Death, destruction, devastation, are all what Boko Haram leaves behind its trails. Many cells exist under its roof, from mercenaries, to ritualists and politicians with sinister intentions. Jameel Muhammad and Sayyidatu Abdallah examines why and how Boko Haram is an octupus and hydra-headed, which makes it difficult to deal with.
Cells Of Boko Haram
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The Many
Cells of Boko Haram
A group of people in the North-East geo-political zone of Nigeria has found a thunderous flow of news headlines and analyses, most especially in the last few months. Commonly, and popularly too, this group is called Boko Haram - "Western Education is Prohibited" - coined from the mainstay of the group's original ideological stand against Western culture imported through Nigeria's educational system, which is largely a product of colonial and neo-colonial precepts. But the group, in its own formal terms, calls itself "Jama'at-ul Ahl-ul Sunnah Lil Da'wati Wal Jihad" - "A People In The Tradition (Of Prophet Muhammad) For Calling (To Islam) And Struggle (Against Oppression).
Whatever the name of this group, it is not the name that defines it, rather its definition comes from the atmosphere it creates: fear, hollowness, death and destruction. This group has destroyed lives, property, minds, hearts, hopes and aspirations; it has created hollowness, hopelessness, corruption and insecurity in the lives and things it cannot terminate. Wilderness is not the name of its trails, yet evil is the barrels of its cannons.
Boko Haram has defied formal political and military solutions to date because the group is a conglomeration of a number of underground activities and conspiracies, each with its own cause but all of them united on a common action of death and destruction. The original Boko Haram, founded on an opinion (rather than ideology) of hating Western education, actually
used guns-and-a-cause as its methodology but maintained its opinion. Today's Boko Haram uses guns-and-a-cause but with neither a clear opinion nor an ideology. This is very evident in the group professing a dull, crude and unintelligent leader in Shekau, who once referred to the Governor of Lagos State as "Ashimole" (not even "Oshimole", Edo State Governor) instead of Babtunde Fashola. It beats one's imagination that a leader does not know the geography and politics of the people he is determined to exterminate. Whenever Shekau speaks it is evident how he displays some rash emotions while seemingly acting scripts of some poor design and illogical sort. Leaders of even criminal gangs normally look calm and focussed, unlike Shekau who dramatises even the drama he is made to play before camera lenses.
Mrs Stella Oduah. Controversially left Aviation Ministry. Was she there on assignment?