Confronting the Terrorism of Boko Haram in Nigeria - Resourcedat

Forest: Boko Haram6. Responding to Boko HaramThe first chapter of this monograph described how terrorism is largelycontextual: there are political and socioeconomic grievances that provideideological resonance and a security environment in which a group canattract recruits, funds, materiel, and safe havens. Defeating a terrorist groupthus requires attention to those grievances and elements of the security environmentthat allow the group to operate. Unfortunately, the grievances inNigeria that have fueled unrest and political violence over the past decades,in both the south and the north, are so many and so great that the governmentmay be overwhelmed. In conducting field research for this monograph,one interviewee described the Nigerian government’s response to the currentsecurity challenges as “buying time and loyalty with oil money in the southand north… what they need to do instead is reduce corruption, emphasizeinfrastructure development, especially electric power, support education,and assure affordable housing options.” 265 Various sources have describedthe country’s political system as one in which government leaders “buy off”potential threats to their power and use public resources to influence thepopulation. According to another interviewee, “the system depends entirelyupon oil revenues; take that away, chaos will result.” 266Significant reforms are needed in many areas, including the legal sector.The appeal among many Muslims of Sharia law is that the secular laws areseen as serving only the elites of Nigeria. Corruption is so rampant thatthe wealthy and connected are perceived as able to get away with virtuallyany kind of injustice. As John Campbell notes, Boko Haram’s ideology“draws on a long-standing local tradition of Islamic radical reform thatemphasizes the pursuit of justice for the poor through the imposition ofSharia. Adherents generally despise Nigeria’s secular leadership and thecountry’s traditional Muslim elites, whom they see as having been co-optedby the government.” 267 In his analysis of extremist groups in Nigeria, ChrisNgwodo noted, “It is their advocacy of the poor and their opposition tosocial injustice that lends these groups their appeal.” 268Inequitable application of the rule of law exacerbates an already deeplyproblematic system of ethnic identity politics, which detracts from anysignificant sense of national unity or shared journey. As noted in Chapter3, the emphasis on differences in heritage precludes the development of ashared cultural heritage among Nigerians. And of course, the government87