What’s The Matter With Nigeria?

Nigeria has defeated Ebola. Its next target this year should be Boko Haram.

Sometimes I like to watch scary movies, just to experience the thrill of being terrified without suffering the consequences.  Nigeria’s Boko Haram, however, doesn’t give me that kind of vicarious thrill; instead it worries me a lot. As we welcome the New Year, I am convinced that it is time for Nigerian government to impose a well-coordinated and calibrated response to eradicate this terrorist group.

 In the past few months the violent Islamist terror group, which sees fear as the basic currency of expansion, have taken over swathes of north-east Nigeria. As of November of last year, it controls parts of Adamawa and Yobe states, and at least two dozen towns in Borno State.¹ Today only a few outsiders dare to visit Gwoza, a hill town of almost half a million people, because it is the capital of Boko Haram’s self-declared caliphate.²

As a way of establishing its writ through fear, the group routinely slaughters unbelievers as well as Muslims. Hence, it was no surprise that the death toll from their activities had continued to rise (see table 1). The residents of the verdant villages of Kubi and Watu in Adamawa state experiences great terror when a horde of Boko Haram fighters pounced on them in the early morning of September of 2014. On arrival, these barbaric fighters spent the day looting and killing their helpless victims.³ While they were dismembering bodies and leaving them for the vultures, the state police and other security agencies failed to come to the victim’s rescue.

Table 1 – Death Tolls from Nigeria’s Boko Haram

Year	Number of Deaths/Fatalities
2009	850
2010	340
2011	516
2012	1,988
2013	2,700
2014	5,000

                      Source: SAIS Africa, 2014

Sorrows, Tears and Blood

Nigerian government’s claim in October of 2014 that they have agreed to a ceasefire with the group must be viewed with great caution. So also should their assurance that Boko Haram have promised that more than 200 schoolgirls abducted earlier that year in the town of Chibok would be released. So far attacks by Boko Haram had continued and the girls have not been freed. Even if they have such a deal with the group, the outcome will not produce positive result because it would have entailed a swap of prisoners, including militant leaders, which can escalate the insurgency.

Boko Haram, which conducts complex military maneuvers reminiscent of those used by the formidable Chadian army, started out by assassinating provincial officials from the backs of motorbikes. Since then it has indeed become an able fighting force, looting military garrisons across the affected regions and accumulating tanks, antitank weapons, artillery and armored personnel carriers. There is a high possibility that it now have anti-aircraft guns, since its leaders claims to have downed a Nigerian fighter jet and, as a proof, has filmed the beheading of the pilot.⁵ Having grown into what may be termed a fairly effective commando force with almost 10,000 fighters, the group’s focus now is on acquiring and holding territories in north-east Nigeria as well as on acquiring more members, new weapons and tactics. And since economic stagnation, illiteracy and poverty fuels religious radicalism in the region, the group no longer need to use force or any form of coercion in their recruitment drive: young people in that north-east Nigeria have few options. So, joining Boko Haram, which feeds, indoctrinates and bloods them in raids, became an attractive option.

To finance itself, the group often plunder or kidnap victims for ransom. They also collects taxes at road blocks. For Boko Haram, ensuring compliance with their demands means using the weapon of terror to make their victims feel doomed if they fail to obey. One of the strategies they use in that regard is to produce slick propaganda videos that shows supposed sharia justice in action: They show videos where offenders have their hands cut off in front of sullen crowds or where they are lashed or stoned.

At the affected regions of northern Nigeria, the insurgency have driven almost a million people from their homes, with many of them staying at refugee camps in Yola, Adamawa’s capital. In many of the refugee camps it is a common thing to see hundreds of children, many of whom have seen their parents or siblings killed, waiting for food. It is really a sad story.

The “Un-Level” Field

In parts of the northeast Nigeria, agriculture has collapsed as fields remain barren. Even in areas that are still under government control, markets are noticeably empty. Many hospitals have run out of drugs and public schools have been closed for almost one year.

While the inhabitants of north-east Nigeria continue to suffer from the activities of Boko Haram, a different Nigeria exists a day’s drive away. In other words, southern Nigeria is booming while northern Nigeria is imploding. Recently, the World Bank lauded Nigeria for making it easier to set up firms,⁶ particularly in cities like Lagos (the country’s commercial capital on the coast) which has become a magnet for investors who are lured by the explosive growth in the Africa’s biggest economy.

