For a few days in April 2014, the Nigerian jihadist militant group Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-da’wa wal-Jihād (better known by its Hausa name Boko Haram), a commanded the world’s attention following the abduction of over 250 girls from a school in the north-eastern town of Chibok. Four months on, that attention, like the #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign which fuelled it, has proved ephemeral. Most of the girls are still missing and Boko Haram is resurgent. Increased counter-terrorism efforts have done little to mitigate its threat, and, in some respects, they have exacerbated it. The group has launched its first attack on the commercial centre of Lagos, has increased attacks in neighbouring Cameroon, and has taken tentative steps towards carving out its own Islamic state in north-eastern Nigeria. Thanks to the abrasive and ineffective reaction of the Nigerian military in the north and the strong likelihood that the group will escalate its activities in the run-up to the February 2015 general elections, the security situation in Nigeria is unlikely to be resolved in the medium term.
The starkest sign of the group’s increased activity is its death toll. Between 2009, which marked Boko Haram’s turn to violence, and 2013, there were 3,600 fatalities linked to the group in Nigeria; in the first eight months of 2014, there have already been almost 6,000. Boko Haram’s reach has increased too: the group attacked a third of Nigeria’s 36 states in 2014, and assaults have mounted in Niger, Chad and, particularly, Cameroon. Its tactics have grown in sophistication and potency. Following the Chibok abduction, it has committed two further mass kidnappings of northern Nigerians (which have gone largely unnoticed by the international press), has introduced the new tactic of deploying female suicide bombers, and has further demonstrated its ability to penetrate previously safe parts of Nigeria. It has also started to hold ground: where previously it focused on hit-and-run attacks, in August 2014 Boko Haram leaders announced the formation of an independent Islamic state around the north-eastern town of Gwoza.
Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, has come under unprecedented attack. Two major bombings in April 2014 and May 2014, ahead of a World Economic Forum event in the city, and a bombing in June 2014 on the day of a football game involving Nigeria at the FIFA World Cup killed over 100 civilians. All three attacks demonstrated Boko Haram’s ability to infiltrate the capital at times when security forces were on high alert. More worrying for foreign investors, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, has received its first blow. In June 2014, an explosion near a fuel depot in Apapa, Lagos’s port district, killed two individuals. Had the attack met its apparent goal of destroying the fuel depot, the impact would have been much greater. Further attacks in southern Nigeria are likely; security forces believe that Boko Haram cells are active in Lagos, and, so far this year, over 1,000 Boko Haram suspects have been arrested in states in the Niger Delta.
Prior to 2014, around one percent of Boko Haram’s reported activity occurred outside Nigeria. In 2014, this has increased to 12 percent, the majority of which has occurred in Cameroon. In July, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad agreed to contribute 2,800 troops towards a regional defence force. It is too early to assess the success of this endeavour, but so far it has failed to stem the group’s spread. In the Far North region of Cameroon, historically a safe haven for Boko Haram, a renewed offensive against the group has been akin to kicking a wasps’ nest. The group’s attacks in the country have multiplied eightfold since 2013, and their targets have shifted from foreign nationals to the Cameroonian military and politicians. Prominent Cameroonian individuals, such as the wife of the Deputy Prime Minister and a local religious leader, have been kidnapped.
Geographically, Chad and Niger are less at risk. Due to their relative distance from the group’s base in the Sambisa forest, their territory is primarily used for recruitment rather than safe haven; as a result, the group’s presence is lower. Chad is well-protected – its military is arguably the best-equipped in the region and France has recently located 1,000 troops there to form the core of a counter-terrorism force located in the Sahel. Niger, however, is more vulnerable, especially as the growing number of attacks in Lagos, Abuja and the surrounding states demonstrate Boko Haram’s ability to extend its range.
Boko Haram is now putting down roots. Since its inception, Boko Haram has been committed to introducing an “Islamic state”, headquartered in north-east Nigeria and dominated by the (currently marginal) Kanuri ethnic group. Until recently, this seemed an empty threat. However, recent indications suggest that the group may have been emboldened by the efforts of the Islamic State in Iraq. In its confrontations with the Nigerian military, Boko Haram’s capacity has increased sufficiently for it to commit frequent company-sized (over 200 combatants) attacks alongside its more regular platoon-sized (over 30 combatants) assaults. In Borno State, the group has destroyed bridges and roads connecting part of the state with the rest of Nigeria and Cameroon and has taken towns near Chibok. Boko Haram has de facto control of several Local Government Areas in the state, over which the Rayat al-Uqab, the ‘flag of Jihad’, also used by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, now flies.
Its recent taking of Gwoza, a town of 265,000 people in Borno State, demonstrates the extent of its capability. It may use the foothold established here to launch a territorial assault on a major urban centre, such as Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
Other factors are contributing to the continued disintegration of the situation in the north. The military is ill-equipped and ineffective; the networks of the State Security Service have been unsuccessful in weeding out Boko Haram cells outside of the familiar territory of Lagos. Since 2010, three million people have been internally displaced as a result of the violence, with many of them fleeing into Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, where confrontations between settler communities and recent immigrants are common.
The response of the Nigerian military, and the Civilian Joint Task Force (JTF), a vigilante militia force with which it cooperates, has further undermined the north’s stability.
Both groups are alleged to have committed human rights abuses; according to Amnesty International, young men suspected of being adherents of Boko Haram are routinely tortured into confessions and are the subject of extrajudicial executions. The outsourcing of policing, via the JTF, is likely to further protract the lapse of the rule of law in the north of the country.
The situation will be exacerbated by the February 2015 general elections. Nigerians liken their polls to wars; following the 2011 general elections, 800 people died in the subsequent riots and sectarian violence in the north. The ongoing insurgency increases the likelihood of such scenes being repeated. Should the state of emergency (in effect, a suspension of the constitution), implemented in May 2013 in the three north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa be extended into the electoral period, elections in the affected states will be annulled, and violent protests will likely ensue. In those states in which elections do take place, rival politicians will continue to accuse their opponents of supporting the insurgency. Targeted killings are likely to occur. In July, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler of Niger and a prominent member of the opposition, was the subject of a failed assassination attempt, variously blamed on the federal government and Boko Haram. It is an ominous harbinger of more violence to come in pursuit of democracy in Africa’s largest economy.