and its aftermath are essential to the Boko Haram story, but one of our goals is to take you beyond those headlines and into a deeper understanding of the conflict’s origins and its consequences for the millions of ordinary Nigerians caught in the crosshairs. Cutting through a tangled web of evidence, we hope to offer a clear and concise story about who the members of Boko Haram are, where they came from, how they have operated, and the toll they have taken on the ordinary Nigerians (and Cameroonians, Chadians, and Nigeriens) in their path.
More broadly, we hope that the book will help readers understand how the story of the “two Nigerias”—one wealthy and globalized, the other poor and insecure—has influenced both Boko Haram’s emergence and the Nigerian government’s tragically ineffective response to it. Certainly, it is important to acknowledge Boko Haram’s place in a larger global story about the rise of jihadist terror and insurgency in the early twenty-first century. But we also argue that the group’s history, rise, and (hopefully) fall are deeply connected to this Nigerian story, in which a country of great wealth and opportunity nonetheless found itself confronting one of the world’s deadliest insurgencies.
In the hands of the country’s ruling class, a simplistic version of the “two Nigerias” story emphasizing the inevitability of conflict over the country’s ethnic and religious differences helped nurture the conditions that made Boko Haram possible. Yet, as we hope to show, a more nuanced understanding of how inequality, injustice, and poor governance unite many Nigerians across lines of ethnic and religious identity also reveals how the struggle against Boko Haram has brought out the country’s best. Beyond discussions of Boko Haram’s history, ideology, and tactics, this book aims to tell stories about how a wide range of Nigerians—particularly artists, writers, and musicians—have responded to the crisis, often in ways that bring Nigerians together rather than pushing them further apart.
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As of this writing, the story of Boko Haram and the fight against it remains unfinished. Although the Nigerian government has repeatedly declared them “technically defeated,” they continue to kill. Millions of residents of northeastern Nigeria (and across the Lake Chad Basin) are unable to return to their homes and begin the long process of rebuilding their communities, while others are terrorized (and, increasingly, taxed for revenue to sustain the insurgency) by members of the ISIS-affiliated “Islamic State in West Africa,” a Boko Haram offshoot that split with Shekau in 2016. Some but not all of the Chibok girls have been released from captivity following negotiations between the government and leaders of the Boko Haram faction that held them, and protesters continue to challenge government’s inability to free the thousands of other captives who remain. Meanwhile, new abductions and suicide bombings have continued with depressing frequency. Although events may eventually overtake some of the details we offer here, we hope that this book provides a useful marker along the way to what will surely be more comprehensive histories in the years to come.
1
A Nigerian Origin Story
Boko Haram’s origins are shadowy and poorly understood. Even after nearly a decade in the limelight, most of its leaders—dead and alive—remain ciphers. The record of its creation and consolidation is filled with speculation, pseudonyms, and peripheral characters, and even credible sources differ on the specifics. But for all intents and purposes, the crisis of Boko Haram began in 2003 in the village of Kanama, in rural Yobe State just south of Nigeria’s long border with Niger.
Here a small group of Muslims (estimates range from about fifty to several hundred) angry about the sinfulness of Nigerian society attempted to withdraw from it. Their haphazard collection of tents and mudbrick houses were objects of bemusement to locals, who referred to them as the “Hijra Group” in reference to the hijra, the flight of the Prophet Mohammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. They called themselves Al-Sunna Wal Jamma (People of the Prophet’s Example), a name that highlighted their relationship with Salafism, a global Islamic ideology that seeks to “purify” the faith by returning to the example of the Prophet (the sunnah) and the earliest Muslim community. Although Salafi movements are often seen as products of the Arab world, Nigerian Salafi preachers and organizations are among the most influential in Africa.
Globally, Salafis are divided about how their religious values ought to relate to the political world. Some use politics to establish their vision of a good society, while others (the so-called quietists) focus on promoting personal piety and religious education. Still others—a minority but a vocal one—see modern governments as beyond reform, justifying violent struggle against them. Initially, the very nature of the Hijra Group’s action—physical and symbolic retreat from Nigerian society—seemed to put it among the quietists. But the speed with which it turned to violence suggests that its members were divided over how to achieve their goals.
The Hijra Group’s actions were undoubtedly influenced by grievances it shared with many Nigerian Muslims. In 1999, following the inauguration of Nigeria’s first elected government in a generation, a handful of politicians in the northwestern state of Zamfara announced their intention to implement a strict version of shari’ah (Islamic law) in criminal law, with the goal of restoring it to the status it held prior to colonial rule. The subsequent outpouring of popular support turned the “shari’ah issue” into a movement, and between 1999 and 2003, twelve states enacted shari’ah-inspired legislation and policies that were met with high hopes by Muslim citizens.
A minority of Muslims clearly hoped that Zamfara’s proposal would be the first step in moving the country toward an Islamic theocracy. This possibility was also on the minds of Nigeria’s 85 million Christians (the country has a roughly equal proportion of Muslims and Christians), and the two religious communities clashed repeatedly over the next decade. For most Muslims, however, shari’ah’s popularity was rooted in the hope it might force Nigeria’s notoriously corrupt political class to address their demands for economic development, social justice, and political rights. Yet, whether because the benefits rarely materialized or because punishments for the wealthy and well-connected never seemed to equal those imposed on the poor and vulnerable, public opinion on shari’ah quickly soured. This letdown was especially crushing for the Salafi activists who had set aside their discomfort with formal politics in the hope of influencing the process. For them, shari’ah’s failure was an outright betrayal.
In Kanama, the Hijra Group and local citizens lived alongside each other peacefully for months. Locals reported that members occasionally took on farm labor jobs to earn money, but mostly they kept to themselves. Things unraveled in late 2003 when the group’s use of a fishing pond came to the attention of a local chief, whose request for an access fee was met with anger. Tempers rose, and the police got involved. On December 20, several members were arrested, and others were beaten and harassed. There is confusion about what happened next. Some point to provocations by local authorities, others to threats by group members against the local government chairman and the district head, the ranking local agents of the Nigerian state. On December 24, the group stormed a nearby police barracks and overpowered its defenses, killing at least one policeman and coming away with a cache of arms. From there, it raided the town of Geidam, gathered more guns, and prepared for war. By early January 2004, it had made its way overland 250 kilometers to the Yobe State capital of Damaturu, all the while engaged in a series of running battles with the police. Here it was dispersed but only after sacking yet more police stations and reloading its armory.
Over the next few days, police and military forces ramped up operations that claimed dozens of perpetrator deaths and arrests. There were also indications of the conflict’s mounting social costs, as ten thousand people fled their homes and farms during the fighting. It was also around this time that the name “Nigerian Taliban” appeared as the group’s “official” moniker. Some journalists claimed that they had seen fighters flying a Taliban flag, while others referenced a shadowy leader nicknamed “Mullah Omar” after the Afghan jihadist. However tenuous,
