Month: January 2015

Boko Haram’s deadly attack on a Nigerian village has received a fraction of the attention paid to the attacks in France. Caroline Bankoff acknowledges that relative disinterest among white Western audiences is surely a factor, but she notes it’s also important to realize how hard it is to report from, or even travel to, any part of Nigeria under Boko Haram control:

The insurgents have destroyed much of the area’s telecommunications infrastructure, making it almost impossible to quickly transmit the photos, videos, and first-person accounts that news-watchers have grown accustomed to. “In Nigeria, you still have to contend with actually trying to ascertain what exactly went on,” said professor and African development expert Muna Ndulo. “To some extent, that does affect the way people look at things.”

When reporting on the Baga killings, journalists [also] had to rely on sometimes unreliable information from terrorized survivors and local officials, which is why we still don’t really know how many casualties there were (estimates range from Amnesty International’s figure of 2,000 to “hundreds” to, as the New York Times cautiously reported, “dozens“). Meanwhile, the Nigerian government isn’t exactly eager to facilitate the spread of news from Baga. President Goodluck Jonathan, who is up for reelection in February, has yet to publicly mention the massacre, though he did send a condolence message to France in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

Ethan Zuckerman puts into context the divide in overall coverage:

A study we conducted in April 2014 suggests that media outlets publish three to ten times as many stories about France than about Nigeria. This disparity is striking as Nigeria’s population (estimated at 173 million) is almost three times the size of France’s population (66 million). There’s [also] bad news for those hoping online media will change existing patterns of media attention:

while broadcast news outlets ran 3.2 times as many stories about France as about Nigeria, online media outlets published more than ten times as many French as Nigerian stories (10.4 to be precise). We tend to read about countries like Nigeria only when they are in crisis, from terrorist attack or epidemics like Ebola. Despite the shocking magnitude of the attacks in Baga, the story can feel predictable, as the news we get from Nigeria is generally bad news. …

Attacks like the one on Paris are shocking, visible and rare, while attacks on Baga are common (though the scale of the Baga attack is unprecedented.) When we understand extremist violence as attacks on urban, developed, symbolic targets, we’re missing a much broader, messier picture, where religious extremism blends with political struggles and where the victims are usually anonymous, uncelebrated and forgotten. We miss the point that Islamic extremists are at war with other Muslims, that the source of terror is not a religion of 1.6 billion people, but a perverse, political interpretation held by a disenchanted few.

Along those lines, Hilary Matfess has a reality check for those who attempt to write off Boko Haram as just another Muslim extremist group like al Qaeda or ISIS:

[L]umping these organizations together ignores the local conditions that give rise to their specific characteristics. Attempting to understand Boko Haram from a transnational perspective yields very little; in more than a decade, the organization has only engaged in one attack on an “international target,” bombing the United Nations building in Abuja in 2011. For all of the rhetoric and symbolic overtures to internationalization that Pham and others point to, the operational characteristics of the Boko Haram insurgency are overwhelmingly focused on Nigeria.

The changes in the insurgency’s tactics in Nigeria are likely a reaction to the policies of the Nigerian government and the resources available to the insurgency than a response to global jihadist currents. It’s critical to note that Boko Haram began as a largely non-violent (though anti-system) Muslim reform movement, targeting local imams and politicians that were unsympathetic to their strict interpretation of sharia law. The movement only became radicalized following the Nigerian government’s 2009 offensive, in which an estimated 700 people, including Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf, were killed by members of the Nigerian security sector, while members of the Joint Task Force engaged in egregious human rights abuses and violations of the rule of law. While Abubaker Shekau may include in his sermons international jihadist rhetoric, much of Boko Haram’s ideology and mobilization centers on the specific abuses of the government.

Ryan Cummings suggests reporters and NGOs be more careful with their death tolls as well:

By punting uncorroborated and likely inflated casualty figures, we run the credible risk of quantifying human suffering in a manner which could discourage much-needed international awareness of the Boko Haram conflict. Death tolls which do not tally into the thousands may no longer draw headlines.  Nor will such reports likely evoke the condemnation which accompanied initial reports of Baga and its dead. Instead, Nigerians will continue to die by the scores awaiting help from a world which will only care when they are dying by the thousands.

