Boko Haram

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from August 5 to August 11, 2017. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.     • August 5: A suicide bomber killed himself and eight others in Ouro-Kessoum, Cameroon. Boko Haram was suspected. • August 5: Nigerian soldiers killed twelve Boko Haram militants and lost two soldiers to an IED in Bama, Borno. • August 5: Nigerian soldiers killed one Boko Haram militant in Madagali, Adamawa. • August 5: Boko Haram killed thirty-one fishermen in Kukawa, Borno. • August 6: Gunmen killed fifteen in a church in Ekwusigo, Anambra.   • August 6: Nigerian troops killed two Boko Haram militants in Kala/Balge, Borno. • August 7: Nigerian troops killed six Boko Haram militants in Dikwa, Borno. • August 7: Gunmen kidnapped sixteen from a bus in Emuoha, Rivers. • August 10: Boko Haram killed "scores" (estimated at forty) in Madagali, Adamawa.

Since 2009, the Nigerian security services have regularly reported that they have killed Boko Haram leader and warlord Abubakar Shekau. However, Shekau, or at least a Shekau-like figure, would then surface in a Boko Haram video. He seems to have appeared most recently in a June video, but he was not shown in a Boko Haram video this April. Shekau has been largely absent from the media for more than a year, fueling speculation that he is dead. Some in the security services speculate that Shekau’s appearances in Boko Haram’s vidoes are in fact the result of Shekau doubles. Nigeria chief of army staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusufu Buratai apparently thinks Shekau is alive. On July 21, he issued to his troops an “ultimatum” to deliver Abubakar Shekau, dead or alive. According to a Nigerian army statement, Buratai “has directed the Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, to capture Abubakar Shekau, the so-called and self-styled leader of Boko Haram terrorist group, dead or alive” in 40 days, or by August 30. Lafiya Dole is the code name for the Nigerian army’s counterinsurgency operation.  The Boko Haram insurgency has been underway since 2009, yet remarkably little is known about its internal organization. Shekau’s authority is not clear, and, adding to the lack of understanding, the movement appears to have developed factions. It is unclear what the tactical or operational consequences would be if the army captured or killed Shekau. Still, his elimination would be a major political victory for the Buhari administration and a general boost for Nigerian morale.   

A special Nigeria Army Board of Inquiry focusing on alleged human rights abuses reported that the American embassy and the British High Commission in Abuja have revoked or denied entry visas to certain serving or retired military officers. The board investigated charges by Amnesty International of human rights violations by the military in the fight against Boko Haram, abuses of internally displaced persons in the north east, and episodes involving the Indigenous People of Biafra. The Board report exonerated specific senior officers of charges of human rights abuses. According to the report, the Nigerian Army HQ had initially conducted an investigation into the allegations and its findings were sent “to all relevant authorities, including the U.S. authorities through the defense attaché in Washington.” However, the head of civil-military relations, Major General Nuhu Angbazo, said that the U.S. “conveyed its dissatisfaction with the report and requested that a more comprehensive inquiry be conducted.” This prompted the creation of a special board of inquiry for this purpose. It was this board that subsequently exonerated the Nigerian Army. Before the board was able to publish its investigation, however, the American and British authorities had revoked or denied visas to certain senior military personnel implicated in the allegations. The results of the board's investigation will no doubt be studied carefully in Washington and London. In the case of the United States, visa revocation is done on a case-by-case basis after a thorough, interagency process. U.S. privacy laws precludes the announcement of the names of those whose visas have been revoked or the numbers effected. Hence, knowledge of revocation usually comes from foreign sources, not American. It is encouraging that the American and British governments are successfully using visa revocation and denial as a means to call attention to the need for official and legitimate investigations into credible reports of human rights abuses, like those made by Amnesty International. It is a tool that could also be used against individuals mired in corruption. For elites, military and civilian, the ability to travel to the United States and the United Kingdom is highly valued. Impediment to that travel commands their immediate attention.

