Was the Nigerian 2015 presidential election a victory for Boko Haram or for democracy?

The ousting of Dr Goodluck Jonathan marked the first time in Nigerian history that a member of the opposition unseated an incumbent in fair and peaceful elections. The smooth transition of power, uncharacteristic of Nigeria, was hailed by the international community as a victory. However, did Muhammadu Buhari win because Jonathan lost or did Jonathan lose because Buhari won? This article argues that Jonathan's growing unpopularity gave Buhari the win, and that Boko Haram played a major role in the president's sinking support. The 2015 presidential election was thus a win for both democracy and Boko Haram.     

Boko Haram and the challenges of Nigeria's war on terror

Boko Haram terrorism has been recognized by Nigerian President Jonathan as the most threatening and complex security issue in Nigeria since independence. In response, the Federal Government of Nigeria has committed itself to different counterterrorism measures, which are largely dominated by “hard politics” and military mobilization. Spending heavily on defense to upgrade military hardware and train personnel in a counterterrorism role, Nigeria has also boosted its strategic importance in the “Global War on Terror”. However, this attempt has become unpopular as it has failed to contain Boko Haram within a short time frame and has made insufficient headway against unabated terror, with human rights costs among the host communities and amidst a surge of stakeholders' discordance. As a matter of concern, this article seeks to assess Boko Haram as an opponent in Nigeria's war on terror (WOT) and to ascertain the challenges the country faces, the alternative measures open to it, and possible ways forward.     

2015 and the survival of the Nigerian State

Nigeria is currently faced with serious domestic challenges. While the state is not officially at war, it is standing on the precipice, especially with the eruption of violence occasioned by the emergence of the Boko Haram sect and the tenuous peace in the Niger Delta. With the 2015 general elections on the horizon, fears of further violence and disintegration are rife, more so because of the debate over who occupies the Presidential Villa at Abuja. President Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, seems poised for a comeback even amidst the vociferous challenge posed by the political elites of northern Nigeria. This article looks at the different scenarios that might play out in 2015. It analyses the challenges of the survival of the Nigerian state, and makes some policy recommendations that Nigeria and its people need to put into place in order to ensure its survival beyond 2015.     

Ethnic crises and national security in Nigeria

The article focuses on the interface between ethnicity and national security in Nigeria. It critically explores the negative mobilization of ethnicity in Nigeria's fourth republic, and how this has been shaping (and reshaping) the democratization process, particularly in the management of cooperation and conflict over contestations for power and other resources. The re-democratization of Nigeria in 1999 has been preceded with high expectations of meaningful reductions in the high level of insecurity witnessed under the long years of military suzerainty. However, this has not been the case. Rather, what is obtained is an increase in national insecurity on a much larger scale. This article argues that one of the banes of national security in the Nigerian state is ethnic politics, which continues to witness changes in context and character with grave consequences for the future of democracy. The central argument is that ethnicity has always been a major driver of politics and conflicts in Nigeria and the trend is not likely to change anytime soon.     

PUBLIC ATTITUDES REGARDING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION AND POLICING/CRIME

The incessant bomb attacks by the Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram elements among other popular movements, against the people and government targets, have unmistakably put Nigeria on the global terrorist nations’ map. The grievances of these groups which are political, economic and religious may not be unconnected from the design and operation of the federation; this paper thus examines the constitutional provisions, and political and economic attributes, of the Nigerian federation in the Fourth Republic with a view to discovering why a mechanism put in place with the objective of achieving interethnic unity, democratic stability and socio-economic development has worked to enthrone crisis, violence and disintegrative tendencies in the country. This paper argues that the current reign of terror is a manifestation of a more serious de-linkage and inconsonance between the state and the people, with popular movements providing an alternative platform for spaces, voices and benefits from the streets and away from the state. The paper concludes that the hope for federal renewal lies in the ability of the current handlers of the Nigerian statecraft to marry decentralist constitutional reforms with an agenda for mass-based socio-economic development of the country.     

