deputy, Abubakar Shekau, pushed him toward violence.

After the group launched an uprising with attacks on police stations, Nigeria’s military, not known for its restraint, responded in kind. In July 2009 its armoured vehicles rolled through the northeastern city of Maiduguri towards Boko Haram’s mosque and headquarters, opening fire when they drew within range. As five days of fighting drew to a close, soldiers reduced the complex to shards of concrete and twisted metal.

About 800 people died, most of them Boko Haram members. Yusuf himself was arrested while hiding in a barn and handed over to police. They shot him dead.

Today Shekau leads Boko Haram, and the once Salafist sect based in Nigeria’s northeast has morphed into something far more deadly, a monstrous organisation whose identity is complicated by imitators and criminal gangs that commit violence under its guise.

Oil: profit and loss

In some ways unrest seems inevitable in parts of northern Nigeria, a country thrown together by colonialists who combined vastly different cultures, traditions and ethnicities into one nation. This was the case for many African civilisations, but a number of factors would make Nigeria particularly volatile; one must, of course, start with the oil.

Nigeria first struck oil in commercial quantities in 1956, among the vast and labyrinthine swamps of the Niger delta, in the country’s south. Commercial production began in relatively small amounts, but new discoveries would soon come, offshore drilling would eventually take hold and Nigeria would become the biggest oil producer on the continent, gaining astounding amounts of money for its coffers – and a list of profound, even catastrophic problems to go with it.

So much of that money would be stolen and tragically misspent, leading to the entrenchment of what might be called a kleptocracy, assured of its vast oil reserves but with electricity blackouts multiple times a day and poorly paid policemen collecting bribes from drivers at roadblocks, to name two examples among many.

Most telling is the fact that it must import most of its fuel despite its oil, with the country unable to build enough refineries or keep the ones it has functioning at capacity to process its crude on its own.

On top of that, petrol imports are subsidised by the government through a system that has been alleged to be outrageously mismanaged and corrupt. In other words, Nigeria essentially buys back refined oil after selling it in crude form – and at an inflated cost thanks to the middlemen gaming the system.

All the while Nigeria's population has been rapidly expanding. It is currently home to about 175 million people, including an exploding and restless youth population. It also recently overtook South Africa as the continent's biggest economy, in terms of GDP size, but its population is far larger, meaning the average Nigerian remains much poorer than the average South African. The title of "Africa's biggest economy" means little or nothing to most Nigerians, the majority of whom continue to live on less than $1 a day.

Because the oil has brought riches there has been little incentive to develop other sectors of the economy. It would be wrong to say that Nigeria’s mostly Christian south, where the oil is located, has done well for itself in these circumstances, but it has fared better than the north. It is better educated and has more industry and jobs and less poverty. The country’s oil-producing states are handed a significantly bigger chunk of government revenue. Despite that, the region has not been immune to violence.

The deeply poor Niger delta, badly polluted by years of oil spills, has seen militants and gangsters take up arms, attack the petroleum industry and kidnap foreigners.

Much of present-day northern Nigeria, long ruled by Hausa kings, eventually fell under a caliphate in the early 19th century, after an armed jihad led by a Fulani Islamic cleric, Usman dan Fodio.

Even today dan Fodio remains revered, but it is difficult to locate his reformist legacy in the region, where corrupt elites siphon off revenue at will and a huge population of young people roam with nothing much to do.

Lip service

Boko Haram figures may have occasionally paid lip service to dan Fodio’s caliphate, but the extremists’ bloodthirsty slaughtering of innocents and lack of any practical plans for how to improve the lives of Nigerians reveal the insurgency to be far different.

As some have pointed out, many in northern Nigeria have come to see democracy as a system that keeps them poor and enriches undeserving, corrupt leaders. It was in this atmosphere that Mohammed Yusuf began to lead his followers.

Boko Haram’s re-emergence more than a year after the 2009 uprising and Yusuf ’s death began mysteriously, with men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s carrying out drive-by shootings targeting community leaders and security forces. Attacks would eventually spread into other parts of the north, then central Nigeria, then the capital.

