This is an article that I authored in August 2009, that was published by Nigeria Village Square in regards to terrorism and Boko Haram incident in Nigeria. In this write up, I looked at the Nigeria intelligence issues and lack of it thereof. I also analyzed the web of corruption and bad ruler ship of Nigeria and its potential down side for Nigeria’s security.
I believe this is still relevant in today’s escalated terrorism attempt and as such a good reminder to Nigerians and security operatives of the fight ahead if Nigeria will remain safe, secure and at the same time what that will mean to Nigeria’s battered image in the global community. All of this will be looked at in my next upcoming write up.
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Nigeria is a country that should be rich on prodigious oil reserves but instead is getting poorer by the day according to the Associated Press report. The report went further to indicate that Islamic radicals are seeking to impose a Taliban style regime in the north, and that Angola has surpassed Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil producer. While the current United States’ military attention is focused on removing possible al-Qaida cells in Somalia, some analysts say terrorist threats from other parts of Africa such as in northern Nigeria should also be closely monitored. Also, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, titled, “Prevent the rise of Another Taliban”, it posits’ that, “with Washington’s focus so heavily centered on Iraq and Afghanistan, it is important not to overlook other regions that could descend into sanctuaries for the next generation of terrorist.” It went further to state that [o]ne African country that should seriously concern Washington is Nigeria.”
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states that terrorism is, “any activity that involves an act that: is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; and … must also appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it is associated with an activity as designed to be subjective. Generally speaking the target of a terrorist episode are not the victims who are killed or mimed in the attack but the Federal Government that is intended to be destabilized.
According to Nadine Gurr and Benjamin Cole in their book titled, The New Face of Terrorism, it noted that, “terrorist groups generally seek specific political, religious or social objectives, and will employ violence to achieve those objectives in a number of complimentary and often interlinked strategies and tactics that are designed to intimidate, and coerce government, increase the cost for the state of continuing the conflict, and to win a political victory over the state.” Terrorist use violence as a means to generate propaganda, to demonstrate to their constituency, their enemies and the world at large, that their cause is still alive and that the group is still active, and that is exactly what the militant Islamist group is doing in Northern Nigeria. Recently, a number of suspected Jihadist have been arrested by police and the Nigerian State Security in recent years, but unfortunately according to the Jamestown Foundation publication: Terrorism Monitor Vol: 6 issue: 12, “those cases have dragged on in courts and there had been no convictions.” Five Islamist militants with suspected links to al-Qa’ida went on trial in Abuja, for plotting attacks on the government (VOA, December 9, 2007). The men were arrested in November 2007 by SSS in the Muslim North of Nigeria. Three of them had also been charged with training in Algeria with the Salafist Group for preaching and Combat (GSPC) between 2005 and August 2007. The GSPC renamed itself al-Qaida the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in January 2007. Also, the northern part of Nigeria has witnessed some Islamist violence in the past. There are several armed Islamist groups throughout the northern region. These groups include the Hisbah, the Zamfara State vigilant Services (ZSVS), Al Sunna Wal Jamma (“followers of the prophet”, also known as “the Nigerian Taliban”), Mohammed Yusuf Movement (Yusuffiya), Boko Haram (“education is sin”).
Bard E. O’Neil in his book titled, Insurgency and Terrorism, posited that “on the other hand, insurgents carry out attacks to provoke arbitrary and indiscriminate government reprisals against the population, calculating that this will increase resentment and win populace support against the government. There had been some ascertainable grudges against the government, however, in Nigeria, religious intolerance is becoming more vocal because the government had failed the society and because corruption is endemic, as such religion is left to religion as long as it does not affect Abuja.
The connection between religion and terrorism is not new, more than two thousand years ago the first acts of what we now describe as “terrorism” were perpetrated by religious fanatics. The religious motive is overriding and indeed, the religious imperative for terrorism is the most important defining characteristic of terrorist activity today. As Bruce Hoffman wrote in his book, inside terrorism “[o]r the religious terrorist, violence is first and for most a sacramental act or divine duty executed in direct response to some theological demand or imperative. Terrorism thus assumes a transcendental dimension, and its perpetrators therefore often disregard the political, moral, or practical constraints that their actions might cause.”
For Nigeria to have an honest and effective fight against this violent Islamist terrorist uprising, first Nigeria had to understand why members are recruited and what binds them together as well. In the case of Nigeria, it may be mostly linked to inefficient governance by the government, corruption, lack of social and basic amenities, and lack of security and so on. Corruption in essence sums up the rest, since without corruption most of the other basic societal ills might have been mitigated effectively. Marc Sageman in his research on why people join terrorist networks in his book titled, “Understanding Terror Networks”, recognized age; faith; and place of recruitment as underlining factors. Age plays a critical factor since most recruited are between the ages of 20 – 55 years of age and usually belong to the same social clique that are mostly a result of the place of worship shared together and the kind of indoctrination and exposures that existed in such areas of worship.
