How to Effectively Defeat Boko Haram

The only way to effectively contain the Boko Haram menace is first by having a good knowledge of their modus operandi and thereafter deploying a sustainable winning strategy, reckons Saheed Ahmad Rufai

There is a growing discomfort over the claims and counter-claims concerning the fall of the Boko Haram Movement between the Presidency and the insurgents.

Towards the close of December, 2016, it was widely broadcast from official quarters in Nigeria that the insurgents had been “effectively” defeated. The leadership of the Movement, too, wasted no time in demonstrating beyond any doubt, through a video clip released almost instantaneously, that the baseless announcement by the federal government was only a continuation of its veiled misinformation and deception of Nigerians.

The current leader of the Movement, Abubakar Shekau, who had been “killed” many times, specifically alluded to the Army’s claim that “there is no big Boko Haram Commander alive in Sambisa Forest” as all of them were said to have been wiped out by the Nigerian troops. Shekau unequivocally questioned the rationale behind the government’s false claim to having “crushed” the group when it was not even close to that.

The unfolding scenario lays credence to Adelakun’s recent allusion to “past similar cases of premature announcements of Boko Haram’s defeat” and the submission that “this announcement is a mere cliff-hanger; more episodes are coming”.

It would be recalled that during the last presidential electioneering, General Muhammad Buhari (Rtrd, now President) scored a significant political point through his promise to terminate the Boko Haram insurgency within six months of his take-over. Probably desperate to actualise this electoral promise, the presidency declared in December, 2015 that the Boko Haram insurgents had been “technically” (not effectively) defeated.
As if to quickly declare the presidency a Liar Entity, the Movement struck in the same month killing 20 in a mosque bombing in Adamawa on December 21, 2015 and killing 16 in an inferno in Kimba, Borno on Christmas day.

Early in the new year, and specifically on January 8, 2016, a Boko Haram suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at a mosque in Kolofata, Far North Cameroon, killing 2 and injuring one, repeating same in another mosque after five days (January 13, 2016) in Kouyape, also Far North Cameroon, killing 12 and injuring one, and recording yet another one at another mosque after another five days (January 18, 2016), killing four.

From February 13, 2016 till date, there have been multiple Boko Haram attacks in Borno and its environs including the one in which worshippers were forced into a mosque and shot, leaving several fatalities and casualties including Nigerian Army’s most gallant commander, Muhammed Abu Ali a lieutenant colonel, Major D.S Erasmus, Lt. Col. K. Yusuf and several senior officers, who were killed by the insurgents between September 25 and December, 2016.

This discourse conjectures that Nigeria does not know the enemy she is fighting. It also conjectures that Nigeria seems somewhat insensitive to the Boko Haram ideology and recruitment strategies. Again, it conjectures that Nigeria’s counter-terrorist strategy is essentially military, a kind of fire-for-fire approach, and neither sufficiently ideological nor adequately orientational. The fact that Boko Haram is not a standing army is expected to give the Nigerian troops a smooth passage!

There however is a grossly unstrategic approach to intelligence, on the part of the Nigerian troops. I shall engage critically with these four conjectures through some theoretical explanations with a view to demonstrating that firearms, (which have been Nigeria’s only ammunition) alone cannot defeat Boko Haram who, at times, prove more militarily sophisticated and battle-strategic than the Nigerian troops.

The central theme of Boko Haram message was that Islam is averse to Western secular education. In a similar token, the group maintained that evangelism, which is being deceitfully given the colouring of Western education, is Islamically unacceptable.

It may be reiterated here that this particular anti-Western education stance cannot be regarded as an initiative of Muhammad Yusuf, given the fact that literature is replete with information concerning the apprehension of Northern Nigerian Islamic scholars, who had been unrepentantly critical of Western education, which they saw as a potential instrument for possible conversion of their unsuspecting children and wards to Christianity.

As time progressed, illiterates and jobless youths flocked around Muhammad Yusuf to embrace his doctrines. Some of the educated ones among his followers were said to have torn off their certificates in demonstration of their total commitment to the path of Yusuf.

Yusuf’s claim was that their mission was to fight the Taghut system and enthrone the Shari’ah in the country. However, the group was able to attract to itself few members of some of the most influential families in Maiduguri, such as Maikanti Indimi and Bana Mulima. According to Muhammad Murtada, who wrote in 2010, Yusuf’s persistent attack on anything western made him a hero among his followers.

As recently pointed out by Borom, the unrepentant nature of Boko Haram Movement suggests the outcome of their recruitment strategy where established members are charged with the responsibility of recruiting others by seeking to identify those who are most likely to agree to act, if asked, and to further the cause.

This way, the leadership of the Movement charges its rational prospectors with the use of intelligence to find likely targets after which recruiters provide further information and deploy inducements to persuade recruits to say “yes”.

This strategy which relies on social bonds and relationships has been a source of strength to the Movement, especially with regards to its ever-expanding recruitment networks. It would be an appreciable counter-terrorist strategy for the Presidency to investigate the specific attractions that have prompted recruits to continue to join the Boko Haram insurgents.