On the morning of August 26th, 2011, a man driving a Honda Accord made his way through the streets of Abuja, his destination the United Nations headquarters for Nigeria. He crashed into the front lobby and set off the explosives inside the car, killing 23 people and wounding dozens more.

It got worse. Boko Haram members overran remote areas of northeastern Nigeria and raised their own flags, part of the reason President Goodluck Jonathan eventually decided to declare a state of emergency. Seven members of a French family, including four children, were also abducted in an incident claimed by Shekau, and dozens of students were massacred in attacks on schools.

Reports began to emerge in 2013 of girls being kidnapped and taken as wives by Boko Haram members. In April 2014, when attackers stormed the town of Chibok and abducted 276 girls from their school, the military seemed barely to put up a fight.

US military officials in 2011 began warning of signs that the main extremist groups based in Africa – al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shebab in Somalia and Boko Haram – were working towards closer co-operation through arms or financing. Th ere had been evidence of Nigerian Islamists travelling to northern Mali since 2004 for training with extremists from what would later be known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, but deeper ties remained an open question.

A rebellion in Mali in 2012 that saw Tuareg and Islamist groups take over half of the country prompted further concern and fuelled speculation about whether Boko Haram members had gone there to fight – and what would happen after they returned home. France responded with a military assault to push out the rebels in Mali, and a US drone base was established in Niger with the aim of monitoring the Islamists who were responsible.

The US has since labelled Boko Haram a global terrorist group, but the move seems to have had no major effect. Shekau himself has been put on a US wanted list offering a reward of up to $7 million.

After he was named a global terrorist by the United States, allowing his assets there to be frozen, he mocked the designation in a video message. “I know the United States exists, but I don’t know which part of the world it is located in, whether in the west or the north, the south or the east,” he said in a sarcastic tone, an AK-47 leaning against the wall next to him. “I don’t know where it is, not to talk of freezing my assets there.”

Mapping out what Boko Haram is remains difficult. Even the name Boko Haram is something of an illusion. Roughly translated to mean “Western education Is forbidden”, it was given to the group by outsiders based on their understanding of the budding sect and its beliefs. The group itself, or at least Abubakar Shekau’s faction of it, says it wants to be known as Jama’atu Ahlus Sunnah Lid Da’awati Wal Jihad, or People Committed to the Prophet’s Teachings for Propagation and Jihad.

Who is Shekau?

As for Shekau himself, little is known about him. The US wanted notice lists three possible dates of birth: 1965, 1969 and 1975. His vicious rhetoric and bizarre behaviour in video messages, where he has said he likes to kill humans when commanded by God to do so in the same way he enjoys killing rams and chickens, have led some to label him a psychopath.

But simply labelling him insane is inadequate, a conclusion based on guesswork that ignores the possibility that he may be trying to provoke by acting in that way. There is also the question of whether it is always the same person in the video messages. The appearance of the man identified as Shekau in videos over the past several years has been significantly different at times.

It is perhaps best to think of Boko Haram as an umbrella term for the insurgency and the violence that has come with it. Foot soldiers may be shared or recruited as needed, drawn from the enormous population of desperate young men vulnerable to extremist ideas and perhaps attracted to the money and support the group can provide. Any kind of true organisation may exist only at the very top, with limited co-operation between the cells.

Its aims seem to vary from the sincere will to create an Islamic state to the desire to collect ransom money, with many other motivations in between. “Do I think that the kids who abducted the girls in Chibok are the ones who set off the bombs in Jos? No,” one Nigerian official who has closely followed the insurgency says.

How much all of this involves politics has been continually debated. As the elections scheduled for February 2015 began to draw near, new accusations emerged of politicians financing elements of Boko Haram – certainly a possibility but, if so, more likely on the margins.