Nigeria’s acting President Yemi Osinbajo visited the northeastern city of Maiduguri twenty-four hours after multiple Boko Haram attacks killed at least eighteen people there. Osinbajo’s visit was brave as well as politically astute, demonstrating that he is not intimidated by terrorism. Another reason for his visit was to open grain distribution centers, highlighting government efforts to respond to the widespread humanitarian disaster in the region, which hosts more than two million internally displaced persons. Mindful of northern Nigerian protocol, his first stop in Maiduguri was a visit to the Shehu of Bornu, the most senior Islamic official in the northeast, and its traditional ruler. Osinbajo is receiving high marks from business leaders and many journalists, both at home and abroad, because of his economic policies–perceived as more flexible than those of President Buhari–and his general projection of engagement and competence. The Maiduguri visit will only add to this praise. Inevitably, there is speculation that he could be a strong presidential candidate in 2019. Born in 1957, Osinbajo is married to the granddaughter of Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba politician and one of the founding fathers of Nigeria, and was a successful lawyer before being elected as vice president. With a net worth over $900 thousand, Osinbajo is much richer than President Muhammadu Buhari, who declared total assets of just under $100 thousand. However, his personal wealth does not approach that of many Nigerian oligarchs, nor are there whispers of corruption. He is a Pentecostal preacher in the Redeemed Christian Church of God and has said that he remains a preacher, and is only “on loan” as the vice president. Nigerian politics is shaped by the understanding that the presidency and the vice presidency alternate every eight years between the north and the south, in effect, between Muslims and Christians. If the president is Muslim, the vice president is Christian. (Buhari is a Muslim). Under that arrangement, the Muslim north is still set to hold the presidency through the 2019 elections. However, power alternation is not mandated by law, and many Nigerians, especially in the south, will argue that this formula is no longer necessary nor desirable. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen what the north’s reaction would be to a southern Christian candidate in 2019, even if the candidate is as politically skilled as Yemi Osinbajo is proving to be.   

 Weekly update on incidents of violence in Nigeria.