Peace-building or structural violence? Deconstructing the aftermath of Nigeria/Cameroon boundary demarcation

ABSTRACT

There is a great conviction that the International Court of Justice’s ruling in 2002 on the Bakassi boundary dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon, and Nigeria’s decision to obey the ruling may have stopped a fierce inter-state war over the boundary. Indeed, many then ascribed to the whole boundary demarcation process as peacebuilding, disregarding the structural changes marked by the violence of forced migration. This article explores how the boundary delimitation has produced particular sorts of structural violence characterised by state neglect, loss of livelihoods and destitution. Thus, the article argues that although a full-blown war was avoided, the socio-economic conditions of the Nigerian populations on both sides of the border were not adequately considered and guaranteed as part of the peace-building agenda. It further argues that Nigeria, like many post-colonial states with the concentration of developments in major cities, neglects rural and border communities. Thus, the border communities accommodating the former Bakassi residents have further degenerated into ‘ill-governed’ spaces. This article uses structural violence as a framework to analyse the primary and secondary data to provide some deeper insights into the issues of violence being experienced by the local populations living on both sides of the demarcated border.     

THE PROHIBITION OF BLINDING AS A METHOD OF WARFARE

Abstract

From the 1982 Maitatsine Uprising to the 2009 Kala Kato Riot, Nigeria has been bedevilled by ethno-religious uprisings with devastating human and material losses. In almost all these crises the police and the military have featured prominently as agencies tasked with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and suppressing insurrection. While it was not alleged that they precipitated some of these risings perhaps in their attempts to stem or nip them in the bud, they have been accused of escalating the conflict either by their slow and inadequate responses, their partisanship and their arbitrary responses, or by their slackness in managing the crises and their aftermath. However, but for their efforts the security basis of the Nigerian state would have been considerably compromised by religious fundamentalism given the level of preparedness of the groups involved, their resistance and, more importantly, the recurrent nature of the uprisings. This article reflects on the management of ethno-religious uprisings in Nigeria by the police and the military. It considers the nature of the security agencies' involvement in the crises and examines the factors both within the agencies and in the larger Nigerian society which have aided or hindered their effective management of the conflicts.     

Turning the tides of war: The impact of private military and security companies on Nigeria’s counterinsurgency against Boko Haram

Since the 2003 war in Iraq, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have become increasingly legitimate actors in modern conflicts. Despite this normative shift, rumours in March 2015 regarding the use of South African mercenaries in Nigeria to combat Boko Haram insurgents caused an international outrage, while the Nigerian government remained nonchalantly silent on the matter. This article investigates the impact of mercenaries on the conflict in the last six months of the Jonathan government. Using primary and secondary qualitative research, it assesses the role that PMSCs played in Nigeria’s counterinsurgency strategy, along with the ensuing reaction of international and local media to the outsourcing of violence to foreign companies. The article concludes that – notwithstanding the improved image of PMSCs in the world, and the actual impact of the contractors on the Nigerian counterinsurgency effort – the stigma of mercenaries continues to plague the industry, particularly on the African continent.     

Causal analysis of radical Islamism in northern Nigeria's Fourth Republic

This article attempts an agential explanation of the raison d'être for Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal Jihad, also known as Boko Haram (meaning Western education is forbidden), an Islamist sect that came to public consciousness in 2009 after the extra-judicial killing of its leader. Conceptualising Nigeria as a weak state, the article identifies the failed prebendal relationship between politicians in northern Nigeria and members of Boko Haram, and the extra-judicial killing on 30 July 2009 of Mohammed Yusuf, as agential causations of the current wave of radical Islamism. The article argues for the need to transcend the orthodox interpretation of the current wave of Islamist terrorism being demonstrated by the Nigerian state to a more nuanced approach that pays attention to the essentialist, psychological, political and economic perspectives of Islamist terrorism at the structural and individual levels.     