The overarching conspiracy theories repeatedly offered in Nigeria – northern elites seeking to bring down a southern president; southern power brokers seeking to discredit the north – do not hold up to scrutiny. There are simply too many varying interests, and too great a range of targets, for them to be attributable to a sole purpose.

As for foreign links, as one well-versed observer put it to me in early 2014, it seems that a practical relationship has developed between certain Nigerian Islamists, particularly those identified with a splinter faction of Boko Haram known as Ansaru and the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or its offshoots. They seek help when they need it but otherwise act on their own.

Another knowledgeable source, a western diplomat with extensive experience in the region, told me in March 2014 that it appeared co-operation involving training and weapons had been deepening in the past few years.

Shekau has pledged solidarity with jihadists globally, including Islamic State, but it has never been clear whether such feelings were mutual. Links have formed with foreign groups, and attacks have been carried out in neighbouring Cameroon, but the various elements of the Boko Haram insurgency have remained Nigerian in their outlook.

Although demands have ranged widely, they have to a large degree focused on local concerns. The insurgents have sometimes simply seemed bent on the destruction of the Nigerian state, seeking to tear everything down with no end goal in mind.

Heavy-handed response

President Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger delta, has offered little beyond heavy-handed military raids that have led to accusations of widespread abuse of civilians, including shootings of innocent people, the burning of homes, torture and indiscriminate arrests.

The government has engaged in doublespeak, at one point claiming to be involved in back-channel talks in a bid to halt the violence but later dismissing this, with the president calling the Islamists “ghosts” who refuse to show their faces.

Although it is impossible to be sure if it is always the same man in Shekau’s video messages, it does not seem to matter much. Regardless of whether there have been Shekau lookalikes, attacks have continued and even worsened.

“If in fact he is dead, then it shows that we are in a much worse situation than we thought,” the Nigerian official who has followed the situation closely told me.

In other words it showed that he could easily be replaced without an interruption in the violence, while the decline of the Nigerian army, largely because of corruption, has left little hope that it can defeat the insurgency. Soldiers “would rather go to the Niger delta to make money”, he said, referring to allegations that members of the army are involved in the lucrative oil-theft racket and other crimes in that region.

The lack of faith in both the government and the military has remained one of the most important reasons why the insurgency has not been stopped.

“I don’t know that northern populations have a great affinity for Boko Haram or whatever they’re advocating, and civilians and moderate Muslims have been the principal victims, along with security forces, of course,” the western diplomat said. “But there’s this sea of indifference in which they are able to operate, because you just don’t have a lot of loyalty or affinity for a central government which is seen as completely clueless and, more importantly, unresponsive to the legitimate needs and grievances of local populations.”

As for recruitment into Boko Haram, some see a cycle of poverty and lawlessness as a main cause. “Religion is the basis of recruitment, so that’s why they can get so many people, but the incentive for people to get into it and remain in it is the profit they make from it,” Clement Nwankwo, a respected Nigerian civil-society activist based in Abuja, told me in June 2014.

“So, if there is money available and these people would ordinarily live a street life where they don’t know what they get for the day, but here somebody’s paying their bills, somebody is feeding them, clothing them and giving them some little profit. And then there is really very little consequence for their actions. They can get away with it. The military hasn’t been able to respond in a way that proves a disincentive for them to continue this path.”

In the meantime the list of the dead only grows longer, each attack helping to push the unrealised potential of such an important nation farther out of reach.

In the country’s largest city, Lagos, steps have been taken in an attempt to begin taming the chaotic former capital of some 15 million people – perhaps even 21 million, according to some estimates – whose hours-long traffic jams and exhausting pace of life have left even the most resilient souls gasping for air. Lagos, along with the rest of the south, has been mainly spared the violence, although there have been questions about whether an explosion in June 2014 claimed by Boko Haram signalled the end of the city’s relative peace.

If so, the insurgency would reach yet another, far more dangerous stage, and the shoots of progress that have taken root would be tragically ripped out.

Mike Smith is a foreign correspondent for the AFP news agency. This article is adapted from his book, Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria's Unholy War, published by IB Tauris