Nigeria must also understand the use, and limits of an effective intelligence gathering as an effective tool for counterterrorism. It is a truism that successful counterterrorism depends heavily on intelligence. On February 26, 2007, in an article that I wrote titled “Instability and Terrorism in Nigeria”, published by Nigeria World News. I indicated at that time based on unclassified soft intelligence that al-Qa’ida is infiltrating Nigeria from Niger Republic and the other like countries and warned Nigeria to be ready and proactive, but unfortunately what we saw was governmental State Terrorism enablers [for governments failure to act to curtail the spread of this terrorism, it unintentionally enabled it to foster]. In the last two years after that article was written, we have had many arrest of many Islamic preachers from other countries that came to Nigeria to teach Islam of hate and destruction. Based on the available data on illiteracy level in the North, the government cannot afford such teachings especially given the at risk age grades recognized above. It is safer, more cost effective, and a national security priority to target the unwelcomed teachers by arresting and prosecuting them accordingly than to allow the teachings to filter through and at the process waste more than 500 innocent Nigerian lives that could have been effectively rehabilitated. Nigeria government had to understand that passivity in the face of terrorism can be deadly. In conducting the September 11 attacks, al-Qa’ida recruited and raised money in Germany with relative little interference, enjoyed financial support from many Saudis unobstructed by the government in Riyadh, planned operations in Malaysia, and sent operatives in America. None of these governments are sponsors of terrorism or al-Qa’ida, but their actions proved as important as, if not more important, than the haven the group enjoyed in Afghanistan in enabling al-Qa’ida to conduct the attacks.
Nigeria to be unified and effective must employ a workable counterterrorism policy even though no single approach makes an effective counterterrorism policy. The policy must have several elements that must exclude lack of prosecution of government allies that use terror, the weak, and religion in order to propagate their political agenda. Part of the problem is also, the terrorist groups that are operational due to politicians need to have them around. As I have written in the past, once the elections are over, the elements that this political class had put in place becomes “Lords” unto themselves and as such difficult to be put back into the pocket assuming the political machinery that put them in place will want to do so, they couldn’t. There is also a great need to reduce or contain the capabilities of terrorist groups to conduct attacks, and this work involves a lot of intelligence, legal, and other counterterrorism instruments.
• The His bah group is an Islamic vigilant group that support adherence to Shari’ a. This group does not carry firearms, but are more likely to carry sticks and wipes as well as knives and curved weapons with a blade known as “barandami”. His bah group was sponsored by state governments that support Shari’ a in the North and drew there membership from the army of unemployed in those states and they are considered as instrumental in the outcome of the elections in those northern states where they operate.
• The Governor of Zamfara State sponsored the Zamfara State Vigilant Services (ZSVS). They wear red uniforms and carry pistols along with machete and whips and can arrest anyone that contravenes Islamic law.
• Al-Sunna Wal Jamma was formed around 2002 and its objective was to establish in Nigeria an Islamic state. Its adherents are predominantly Maiduguri University students from the northeastern part of Nigeria. So fervent is its adherence to the fundamentals of Islam that locals had dubbed it “the Taliban” in recognition of the groups strict pasture. Indeed, Al-Sunna once replaced Nigerian flag with the Afghan flag on a State building briefly occupied during an altercation with the police.
• Boko Haram (“education is sin”) – This militant group opposes western education and had been campaigning for the imposition of Shari’ a (Islamic law) in the entire 36 states of the federation.
The intentions of terrorist groups (what the leaders of the groups that already exist chose to do) raise some of the same motives and issues that are relevant to terrorism roots (why terrorists groups arise in the first place and why people join them.) Finally, defense is a critical area where the Nigerian government can invest in to bolster its fight against religious instability. Physical defenses are elements in their own rights in saving lives from terrorism, even where they do not deter. And lives are saved even when attacks are not defeated entirely. Physical defenses against terrorism need to be considered in conjunction with roots of terrorism. That is, security measures that Nigeria government and the military and police put in place should be assessed with an eye not only on how well they would foil an attack but also on how they may affect broader perceptions of and resentment towards the government. Nigeria government also had to understand that Money plays a great role in states instability. As I have written in the past, Nigeria is a signatory to most of the United Nations Anti Terrorism Financial initiatives. The government had to make an honest effort to adhere to the tenets of such existing instruments. What we have now are situations where the government look the other way to enable political allies to perpetuate corruption, money laundering and so on at the process makes it easy for terrorism to be effectively funded, maintained and perpetrated. Money has often been described as a key to terrorist activities and as such counter terrorism had to make an effective effort to track it and to interdict it, and once that is done, it will reduce the financial lifeblood hence it dries up and reduces the reach.
In conclusion, Nigerian government had to make an honest assessment on whether the security of the nation is a top priority. If that is an affirmative priority, then counterterrorism measures should be enacted to effectively tackle the spreading surge of religious terrorist groups that are taking roots in Nigeria’s polite. Counterterrorism units must be created and experts on terrorism intelligence gathering and analysis must be retained, new ones trained and data routinely collected, stored and analyzed for an effective use. Corruption also should be aggressively addressed since without that, any fight against other areas will become ineffective. Bottom line is – Nigerian government must have to become serious or they will be on the loosing end even before the war began and as such may become another Somalia, or Afghanistan.
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