Exploring the subsidiarity principle in policing and the operations of the Nigeria Police Force

The provisions of the 1999 Constitution, which recognises the existence of a single police force and forbids parallel police organisations, have oftentimes generated controversies among actors in the Nigerian federal polity. Rising insecurity precipitates lingering questions on the utility and adequacy of a single, highly centralised and centrally controlled police force given Nigeria’s geographic vastness and demographic diversity. Conversely, arguments have also dwelt on the dangers of fragmentation considering Nigeria’s psychosocial, economic and political nature. This article attempts to balance these arguments by analysing policing and the operations of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) through the lens of the subsidiarity principle. Subsidiarity is a governance principle in federations, captured in the founding documents of the European Union (EU), which prescribes that governmental powers, authorities and duties should be held by the tier that can best perform them equitably, efficiently, effectively, suitably and based on interest and need. Drawing largely on interviews with purposively selected police scholars, political actors, civil society organisations and police personnel, the paper contends that this principle offers a pragmatic solution to the perennial problems of intergovernmental frictions on the use of the police within the context of governance in the Nigerian federation.     

No war,no peace

The armed conflict over crude petroleum oil in the Niger Delta has raged for several decades. A host of peace initiatives have been adopted by the Nigerian state to address it, but with minimal impact. The amnesty offer to repentant militias in 2009 by President Umaru Yar'Adua's administration is one of the most recent and broadest peace initiatives by the Nigerian government intended to end the general tendency to warfare and the absence of peace in the Niger Delta. This article, based on secondary sources of data, examines the components of the amnesty, its critical problems and their implications for peacebuilding in the Niger Delta. It finds that though the programme has engendered relative peace, the issues and grievances that occasioned the general tendency to warfare and absence of peace in the region – such as inequitable distribution of oil revenue, environmental degradation, and underdevelopment – are not properly articulated in the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration components of the programme. Thus, it holds that the prevailing situation in the region largely approximates a swinging pendulum of no war, no peace.     

‘The only good jihadist is a dead jihadist’:Boko Haram and de-radicalization around Lake Chad

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the shortcomings of the “de-radicalization doctrine” in sub-Saharan Africa. The issues raised are illustrated by the war against Boko Haram, which involves Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Relying on interviews with security officers, insurgents, civil servants, displaced people, humanitarian workers and Muslim and Christian clerics in Nigeria, Niger and Chad since 2005, the investigation shows that the four states focused on repression rather than demobilisation programs in prison or outdoors. The Boko Haram crisis is mainly a story of mismanagement. The article thus challenges the assumptions of the “de-radicalization doctrine” in Muslim Africa South of the Sahara. First, attempts to de-radicalize jihadi terrorists tend to focus too much on religious fanaticism and the exegesis of the Quran. Secondly, they are neither feasible nor efficient. Finally, they obscure priorities that are more important to counter extremism and demobilize insurgents.     

Foliage and violence: Interrogating forests as a security threat in Nigeria

The discourse on security challenges in Nigeria has generated much scholarly insight. What is yet to be sufficiently interrogated is the place of forests in the problem. Situating the problem within the context of global occurrences, the study explores security threats posed by the poor management of some Nigerian forests, which has resulted in invasion and exploitation by criminals who engage in militancy, kidnapping, ritual killing, armed robbery, cattle rustling and cannabis cultivation. Using the theory of ungoverned spaces as a foundation, the study locates the major reason for the invasion and use of forested landscape for criminal activities in the Nigerian state, the presence of the authorities in these sanctuaries is either non-existent or, at best, sporadic.     

Unrestricted warfare: Review essay I

During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), France chose to support Biafra, but only on a limited scale, providing mercenaries and obsolete weaponry to Ojukwu's regime. General Charles de Gaulle's assistance to Ojukwu was conditioned by the French military drawdown after 1961, the increased power of French secret services on the continent, and the interventions in Katanga (1960–1963), Gabon (1964) and Chad (1968–1972). France supported Biafra primarily to protect its former colonies from Nigeria, stop Soviet subversion and acquire an economic foothold in the oil-rich Niger Delta. De Gaulle chose a limited strategy for two reasons. If Biafra won the war, France would be Biafra's greatest ally. If Nigeria won the war, France could extricate itself from the situation relatively easily and re-establish relations with the Nigerian government, which is what ultimately occurred.     