This is a guest post by Sherrie Russell-Brown. Sherrie is an international lawyer, who writes about issues of gender, security, international justice and humanitarian law, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She also coordinates a collaborative group of experts dedicated to promoting research and analysis on the Sahel, and, in particular, the Boko Haram insurgency. Ahead of an all-important international donor conference, on February 24, in Oslo, Norway to mobilize greater international involvement and increased funding for the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters (DHQ) has warned the public of an alleged “new tactic” by Boko Haram. The movement is already known for using more women and girls to carry out suicide operations than any other terrorist group. However, in a statement on Friday, January 27, Director of Defense Information Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said that “female suicide bombers are now evading detection from security operatives by carrying babies on their back.” In earlier reports, he had speculated that the bombers may have only disguised their IEDs as infants. The intention in either case is the same: to enable them to pass as nursing mothers and cross a security checkpoint. Nigerian authorities who confirmed the January 13 attacks in Madagali “saw two women detonate their devices, killing themselves, two babies and four others.” Last month, the Associated Press also reported “[i]n a particularly horrific instance, a woman suicide bomber carrying a baby on her back was shot by soldiers at a checkpoint on Nov. 28. The shot detonated her explosives, killing the woman and the baby. The BBC noted that “officials” have said that the use of babies by Boko Haram, signals a dangerous “trend”. King’s College London researcher Elizabeth Pearson notes an associated trend affecting women and girls in northeast Nigeria. Reports of averted attacks indicate that the Civilian Joint Task Force and military have shot and killed more than twenty suspected female bombers in the past year. If this disturbing news of Boko Haram using babies in female suicide attacks were not enough of a wakeup call about the deepening crisis in Nigeria, Toby Lanzer, outgoing United Nations (UN) assistant secretary-general and regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, has been tirelessly raising the alarm about the grave humanitarian situation, faced, in particular, by children, in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region. Lanzer reported that in the Lake Chad region ten million people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid and that 7.1 million of them face severe food insecurity surviving on one meal a day, if that. Over five-hundred thousand children are severely and acutely malnourished and will die this year if aid does not reach them urgently. At an International Peace Institute event, Lanzer recalled a trip to Bama, Borno State, Nigeria in April 2016, a town he said was completely devoid of children aged two, three, and four. When he asked where the children were, the response was that “they had died, they had starved.” Mausi Segun at Human Rights Watch, similarly reported on the new victims of the Boko Haram conflict, starving children. Only last week, the New York Times reported that “starvation in northern Nigeria’s Borno State is so bad that a whole slice of the population—children under five—appears to have died.” There is action at the grassroots level to confront this crisis. Nigerian women this week convened a Peace Summit in Yola, Adamawa to discuss gender equality and the security situation. Many were reportedly widows, or had lost children to the Boko Haram insurgency. At the January 12, UN Security Council (UNSC) session on the Lake Chad region, the former U.S.- ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, expressed her gratitude to Fatima Askira, director of the Borno Women Development Initiative and youth programs coordinator at Search for Common Ground Nigeria, “for sharing the vital voice from the ground.” Nigeria’s representative to the UN, Ambassador Anthony Bosah, advised the UNSC that it was working hard to ensure the release of all Nigerians held captive by Boko Haram, including the Chibok schoolgirls who remained in the country’s “national consciousness” (shortly after the UNSC session members of the #BringBackOurGirls movement team including Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and Aisha Yesufu participated in a guided tour of the Sambisa General Area War Zone hosted by the Nigeria Air Force). But action requires resources, and this is a key challenge. At a high level dialogue, January 24, at the UN, titled Building Sustainable Peace for All, Joy Onyesoh, president of WILPF Nigeria put out a call to donors, that investing in peace and investing in women are critical to the transformation sought in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region. Other national measures to complement humanitarian intervention in northeastern Nigeria, include the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative and the Emergency Coordination Centre led by the Chief Humanitarian Coordinator Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija. There is growing awareness not just of the severe regional implications, but also the global consequences of Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis—Nigeria was the third largest source of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in 2016. It remains to be seen whether the use of babies by Boko Haram in female suicide attacks marks a “trend.” What is clear is that hundreds of thousands of children are suffering as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency, in many other ways. Both the Oslo pledging conference in February and the UN Security Council mission to the Lake Chad region in March, should seek to ensure the role of women in building sustainable peace. As concluded by The Fund for Peace report Confronting the Unthinkable: Suicide Bombers in Northern Nigeria which used data generated by the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Program , the Violence Against Women and Girls Observatory Platform, and The Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker. More dedicated research, funding, and support is needed to address the complexity of the issue of female and child suicide bombers. It must also be used to tackle those urgent issues less likely to make global headlines, such as the starvation of children in northeastern Nigeria, and the towns like Bama, where their faces are no longer seen.

With warfare continuing between the Islamist radical movement Boko Haram and the Nigerian security forces, the resulting humanitarian crisis in northern Nigeria is deepening. The United Nations (UN) estimates that there are between two and three million internally displaced persons (IDP). How many there really are is impossible to know. A small percentage are in formal camps. The majority appear to have been taken in by kin. The security services have liberated some women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. Again, exactly how many is not known, in part because of the lack of transparency and incomplete official statistics. However, International Alert, a peace-building group, and the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), both of which are highly credible, report that there is widespread community rejection of the freed women and girls. In some cases rejection is based on fear that those liberated have been radicalized and will recruit others. Others are rejected as “Boko Haram wives,” and rape carries a strong cultural stigma. Finally, there is anecdotal evidence that is highly credible that food prices in parts of the northeast have reached famine levels. There is a United Nations estimate that there are 223,000 severely malnourished children that could die absent immediate help, according to the New York Times. Periodically, the security services announce that because they have cleared Boko Haram from certain territories, IDP’s go home. But many flee again because of renewed Boko Haram depredations. The pervasive lack of security in the northeast makes the delivery of humanitarian assistance and services by the Nigerian government and the international community highly problematic.