Broadly speaking, the commercial metabolism of southern Nigeria is phenomenal. Of course natural resources still make up only 14 percent of Nigeria’s GDP and oil has remained its main export earner. But today, according to government’s statistics, factories located in the country are running at about 53 percent of capacity – a figure that indicate an increase over 46 percent recorded in 2013. Analysts at McKinsey, a consultancy, predicts that Nigeria could become one of the world’s 20 biggest economies if its GDP could grow by more than 7 percent a year for the next 15 years.⁷ It should be noted here that much of these improvements is due to Nigerian government reforms. For instance, improvements in the country’s electricity sector, which has started to reduce the rate of blackouts, has helped to puff up local economic growth figures. The government had also brought out new regulations which may give the country’s inefficient mortgage industry the shock it needed to spark the growth in mortgage for potential home-owners. To boost the fight against poverty, the government has helped launch a private sector development bank and is setting up a conditional cash –transfer system. The government reforms has also helped in bringing down inflation from more than 13 percent in 2010 to about 8.3 percent.

Going With the Flow

Yet politics and business in the north-east is dying while much of the economy in the south is coming to life. It is worth bearing in mind that Boko Haram has risen partly because Nigeria, as a nation, has been hollowed out. The unhappy truth is that while Nigerian institutions occupy impressive buildings, the state has generally failed to enforce the rule of law. Hence, the country’s judges and civil servants can be easily bought.⁸

The country’s government has racked up some successes though. Take the Ebola crises as an example: after a well-run operation to trace and isolate 19 people infected with the virus, Nigeria was declared free of Ebola on October 2014.⁹ Nevertheless, when it comes to security and public safety, Nigeria has failed woefully. Kidnappings for ransom has reached epidemic proportion in the country: Politicians, wealthy individuals, executives of multinational corporations, celebrities and clergymen are plucked off the street in broad daylight.¹⁰ Every year, hundreds of people are killed in land disputes. In the Niger Delta, piracy is common and thieves siphon off as much as 20 percent of the country’s oil output.¹¹.

The fact that such rampant criminality has continued in Nigeria validates why the country was named the most fraud-prone country in Africa by KPMG,  a global audit firm.¹² Generally speaking, the same issues that dominated public space 50 years ago are still the ones that confront the country today: the overlap between politics and organized crime in almost every parts of the country, in which gangsters aid politicians by intimidating opponents and, in return, elected officials share out funds plundered from the state, is an open secret. During the Biafran civil war in the late 1960s, corruption blossomed tremendously and money flowing into regional coffers went into private pockets. The generals that ruled the country after the civil war never lost their appetite for helping themselves with public funds. Naturally, the civilian political class who took over the reins of government when the generals allowed a return to democracy 15 years ago adopted the army’s habits. Thus the level of corruption in Nigeria is really scary, as what started as a nibbling at the system has metastasized into an all-out gobbling. It was thus not a surprise when Lamido Sanusi, the internationally-respected central bank governor was fired for accusing the state oil company (called NNPC) of failing to account for $50 billion in revenues.¹³ What happened to Lamido also validates the fact that the scales of justice in Nigeria are weighted down by graft.

Unfortunately, President Jonathan did not make things easy when he belittled the problem by stating that corruption is not the same thing as stealing. He seems to forget that hyper-corruption in Nigeria means not only a loss of state funds but also a corrosion of decision-making. No wonder the oil industry bill that would boost investment in oilfields and hence production has continued to be shunned by the country’s federal parliament for years. For the federal legislators, it is better to keep things as they are.  Oil output can stay stagnant. After all, they still do well from the handouts they receive from the local oil cartels.

The Northern Response

Inequality is also starkly regional in Nigeria, especially in the north where it coexists with illiteracy – a toxic combination. As a matter of fact, some of Nigeria’s northern states would rank bottom  globally in terms of development if they were independent countries. In some part of northern Nigeria, fewer than 5 percent of women can read or write. The number of children out of school in the region has also reached astronomical level and is comparable to nowhere else in the world. With three out of four residents in the north-east living below the poverty line, it won’t be a surprise that violence and religious fundamentalism has become a “collective neurosis” in the region, with Boko Haram being a reflection of the deeper crisis in the country. Simply put, the rise of Boko Haram, to a large extent, is fuelled by poverty, illiteracy, religious dogmatism, as well as the brutality and incompetence of the country’s law enforcement agents.

