Beyond Boko Haram – By Dr. Jideofor Adibe

Posted by admin Articles, Boko Haram, Columnists, Jideofor Adibe, PhD, NNP Columnists Thursday, September 8th, 2011

By Dr. Jideofor Adibe, London, UK – Sept. 8, 2011 – The bombing of the UN Office in Abuja on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, is one of several spates of mayhems thought to have been carried out by Boko Haram. The group, believed to have been formed in 2002 by the late Muslim cleric Mohammed Yusuf, was initially peaceful. In June 2009 it waged a short- lived uprising which it said was aimed at establishing an Islamic State. The insurrection was brutally crushed by the military in July 2009. Some 800 people, mostly sect members, died from that face-off. Since January 2010 surviving sect members – or people acting in their names – have claimed to be behind the series of lethal bombings across many parts of the North and Abuja. One of the jigsaw puzzles in the bombing of the UN headquarters however is why a group, which claims to be driven by puritanical religious fervour, would carry out such an act on a Friday, a holy day for Muslims. It is also not exactly clear the reasons why the group became radicalised and the sources of the increasing sophistication of its methods.

While the bombings and other unsavoury acts that are linked to the sect are very condemnable, it is germane to underline that Boko Haram is only one of several groups in the country that purvey terror and death. This is not an apology for their actions, but there is increasing tendency to discuss the spate of insecurity in the country as if it all began and ended with Boko Haram – or as if without Boko Haram Nigeria would be a tranquil place to live in. The truth is that there is everywhere in the country a pervasive sense of what the German – American political theorist Hannah Arendt called the ‘banality of evil’. Her explanation of this thesis is that the great evils in history are not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their actions and therefore participated in them on the grounds that those heinous actions were normal. This is the so-called notion of ‘normalising the unthinkable’ or the routinisation of evil. And this truly reflects the federal character – violent armed robberies across the entire country, kidnapping especially in the South East and South, turf war by militarised cults in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State and senseless intra and inter communal ‘warfare’ across several parts of the country.

There have been several explanation on why many young people embrace and routinise evil acts. The explanations have ranged from unemployment and crisis of values to poor governance. These, in my opinion are at best partial explanations. Personally I believe that a major reason for this is the crisis in our nation-building project, which feeds into the crisis of underdevelopment to create an existentialist crisis for many Nigerians. For many young people, a way of resolving the consequent sense of alienation is to retreat from the Nigeria project and construct meanings in chosen primordial identities – often with the Nigerian state as the enemy. In this sense actions we rightly see as heinous are normal, even heroic, to them. The fact that many communities in which such people live know them but are not giving them away to the authorities could mean that the de-Nigerianisation process is perhaps more pervasive than we think.

The crisis bedevilling the Nigeria project is such that there is a heavy burden of institutionalised sectional memories of hurt, injustice, distrust and even a disguised longing for vengeance. As with the efforts to resolve the underdevelopment crisis facing the country, virtually every strategy needed to confront the security challenge is bound to evoke these ugly memories in some sections of the population. No individual or political authority enjoys universal legitimacy across the main fault lines. Nigeria is therefore a country in desperate need of creating Nigerians.

My personal opinion is that Boko Haram and similar groups represent a retreat from the Nigeria project, which is fast approximating the Hobbesian state of nature where life is short, nasty and brutish. With the State increasingly unable to fulfil its part of the social contract – guaranteeing security of lives and property and providing an enabling environment for a good life – it will seem that those retreating from the Nigeria project increasingly see the state as standing on the way between them and progress. Some seek succour in primordial identities and construct ideologies to help them resolve the existentialist crisis fostered by the dysfunctional nature of the Nigeria project.

It is often baffling how elephantine and pervasive the institutionalised sectional memories of hurt, injustice and double-crossing are in the country. Contrast this with Europe where some 36.5 million people died during the Second World War (1939-1945). Many survivors of the war starved and many homes and national monuments were destroyed in Germany, Britain and France. Yet the memories of hurt were quickly put aside, enabling them to build vibrant economies and social systems they could be proud of. In Nigeria we seem incapable of this forgiveness despite the fact that we love to flaunt our religiosity. I think that a major reason why the institutionalised sectional memories of injustice seem to have become sharpened is that many Nigerians have very little to be proud of about their country. At both the collective and individual levels there appears to be a crisis of aspiration, which is accelerating the de-Nigerianisation process (i.e. the process of retreating from the Nigerian State). The state is therefore seen as a target with retreating individuals and groups using means at their disposal in this attack – politicians steal it blind, organised labour frequently strike, students riot and resort to cultism, some primordial groups bomb symbols of state while others kidnap for ransom.

The crisis in our nation-building project feeds into our underdevelopment crisis, which in turn accelerates the retreat from the Nigeria project. I do not however think that the country is beyond redemption. My personal opinion is that resolving the crisis in our nation-building project will require the emergence of a charismatic leader, who will heal sectional wounds and rebuild trust in the Nigeria project. But how will such a leader emerge? I believe such a leader will emerge through an election and may not necessarily be charismatic at the time of his/her election. Leaders can get radicalised or de-radicalised by power. I foresee the emergence of a leader, who is not expected to do great things, but who gets radicalised while in office and does a few things that will impress the generality of Nigerians. Once the crisis in our nation building project is resolved, it will become easier to have Nigerians who will have an overriding interest of the nation at heart. At that time we will move from the current de-Nigerianisation to a rapid re-Nigerianisation process.

Resolving the crisis in our nation-building project will not mean that groups like Boko Haram, kidnappers and other purveyors of heinous crimes will automatically vanish. It will however mean that instead of shielding them or treating them as heroes, more people will be willing to report them to the authorities. I believe that in the short run the government should take all necessary measures to contain these groups and punish those found culpable. In the long run however, it will be better to encourage such groups to form political parties and canvass popular support for the ideas they espouse. By luring them to come and subject their ideologies to the competition of the marketplace of political ideas, we will blunt the romanticisation of such ideas when they are driven underground. This is precisely the reason why countries like Britain have refused to ban racist groups like the British National Party. I believe that groups that espouse ideologies that ‘shock and awe’ such as Boko Haram and other groups that call for secession should be encouraged to come and subject such ideas to the competition of the political marketplace of ideas. More often than not such ideas are unable to compete and are subsequently confined to the fringes of the political landscape.wp_posts

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