REGIONAL TRAFFICK

That West African criminal networks have contributed to the growth of organised crime in Southern Africa is clear. Though often remarked upon, these networks are seldom understood. This essay assesses the information available on how these groups, mainly Nigerian, have penetrated and operated in the region. Technology, mobile phone and the internet, for instance, as well as a reliance on close-knit ethnic groups enable networks to expand their illicit activities very rapidly and at the expense of national law enforcement agencies. Affected by economic decline in Nigeria and blaming that decline on the West, some Nigerian networks view their crimes as justifiable and legitimate business. South Africa, since the end of apartheid is the main focus but Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia are important points in the chain. Drug trafficking, advance fee fraud, kidnapping, cheque and credit card fraud, stolen goods and trafficking in humans are all part of the repertoire.     

Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria

Since the July 2009 Boko Haram terrorist outburst in Nigeria, there have been increasing questions on the phenomenon in the country. There has not been any substantial analysis on the emergence of the Boko Haram group and its terrorist activities in Nigeria as the out-rage continues. This study is advanced to explain the phenomenon of Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria. It employs the levels of analysis framework popular in the field of international relations to explain the terrorism at three major levels: individual, state and international. The study relies on dependable news reports, which include interviews with key actors relevant to the subject matter, and finds that Boko Haram terrorism has its roots in the ideology and motivations of its founder and members, the failures and deficiencies of the Nigerian state, and the modern trend of religious terrorism in the international system.     

Unsolved murders and the investigative failures of the Nigerian police force: Security and sociopolitical implications

This article focuses on the systemic failures of the Nigerian police force to unravel the mysteries surrounding homicides in the country, along with the security, social and political implications of the ongoing trend. The article draws on documented pieces of evidence of high-profile murders, along with the causes of the upsurge in murder incidences and the inhibitive factors relating to the investigative procedures of the police. The suitability of the theory of subaltern realism and the concept of third-world security predicaments in explaining the peculiarities of Nigeria’s internal security challenges is examined, along with the problems of the legitimacy of political regimes and weak borders. There is a need for the National Assembly of Nigeria to exercise its constituted powers in reawakening and supervising investigations into dormant cases of murder through its committees on police affairs, public safety and national security. The police should check its organisational failures, which may be related to using the wrong investigative approaches, low levels of information, limited resources, corrupt practices, and pressure to obtain quick results.     

How and why Boko Haram blossomed: examining the fatal consequences of treating a purposive terrorist organisation as less so

Boko Haram (BH) is an insurgent group that operates mainly in northeastern Nigeria. Its stated aim is to establish an Islamic state, and it employs terrorism as its strategy. Earlier interests of security analysts centred on the drivers of BH uprising and the possibility of its internationalisation. Today's concerns relate more to why the rebellion has lasted this long. In toeing the same line, this article demonstrates that BH is a purposive terror group against which the government has evolved no viable strategy. It examines some gains of BH over the past six years and how it benefitted from the government's underestimation of its capacity and determination. It concludes that to effectively engage BH, the Nigerian government must revaluate its threat and sincerely pursue an expanded strategy beyond the current military-centric approach. To be effective, government's response must be packaged in such a way as to enhance human security in the region.     

Comparative analysis of Arab Spring determinants

The Arab Spring, a pro-democracy uprising that has been sweeping through North Africa and the entire Arab world since 2010, has been described as a cataclysmic revolutionary wave that has left the overthrow of political regimes in its wake. Studies have comprehensively x-rayed the political and socio-economic circumstances that gave rise to the uprising. Apart from the impact of the uprising on political developments and democratic governance in the Arab world in particular and the world in general, the circumstances that resulted in the revolutions constitute empirical security implications for Nigeria. This is the focus of this article. Using the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) and other selected indicators, this article draws a comparative analysis of the key factors that led to the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, pointing out areas of social and security tensions in Nigeria. Based on these findings, it points out the urgency of and imperative for security sector reforms in Nigeria.     

A Survey of Lebanese Shi'i attitudes towards Hezbollah

The Taliban has recently re-emerged on the Afghan scene with vengeance. Five years after being defeated in Afghanistan by a US coalition, the resurgent Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda, are mounting an increasingly virulent insurgency, especially in the east and south, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Taliban now represents a significant challenge to the survival of President Hamid Karzai's government. This article assesses the narrative strategy the Taliban has employed to garner support with the Afghan people. Specifically, this paper assesses the narratives of Taliban shabnamah, commonly referred to as ‘night letters’ in an effort unravel what the Taliban represents.