According to the available published evidence, extrajudicial killings by Nigeria’s security forces accounts for thousands of deaths in the north.¹⁴ So naturally, revenge for those killings is the main reasons Boko Haram attacks police stations and Army barracks. It should be noted here that abuse in Nigeria’s  Police detention centers is routine. Almost every police station in Nigeria, including the north-east region, have what is normally called “O/C Torture”, which means “Officer in Charge of Torture.” It is this officer(s) that handles interrogations at the affected stations. So after each police sweeps of suspected insurgents’ hideouts, dozens of bodies bearing marks of torture often turn up at the main morgue in Maiduguri. And in some cases, many of the prisoners appear to have been starved to death.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Meanwhile, in the field, Nigerian army lacks both the morale and the equipment to give Boko Haram a good chase, even though the country is the seventh-biggest oil producer in OPEC. Thus Boko Haram is now free to ride around in large convoys almost unmolested from the air and on the ground, especially now that they have destroyed much of the country’s air fleet in a raid in 2013. Western countries declined the Nigeria generals’ request for new helicopters and other equipment, insisting that Nigerian army need to alter their tactics first. Specifically, they want the country’s military to learn counter-insurgency skills, respect human rights, and create proper supply lines. Just like the Western countries, the United States is not ready to offer Nigeria any form of training or arms unless its army start to respect human rights.¹⁵

It is really a big shame that the same Nigerian army that were not good at chasing insurgents are experts at extracting bribes. There are numerous accounts in which the troops sent to the north-east to fight Boko Haram run  checkpoints as shakedown spots.¹⁶ Bus drivers has continued to complain that they were forced to stop every 10 kilometers on the road between Maiduguri and Damaturu to pay tithes to the soldiers. Of course the politicians and the army generals cannot say that the troops are corrupt since the pot cannot call the kettle black. The soldiers are merely following the footprints of their generals and the country’s politicians, most of whom retire as millionaires. As a matter of fact, most Nigerians are not excited when the government announced that it has mapped out a budget supplement of $1 billion to fight Boko Haram. To the concerned Nigerians, this budget supplement is nothing more than a new trough for greedy officials: So little of the money reaches front lines that desertion is common. Last year, several troops were sentenced to death by firing squad for mutiny after they shot at their own officers out of frustration for lack of food and ammunition.

Meanwhile, government officials has continued to claim that the existence of Boko Haram doesn’t not mean that Nigeria is facing an existential crisis. In their view, the only problem Nigeria has with respect to Boko Haram is how to communicate its successes abroad. According to Nigeria’ finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the international media tend to publicize only bad news about Nigeria while shelving the good news about the country. Nonsense: It is not true to say that the international media carries only bad news about Nigeria. It’s just that Nigeria don’t usually have the kind of news that generates sexy headlines.

Obviously, President Jonathan is no longer able to effect wholesale change in a broken state even though he has never been short of speeches and initiatives. So as Nigeria approaches the next national election in February 2015, it is important that the citizens votes for the right candidates so as to prevent the country from tipping over into chaos.

References

¹ Nigeria, a Nation Divided. (2014, October 25). The Economist, p. 49.

²Mahmood O. (2014): Nigeria – Boko Haram’s Gwoza Caliphate Demonstrates Group’s Increasing Power. All Africa. Retrieved January 2, 2015 from http://allafrica.com/stories/201409110475.html

³ Mohammed I. (2014): Boko Haram Kills Scores, Burns 540 Houses in Michika. Sahara Reporters. Retrieved January 2, 2015 from http://saharareporters.com/2014/09/30/boko-haram-kills-scores-burn-540-houses-michika

⁴ SAIS Africa (2014): Social Violence in Nigeria. Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://www.connectsaisafrica.org/research/african-studies-publications/social-violence-nigeria/

⁵ Alamba S., Faul M. (2014): Boko Haram Video Shows Beheading of Nigeria Pilot. Yahoo News! Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://news.yahoo.com/boko-haram-video-shows-beheading-nigeria-pilot-121607194.html

⁶ The Economist, op. cit, p. 49

⁷ The Economist, op. cit, p. 50

⁸ Nigeria – Countries at the Crossroads (2012). Freedom House, Retrieved January 3, 2015 from https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/countries-crossroads/2012/nigeria#.VKhXzSvF888

⁹ Ebola Crisis – Nigeria Declared Free of Virus (2014). BBC News Africa, Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29685127

¹⁰ Hyundai Paid Nigeria Kidnap Ransom, Police Say (2013). BBC News Africa, Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-20916441

¹¹ The Economist, op. cit, p. 50

¹² Ihediora K. (2015): Nigeria – Moving Forward in A Circle. Punch. Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://www.punchng.com/opinion/nigeria-moving-forward-in-a-circle/

¹³ Nossiter A. (2014): Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank Is Fired After Warning of Missing Oil Revenue. The New York Times. Retrieved January 3, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/world/africa/governor-of-nigerias-central-bank-is-fired-after-warning-of-missing-oil-revenue.html?_r=0

¹⁴ The Economist, op. cit, p. 50

¹⁵ Ibid

16 Ibid