told Michael. There was another car next to ours; a man and the driver stood wordlessly beside the car, listening to the soldiers’ rants. They were obviously in a similar situation as we were. Michael went to the soldier with the gun and showed his ID card.
“So you are civilian JTF? So what? Four months we have been here without salary, our friends are killed by Boko Haram, and I am sick. Four months no pay. And you tell me you think. You will see. I go keep you here for hours in this sun.”
He let us go after about 15 minutes.
Checkpoints, or roadblocks as they are also commonly called, are a regular feature of road travel in Nigeria. Nigerians have become resigned to them the way they are resigned to the lack of reliable electricity or running water. Ostensibly, the roadblocks are there for enforcing traffic laws and ensuring travelers’ safety, but in reality they are nothing but extortion points. They have become a place where you paid your taxes at gunpoint, fully knowing the taxes would not get to the state coffers but into private pockets. Since the Nigerian government placed most of the northeast region of the country under emergency rule in 2013, the roadblocks have proliferated. In some places they have become almost like settlements, humming with beggars, idlers, and boys and girls—out of school due to the insurgency—selling water and food to travelers. In Borno and Yobe states, the epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency, there were roadblocks at about every two-mile interval. Before the insurgency the blocks were manned by policemen who’d chat with you about the weather or about the traffic as you handed them their bribe. They’d even give you change if you had no small notes; all very civilized. Now the checkpoints were guarded by scowling, uncommunicative soldiers in full war gear. I almost laughed when I saw a sign warning drivers that it is illegal to give bribes at checkpoints, with a phone number to call if a soldier solicited a bribe. This was the face of the new government of Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in May 2015 on the promise to wipe out corruption and Boko Haram. Abbas told me he had tried the numbers and they didn’t work.
At the checkpoints passengers in private cars were sometimes allowed to remain in their vehicle, but passengers in commercial vehicles had to get out and approach the soldiers on foot. Often male passengers had to take off their shirts and raise their hands as they passed the soldiers—Boko Haram insurgents sometimes detonated suicide vests at checkpoints. As the passengers passed they presented their ID cards to the soldiers, who compared them to pictures of the 100 most-wanted Boko Haram members prominently displayed at every checkpoint. Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, was ranked number 100; his enlarged face with its signature leer occupied the center of the poster. A few faces on the list had already been captured. Recently, Khalid Al-Barnawi, the head of Ansaru (full name: Jamā‘tu Anāril Muslimīna fī Bilādis Sūdān, or “Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Lands”), a Boko Haram splinter group responsible for the kidnapping and killing of many foreigners, had been caught in a hideout in Lokoja, Kogi State. One other reason ID cards were checked was because Boko Haram members never carried them; to them they are a Western invention and therefore haram, or forbidden. I asked Abbas, would anyone without ID be arrested for a Boko Haram member? No, not always. It mostly depended on the discretion of the soldiers, on the answers the defaulter gave; usually the punishment was a fine of anything between 200 naira to 500 naira.
Ahead of us was the last checkpoint before Chibok. This was the most important checkpoint of all. The soldiers here would determine whether I got to enter Chibok or not. Vehicles coming in or going out were given a special pass, which they must present to the soldiers. Traders bringing supplies from neighboring towns must have an inventory listing every single item they carried. Since the kidnapping of over 276 schoolgirls in April 2014, and the subsequent media focus on the families of the kidnapped girls, the government had placed the town on lockdown. Journalists in particular were personae non grata. I was told of a British reporter who came as a guest of the wife of a local pastor and was turned back at this checkpoint.
The Chibok native, Reverend Titus Pona, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Borno State chapter, had promised that a local pastor would wait for me at the checkpoint and take me in as his guest. When I got the pastor on the phone, he made excuses and said he couldn’t meet me. Now my fate rested on the mood of the soldiers. Abbas, whose hometown, Lassa, was only about thirty minutes from Chibok, said he had lots of friends here, and concocted a new story: We were coming from Lassa to visit his friends, one of whom had just gotten married. And there was the taciturn Michael of the JTF as backup if the new story failed.
And so, once more we got out of the car and approached the soldiers who were seated under a giant tamarind tree by the roadside. With them were three civilian JTF members with their Dane guns and knives tied on ropes around their waists. Michael identified himself and handed over his ID card. Next, Abbas handed over his driver’s license and mentioned the name of his friend who we were ostensibly visiting. The soldier gave a noncommittal nod and turned to me. I handed over my State of Virginia driver’s license.
“America,” he said.
“I am Nigerian,” I said. “But I live in America.”
“Mistah Americana,” he said.
“Actually, it’s more like Nigeriana,” I said, not sure where this was going. But he seemed suddenly to relax. The other soldiers were laughing and echoing, “Americana.” Now I noticed how young they were: None of them could have been over twenty-five. They were just kids, sent here to fight a brutal enemy who relished capturing soldiers alive and slaughtering them like rams for propaganda videos. They were clustered around the one holding my driver’s license, taking turns looking at it. The mood had lifted.
“So, what do you do in America?”
“I teach,” I said. “I am a professor.”
“Ah, Professor Americana.” I laughed with them. Professor Americana. Why not. He returned my license and waved us through.
Checkpoints weren’t only for regulating traffic—they also controlled the flow of the narrative surrounding the kidnapping. Propaganda was an important part of the war against Boko Haram, and the government wanted to ensure its version of events was always the definitive one. In December 2015, seven months after his election, President Buhari had gone on the BBC and declared a “technical” victory over Boko Haram. His information minister, Lai Mohammed, backed up the president’s claim by leading a group of thirty-three journalists to parts of Borno State retaken by the military, as proof of Boko Haram’s imminent defeat. He said the military had “so degraded the capacity of Boko Haram that the terrorists can no longer hold on to any territory just as they can no longer carry out any spectacular attack.” This claim was received with skepticism.
In a move clearly calculated to undermine the government’s claim, Boko Haram launched a series of spectacular attacks a few days later. Two suicide bombers struck a market in the town of Madagali in Adamawa State, killing more than twenty-five people. In neighboring Maiduguri several attacks killed more than thirty people and injured over a hundred. Although the Buhari government’s claim was partly true—the group had been significantly degraded, and most of its captured territory had been retaken—most observers knew it’d take many years to defeat the group.
One of the defining characteristics of the group has been its special talent for resurrection, particularly after crushing defeats.
Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, or “the People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad,” was founded by the cleric Mohammed Yusuf, who followed Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist Salafist doctrine and called for the overthrow of the secular Nigerian government. Boko Haram is the group’s nickname, and very loosely translates to “Western education is abhorrent,” a centerpiece in Yusuf’s teachings. Around 2002 he set up a complex in Maiduguri; his group was rather unremarkable during its first years of existence, despite Yusuf’s