It saddens that Nigerians are not given concrete evidence of the progress made so far in the fight against Boko Haram. Declarations of victory were made but no strategic documents, action plans or procedural maps of Boko Haram have been presented to the public as having been uncovered from the purportedly conquered territories in Gwazo or elsewhere.

If analysed well, such documents have the potential to shed light on several aspects of Boko Haram operations like their recruitment strategy, registration procedure, deployment and redeployment system, mode of military operations, training and retraining method, intelligence gathering and infiltration of the larger society, possible associates, acquaintances and sympathetic citizens at the corridors of power and elsewhere, sources of funding, remuneration and gratification arrangement, and other vital pieces of information none of which Nigeria does not seem to have been able to access.

Social scientists have proffered four explanations concerning how Boko Haram see or relate with themselves namely depersonalization, social cohesion, conformity and obedience, as well as bipolar worldview. The depersonalization dimension may be explained by the fact that the Boko Haram insurgents may see themselves as interchangeable members of an organization and are therefore motivated to make uppermost in their hearts the interests and goals of the organization.

As regards the social cohesion dimension, it may be explained by the collective identity shared by members of the group as such identity binds them together and promotes positive relationships and the spirit of togetherness. The conformity and obedience factor concerns the need for an unrestricted identification with terrorist organizations through an unrestricted identification with the norms that guide the member’s behaviour.

Concerning bipolar worldview in connection with the Boko Haram Movement, it is interesting to note that the insurgents nurse disdain against and develop negative feelings about people outside their group, as a result of the motivation they derive from their unrepentant identification with their group. The implication of this in the estimation of terrorists is that the world is divided between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

They see themselves as bastions of the values and interests of an ethnic or religious community. It is theoretically predictable that the self-identification of terrorists as members of a much larger community will help them to fulfill their avowed goals. This may be an explanation for the unrepentant nature of Boko Haram and a systematic counter-ideological orientation may prove efficacious in this regard.

It is not out of place to situate the Boko Haram Movement within the broad area of fundamentalism which scholars have identified as the most marginal of the dominant streams of Islamic thinking in contemporary Nigeria. They associate it with anti-system movements that express aversion to the established political authorities which are regarded as being grossly secular. These movements are not only opposed to the government but also to established religious elites whom they perceive as lethargic.

According to David Chalk, the fundamentalists cite the dysfunctional conditions of the secular Nigerian state as a reason to challenge current moral and political order through religion. Whether Boko Haram are sincerely or deceitful in such a claim, does not invalidate the perception that this is a good indoctrination that has been working to their favour for some time now and there may be need to urgently design counter-actions along that line.

In a recent study by David, he argues that a state’s inability to fulfill its obligations to the citizenry constitutes an enabling environment for terrorism. He adds that the responsibilities of a state comprise “adequate discharge of political good and social welfare to its citizens and effective territorial control given its monopoly of the use of force” and argues that the state’s failure to discharge these responsibilities may pave way for “various forms of politically motivated violence including terrorism”
Describing a failed state as one that is unable to discharge specific roles that are regarded as functions of a properly functioning state, David rationalizes that the failed state thesis has potential to enhance our understanding of conflicts in the country as occasioned by the rebellion of the so called terrorist or extremist group.

The Boko Haram experience may also be understood in the context of the relation/vengeance theory which focuses on inter-group conflict in factors such as economic, political, sociological, religious, and historical relationship in a society and proffers explanation to the “We” versus “Them” dimensions of inter-group relationship which is often “characterised by some enmity perception among groups based on the aforementioned factors”.

Yet, the rational choice theory seems to be of more relevance to the Boko Haram question. This theory presupposes that motivation for terrorism is tied around utility maximization. The underlining thinking in the main behavioural assumption concerning individuals’ participation in collective terrorist action is that the cost of participation is less than the benefits.

This analysis is not oblivious of the fact that “given that the benefits accruing from collective actions is hardly enjoyed by, and restricted to, the individual as well as the fact that the individual’s effort is quite significant when the group is large in size, the question regarding why individual would participate in such group or its collective actions remains unanswered in the first place, using economic perspective.

It is too simplistic to conclude that it is either the individuals are irrational or have some ulterior motivation in taking a big risk and sacrificing their interests for a group’s objective despite the absence of any personal benefit.

Several sectors have to collaborate with the Armed Forces if the Boko Haram defeat must materialize. Prominent among them is the education sector whose intervention may take the form of what I already formulated and characterized as anti-insurgency curriculum conceptual and design principles for anti-extremist education in Nigerian senior secondary schools.
– Dr. Rufai is the acting Dean, Faculty of Education, Sokoto State University

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This discourse conjectures that Nigeria does not know the enemy she is fighting. It also conjectures that Nigeria seems somewhat insensitive to the Boko Haram ideology and recruitment strategies. Again, it conjectures that Nigeria’s counter-terrorist strategy is essentially military, a kind of fire-for-fire approach, and neither sufficiently ideological nor adequately orientational. The fact that Boko Haram is not a standing army is expected to give the Nigerian troops a smooth passage