In almost a rate proportional to the one in which Nigeria is preparing to hold its general elections in February, Boko Haram is expanding its six-year reign of terror aimed at imposing its strict version of Sharia on the north eastern region of the country and its neighbours, Chad and Cameroon.
So far, a summation of the regions seized by the extremist group is about the size of a small country in Europe. In fact, government officials in charge of providing relief to victims of disasters can no longer fulfil their roles in many of the regions where Boko Haram has declared a caliphate, corroborating this; the Borno State emergency agency said its officials can no longer travel to 20 of 27 local government areas in the state.
Many victims and experts are of the opinion that in a short while, Nigeria would be divided Libya style if Boko Haram continues this way.
Bawa Abdullahi Wase, a security analyst and associate at the Network for Justice, said Boko Haram fighters ride around in pickup trucks wielding rocket-propelled grenade launchers, weapons taken from Libyan armories after the death of former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
With the sects advances, more pressure is being mounted on Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan as he heads into the tightest election since Africa’s biggest crude producer emerged from military rule in 1999. The chaos spreading through the northeast and a 50 percent decline in oil prices last year are prompting investors in the richer south to temper their enthusiasm for a country whose economy has expanded more than 5 percent a year over the past four years.
The naira has tumbled 15 percent in the past six months, the most among 24 African currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The Nigerian Stock Exchange All-Share Index has fallen 14 percent this year, the worst performer globally.
Business risk
The sudden drop in oil prices worldwide combined with the insurgency is a serious risk for business in the country. It would definitely affect the rate of direct investment, experts believe.
Another major fuel for the extremist is the weakness of the national army. As such, the position is looking like the situation with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. It is believed in many quarters that the Nigerian army is poorly equipped for the hunt in the case of Boko Haram. As a way out of this situation, several coalition moves are been made by the country with its neighbours, Chad, Cameroon and Niger to form a multinational force to fight the insurgents.
According to an estimate by risk consultancy firm Verisk Maplecroft, Boko Haram killed more than 4,700 people last year, doubling the amount in 2013. It’s increasingly coercing young girls to carry out bombings. Early in January a girl as young as 10 set off explosives at a market in Maiduguri, killing at least 20 people.
The violence threatens to derail the conduct of peaceful, fair and credible elections in the country’s northeast, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
But international watchers like Manji Cheto, vice-president of corporate advisory company Teneo Intelligence in London hold that it is too early to say if Boko Haram has enough leaders with army and government experience to administer a breakaway state.
“The longer the group is able to retain control of the towns it has captured, the greater the chance that it will be able to adapt and implement quasi-government structures,” she said.
Nigerians who’ve lived in Boko Haram-controlled areas in the northeast, a region where Islam has been practiced for almost a millennium, say the rebels have imposed a strict regime of Shariah that’s closed shops and pharmacies and restricted movement.
“We were living under their brand of Shariah law, which is alien to the Shariah that we Muslims know and practice,” said Yagana Bulama, a 46-year-old mother of five who escaped her hometown of Bama a month after the insurgents came and killed her husband Abba Bulama. “We were like slaves in prison,” she said in an interview in a camp for displaced people in Maiduguri.
US Concern
In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok. This led to a worldwide condemnation outcry to the extent that Michelle Obama and thousands of others campaigned on social media with the #hashtag BringBackOurGirls.
The group’s self-styled leader, Abubakar Shekau, has since boasted on videos posted on YouTube that the young women, who’re still missing, have converted to Islam and have been married off to his fighters.
Banne Musa, a 50-year-old housewife from the town of Gwoza, knows how the girls and their parents must feel. She lived under Boko Haram’s rule before escaping to a camp for war displaced in Maiduguri, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) away. She and other women were forced to wash and cook for the insurgents, some of whom paid girls 2,000 naira ($11) as a fee for “marriage.”
“You are at the mercy of the glorified lunatics and drug addicts that deceive themselves to think they are fighting for Allah,” she said in an interview.
Origins
The origin of Boko Haram can be traced to 1995, when worshippers gathered at the Alhaj Muhammadu Ndimi Mosque in Maiduguri. The group’s violent path dates to 2002 when preacher Mohammed Yusuf became its leader. He was able to appeal to the minds of the unemployed and high school and university students who were drawn by his preachings against the mixing of sexes, corruption of the Nigerian state and the lack of jobs.
A year later, militants attacked police stations in neighboring Yobe state and hoisted the black flags of the Afghan Taliban. Named Jama’atu Ahlissunnah Lidda’awati wal Jihad in Arabic, meaning “people committed to the propagation of the Prophet’s teachings and jihad,” the group was dubbed by local residents Boko (book) Haram (forbidden), which is commonly translated as “western education is a sin.”
The group soon went totally berserk after the death of Yusuf in 2009 in police custody, when his second in command, Shekau, assumed leadership. As the violence worsened, in 2013 the U.S. State Department put a $7-million bounty on his head.
Martin Roberts, senior analyst for sub-Saharan Africa at IHS Country Risk in London submitted that revenue from kidnapping ransoms, bank robberies and extortion has helped to fund the movement and allow it to pay fighters monthly salaries.
“Boko Haram is able to pay people infinitely more than they would expect to earn by legitimate means,” Robert said.
More than half of the 60 million Nigerians who live in poverty reside in the north, the U.K.’s Department for International Development said in September.The World Bank said in July that more than half of people in the northeastern region lives below the poverty line.
“A lot of people in northeast Nigeria feel no loyalty to the central government,” Roberts said. “They feel that the central government is not a force for good.”
But many people have been led to believe that government has neglected the people, and that’s why boko Haram still thrives.
It is the hope of many Nigerians and especially victims of Boko Haram’s reign of terror that someday a genuine solution would be found to the problem. Many Internally Displaced People (IDPs) always express their hope that as soon as possible, an end to the insurgency would come and they would be able to go back to home to their villages and farms.
