Fredrick Nzwili and Ibrahim Garba | The Christian Science Monitor | Jun 04,
2012
From a distance, the violent campaign of a shadowy Nigerian Islamist group
called Boko Haram is nothing less than a holy war between Muslims and
Christians that has killed more than 2000 people.
But look beneath the surface, says Nigerian Roman Catholic Archbishop John
Onaiyekan in a recent visit to Nairobi, and you find that the crisis is "not
purely religious."
In Nigeria's "winner take all" political culture, the archbishop said, where
the country's political elites from a number of regions, religions, and
ethnicities compete for power and the control of oil resources, militant
groups serve as a kind of pressuring mechanism for achieving what cannot be
achieved in elections, in parliament, or in backroom deals. Far from
uplifting the entire populace, oil wealth has remained in the hands of a
very powerful few, creating economic and social inequality for those regions
- such as the Islamic north and the oil-producing but poor Niger Delta
region - who are left out of the power balance.
So when Boko Haram targets Christian churches or Western-model schools, they
aren't doing so out of mere hatred of Christianity or the West. They are
doing this for much more basic reasons, to protest the north's feeling of
being excluded from power.
It's a lesson that rings true for many Kenyans as well. After post-election
riots in 2007-2008, which targeted ethnic communities loyal to Kenya's main
political parties, Kenyans realized that their political leaders were using
ethnic suspicions for their own political purposes, and with murderous
results. More than 1,300 people were killed, and another 600,000 displaced
from their homes after the December 2007 elections ended with disputed
results.
Africa cannot afford to allow its territory to become a proxy battleground
for its own politicians, or for the ideological wars over "terrorism" of
foreign nations and radical interests, the archbishop and others say.
"The 'terrorist' and 'insurgent' groups in various parts of the world are a
phenomenon of the early twenty-first century. They teach us that there is
something fundamentally flawed about global governance," says Jesse Mugambi,
a professor of philosophy and religious studies at the University of
Nairobi. "Such groups are in all continents - Europe, Africa, Asia, the
Americas! Such groups are the symptom, rather than the cause, of
instability."
In Kano, Nigeria, a town that has borne the brunt of much of Boko Haram's
violence, Rev. Ransom Bello of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),
Kano state chapter, says that the activities of Boko Haram are "not
religious. It's the aggrieved people, disguised under the aegis of religion
to cause insecurity in the country."
The current insurgency by Boko Haram, a nickname for the Islamist group,
based on their common slogan "Western education is forbidden," gathered pace
after the group's founder, Mohammad Yusuf, was killed in police custody in
July 2009, during a general crackdown on the group.
Boko Haram's original campaign for Islamic sharia law was aimed at the
corruption and maladministration of local political elites and of the
federal government in Abuja. But after the killing of Yusuf, Boko Haram
became radicalized, and under new leadership, it joined with other Islamist
groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Somalia's Al Shabab,
picking up a global-jihad ideology and a few new tools, such as suicide
bombings, to carry out their war.
Most victims of attacks are Muslims
Boko Haram claims to be fighting in the interest of all Muslims. But of the
500 people killed in the first half of this year, through Boko Haram raids,
suicide attacks, and commando-style assaults on government facilities, the
vast majority of the victims have been Muslims.
In his speech at the newly inaugurated bi-annual lecture of the African
Council of Religious Leaders in Nairobi on May 16, Bishop Onaiyekan
described the early days of the Boko Haram phenomenon, in which villagers in
one of the northern states went on a rampage. The villagers called
themselves "Talibans," after the militant Islamist group in Afghanistan.
"At the time, we thought they did not know what they were talking about,"
Onaiyekan said. "But looking back now, it is possible that they did indeed
know about Talibans and perhaps had contacts with them."
"It is coming out more clearly that Boko Haram have had links with the
Islamic terrorist organizations like the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their
counterparts in Somalia, the Al Shabab," he noted. But it would never have
had the power or the amount of local support it seems to enjoy if not for
other, more fundamental issues, particularly local alienation over bad
governance, he adds. Boko Haram's ability to carry out attacks across
northern Nigeria "has introduced a completely new dimension dimension in
religious conflict in our nation, new in intensity and ideology," he said.
The solution, Onaiyekan says, is for Africans to reach out across national
borders and religious lines, compare notes, and insist that the rule of law
is applied without discrimination on either ethnic or religious basis.
In Africa, some analysts have said that there is also a political dimension
to the conflict. Just before the 2011 election, President Goodluck Jonathan
ended an informal agreement within the ruling People's Democratic Party to
alternate presidential candidates between the Muslim north and the Christian
south. When the Muslim president Umaru Yar'Adua died in May 2010, and his
Christian vice president, Mr. Jonathan, took over, many northern politicians
of his own party pushed for a new election, rather than allow a Christian to
take on the remainder of Yar'Adua's term.
Alhaji Adamu Sumaila, a PDP official in the Jonathan administration, put the
blame on the opposition, however, saying recently, "opposition members are
aiding the insurgency of Boko Haram in Nigeria because they lost power,
which forced them to be aiding rebellion against the government."
Kenyans see parallels
For Kenyans, there are clear parallels, not only in the ethnic battles that
followed the 2007 elections, but also in the ethnic scapegoating of Somali
Kenyans during the ongoing Kenyan incursion against the Islamist militia Al
Shabab inside Somalia.
There is even a secession group in the Muslim-majority coastal region known
as the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), which has threatened to use
violence because of what is sees as neglect by the Kenyan government.
It has since threatened to scuttle general elections expected to be held
later this year or in 2013.
Sheikh Ibrahim Lithome, the secretary general of the Islamic Foundation of
Kenya, uses an African proverb to warn against Kenyans getting complacent
about the potential for violence at home.
"The piece of firewood in the storage should not laugh at one [piece of
wood] that is burning on fire, because the next thing that will happen is
that the piece of wood in storage will be picked up and put on the fire,"
said Sheikh Lithome.
Kenyans may feel like the ethnic and religious violence they hear about in
Nigeria could never happen at home in Kenya. "All of us know we are not safe
from what is happening in Nigeria," he said.
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Received on Mon Jun 04 2012 - 14:14:41 EDT
