Who Wants Boko Haram?

“Politics is the systematic organization of hatred.”

                                      Henry Adams.

You did not hear it from President Goodluck Jonathan, his deputy and the highest ranking northerner, Namadi Sambo, or any Minister, or Special Adviser, but it is now official. The initiative by some Nigerians led by Dr Datti Ahmed, President of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria to broker some discussions between the Federal Government and the leadership of the Boko Haram insurgency has failed. Dr Ahmed says he and his colleagues are withdrawing from the efforts which they undertook at great risk to their lives, because they do not believe in the sincerity of the Federal Government. He said that they were given guarantees of secrecy and confidentiality by the President personally, but have had all their progress and discussions leaked. He said he cannot trust government to honour its word if it cannot deliver on guarantees it gave over the confidentiality of the talks.

The Boko Haram leadership also put out its own statement, saying that it had only agreed to the initiative to participate in the exploratory talks with government reluctantly, and in spite of an earlier betrayal. It said only intense pressure and its high respect for the Datti people convinced it to submit to the talks. When Dr Datti threw in the towel, holding the federal government entirely responsible, they said to him, and to other Nigerians, we told you so. They also said many more things, along their usual rhetoric, but ominously, they say no more peace talks: it is now a fight to finish.

You could say that we are back to the trenches, and it is difficult to see how another initiative acceptable to both parties can be put together, and by whom. The northern establishment is timid, fractured and badly wounded by the insurgency; and it has little respect in the Villa – at least as far as the Boko Haram issue is concerned. As things stand, a fight to finish will quite likely involve more bombs, bullets, arrests and killings. There will be more army and police barricades, more restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Nigerians in the name of security, and more damage to the economy of the north. The nation as a whole will be more threatened, and will throw more money and other resources at the problem. A finish may involve total capitulation by the insurgency, or an acceptance of a substantial amount of the demands of the insurgency. Both will take many casualties before they happen.

So why, we must ask, should President Jonathan have allowed the initiative of Dr Datti Ahmed to fail? My view is that the failure is not just a reflection of incompetence or indifference although they may be factors. There are powerful vested interests which will be badly hurt by a resolution of the Boko Haram insurgency, or even the initiation of some peace-making overtures. Not necessarily in order of importance, these interests will include:

(i)                Interests that will advise against settling with the insurgency before its is defeated by superior force. These interests will draw substantially from the fact that late President Yar’Adua was cautioned over granting amnesty and embarking on an expensive rehabilitation of people who committed serious crimes against the state and citizens before their military and support infrastructure is defeated. Examples will be drawn from the fact that even as we speak, MEND and sundry groups are still a threat. These interests may be involved in advising the President that he is at the point of defeating the insurgency, given recent arrests; and any talks or negotiations will only benefit them;

(ii)             Interests around the huge financial benefits which the fight against the insurgency provides. These include billions being spent around intelligence gathering, logistics, administration, allowances, hardware etc. It will also include nations and other foreign interests which sell security equipment and train our personnel. In 2012, more than N1trillion will be spent on security alone, and much of this will go towards dealing with this insurgency. These interests are likely to be hurt if the insurgency were to be contained, one way are another;

(iii)           Interests which suspect that the Boko Haram insurgency is the manifestation of a much bigger problem: either a regional agenda by northern muslim politicians against the Jonathan Presidency, or the manifestation of a deep incursion of Al-Qa’ida into northern Nigeria. In both cases, there will be arguments to sustain the pressure on the insurgency until it shows its real hands and faces;

(iv)           On the part of the Boko Haram insurgency itself, there will be resistance to submit to negotiations in case it leaves the table with next to nothing. Having put its basic demands at a most difficult point to achieve, the insurgency could end up with little to show for all the lives and pain it has caused. It will also worry over whether all the groups or factions within it will be part of any agreement; and whether a settlement by a faction will expose it to rivals and the government in the long run;

(v)              There may also be other interests which hide behind the Boko Haram franchise to wreck havoc, steal, plunder and threaten the Nigerian state and citizens, which may be hurt by the cessation of the hostility by Boko Haram itself. These may include fringe groups, outright criminals with loads of guns, bomb-making know-how and good intelligence, or even rogue Boko Haram factions which are operating on their own;

(vi)           There may be interests which see the Boko Haram insurgency as the most potent political weapon to use against the North. After all, it is destroying largely northern lives and limbs, its economy and its cultural and political cohesion. What better ways to keep the north on its knees, and why fix a problem in the north when it solves the problem of many parts of Nigeria moving on?

There is a dangerous mindset among Nigerians who live far away from the bombs and bullets of the Boko Haram insurgency that this is basically a northern problem, and should be sorted out by northerners. This mindset may be responsible for the lack of nationwide reaction to the disastrous setback which the failure of Dr Datti Ahmed’s initiative represents. The Boko Haram insurgency is a threat to national security; it is spreading its impact in more ways than many Nigerians understand, and its end is by no means certain. This is the reason why we must demand that President Jonathan intensifies the search for a solution to this problem, and this must include more efforts to find avenues to engage this insurgency. Nigerians who live daily in fear of bombs and bullets; or suffer the harrowing indignity and discomfort of countless checkpoints and other security measures, and whose economy is crumbling by the day are already victims of this insurgency. They have a right to demand that an end is sought for their plights. Whatever the reasons were behind the failure of the attempts to broker talks between Boko Haram and the government, Nigerians will hold our leaders responsible for them. We should also demand that they find additional, or new sources for a comprehensive resolution of this conflict.