(Photo: A man holds a placard that reads “Je suis Charlie, n’oublions pas les victimes de Boko Haram” (“I am Charlie, let’s not forget the victims of Boko Haram”) as people gather outside the French embassy in Abidjan, on January 11, 2015, in tribute to the 17 victims of the three-day killing spree in Paris last week. By Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images)

Earlier this week, Alexis Okeowo filed an update that lowered the death toll from Boko Haram’s recent assault on the Nigerian village of Baga to “hundreds, but not as many as a thousand.” The UN additionally estimates that some 20,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in the past two weeks. And as Peter Dörrie notes, the atrocity in Baga was only part of the increasingly-distressing story:

The Islamists [also] captured and partially destroyed no fewer than 16 other towns and villages in Borno state. The army repelled a large-scale attack on Damaturu, the capital of neighboring Yobe state. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a market in Potiskum, a town in Yobe. The blasts killed at least 19 people. One attacker was a 10-year-old girl. …

The attack also hit the official base for the Multi-National Joint Task Force tasked with beating back the militants. It’s a further blow to a force that was already struggling. The MNJTF originally planned to incorporate 700 soldiers each from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon to counter the insurgents in a region where borders have little practical relevance. But the MNJTF never took off, and now Niger has officially ruled out helping Nigeria take back Baga. Chad and Cameroon kept their distance from the project, citing Nigeria’s unwillingness to live up to its troop commitments for the force.

Sadly, Obinna Anyadike notes that neither Boko Haram’s use of teenage girls as suicide bombers nor the inability of Nigerian troops to hold territory is news at this point. She asserts that “Nigeria is proof that military spending does not necessarily buy security”:

The 2014 defence budget was $2.1 billion and the overall security allotment $5.8 billion – the largest slice of the government’s expenditure pie. And yet the regular excuse is that its soldiers are out-gunned by Boko Haram, despite the helicopter gunships, ground-attack aircraft, and surveillance drones in the official inventory. … Corruption is said to the biggest enemy, with money and fuel meant for the troops siphoned off by senior officers. The repeated failure to destroy munitions and equipment before positions are surrendered to Boko Haram is another factor, as is – sadly, given Nigeria’s peacekeeping pedigree – military incompetence.

When the troops are well led and properly supplied they win their battles. But there have been repeated reports of the military even failing to make use of reliable intelligence provided by its allies. And now the government has splurged on opaque defence contracts, with more helicopter gunships, mine-resistant armoured vehicles and possibly a squadron of new, never-before flown by any other air force, counter-insurgency aircraft.

The response to Boko Haram from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has been lackluster at best. As for the timing of the new violence, last month Ryan Cummings predicted the militants would attempt to influence February’s presidential election:

From an ideological perspective, Boko Haram [will] undoubtedly seek to undermine any process which would underpin its greatest adversary; namely, a secular Western-styled democracy. By violently disrupting the election cycle, the sect could raise serious questions regarding the perceived inclusiveness and transparency of the ballot—a move which could delegitimize the voting process and its eventual victor.

To deal with such a threat, the Bloomberg editors argue that Nigeria’s leaders and the international community need to step up – and fast:

The parties contesting the vote can best respond by toning down their mutual antagonism and bloodthirsty rhetoric. The government must also try harder to provide security for polling places, especially in the north, and speed up its introduction of biometric voting cards. More international observers, deployed for longer, would help.

There’s a limit to what outsiders can do, though. The U.S. and U.K. have curtailed cooperation with Nigeria’s beleaguered army because of human-rights abuses. Specific, vetted units might still be receptive to training and assistance. Beyond that, strengthening the ability of Nigeria’s neighbors to prevent Boko Haram’s incursions might be the best outsiders can do.

Remi Adekoya suggests that Nigeria’s former military dictator, the opposition presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari, might be just what the country needs:

[A]fter a year in which Boko Haram and government corruption has dominated local headlines, the ex-general has two things going for him: a reputation for strong leadership and incorruptibility. He is probably the only prominent Nigerian politician today who isn’t hounded by allegations of embezzling public funds. [Also, a] president with military experience to take on corrupt army officers would surely serve as a morale booster to the Nigerian soldiers battling Boko Haram.

Granted, the ex-general has no magic wand to make the militants simply vanish. But in this period of existential crisis, Nigeria may need a wartime leader who can project reassuring strength and provide a plausible strategy for overcoming the insecurity in the country. Time is running out.

But in a recent profile, the BBC highlighted Buhari’s mixed record during the 20 months he led the country:

About 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were jailed as part of a campaign against waste and corruption. Some saw this as the heavy-handed repression of military rule.

But others remember it as a praiseworthy attempt to fight the endemic graft that prevented Nigeria’s development. He retains a rare reputation for honesty among Nigeria’s politicians, both military and civilian, largely because of this campaign. As part of his “War Against Indiscipline”, he ordered Nigerians to form neat queues at bus stops, under the sharp eyes of whip-wielding soldiers. Civil servants who were late for work were publicly humiliated by being forced to do frog jumps. He also introduced a notorious decree to restrict press freedom, under which two journalists were jailed. However, his attempts to re-balance public finances by curbing imports led to many job losses and the closure of businesses.