4. Introduction
4.3 Ideological Background, Mission and Location
Like Boko Haram, various other Islamist groups typically adverse to western culture and the Christian, have originated in northern Nigeria since the 19th century. Among these include
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the Kala-Kato, the Darul-islam, the Ahmadabad Movement, the Khadiriyyha, Darika Shi ’ a Salafiya (or Izala), the Tijjaniya, Tariqqagroup and the Muhajirun (Onuoha, 2012b;
Pothuraju, 2012). It must be acknowledged that all of these sects have extremist approach.
Meanwhile, the extremity and violence of Boko Haram is uniquely unprecedented, especially since 2009. Its aversion to western-styled education can be traced to the British’s non- intervention education policy in the northern region of Nigeria during the colonial era, which prohibited the Christian missionaries from evangelizing the northern region. Due to their merging of education with religious doctrine for holistic impact (Akanle, 2011), Christian Missionaries were viewed with suspicion that they would be converting Muslims to Christianity through their evangelization. This policy, which gave the north its special Islamic identity (Dudley, 1968: 18) had at least two implications: firstly, western education was not only discouraged but also abhorred in the north; secondly the southerners who had welcomed it were viewed with suspicion by their northern counterparts. According to Thomson (2012), northern parents were convinced that Koranic education was better for their children as it would allow them acquire the necessary moral training in the face of the economic challenges and the resultant lawlessness among Nigerians.
It is not a coincidence, thus, that the founder of Boko Haram emerged from such Islamic education background. Not surprisingly, it is widely held that the founder’s motivation is rather ideological than material. The founder is believed to have been influenced by the ideology of a 13th century Islamic scholar, Ibn Taymiyya who sternly advocates a strict adherence to the Qur’an and authentic Sunna (practices) of the Prophet Muhammad, which he argued contains all the religious and spiritual guidance necessary for salvation in the earthly and heavenly lives (Salkida, 2012). Ibn Taymiyya was not only opposed to the ideas of philosophers and Sufis regarding religious knowledge, spiritual experiences and ritual practices, but also the flexibility of the other schools of jurisprudence in Islam, which he believed have become distorted by Greek logic and thought as well as Sufi mysticism (Salkida, 2012). Meanwhile, beside the ideological façade, according to Waldek and Jayasekara ( 2011:170) the deep-rooted ethnic tensions across northern Nigeria and the middle belt states are also intrinsically linked to the anti-western ideological position of Boko Haram.
The sect strongly rejects the secular authority and instead pursued the quest to Islamize the Nigerian state. Its mission thus is simply to radically change the socio-political order in the Nigerian state for a Sharia-governed system (Onuoha, 2012:2). The inspiration for the prevalence of such rejectionist trend in northern Nigeria is traceable to the empire created
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through the Jihadist war by Usman Dan Fodio between 1804 and 1808, which united the Hausa land under the Sokoto Caliphate. Aside his opposition to perceived corruption in the ruling Habe Dynasty, Fodio maintained that if non-Muslims are to be accommodated in the region they would have to be subjected to the Sharia law (Aguwa, 1997: 339). According to Thomson (2012: 47), more than an empire, the Sokoto Caliphate was also a religious community, distinguished by its faithfulness, and its leader, the Sultan of Sokoto, claimed descent from the prophet Mohammed. The Sokoto Caliphate remained West Africa’s most powerful region prior to falling under the British rule. And the Sharia law was strongly operative under the caliphate. Indeed, the empire and the system of powerful Islamic caliphates of preceding centuries “constituted the apex for high Muslim civilization given its typical role in uniting the region, rejection of corruption and creating prosperity under Islam”
(cited in Thomson, 2012:47-48). Not only is the empire remembered with fondness, it is even wished among prominent Northern leaders to be revived as at independence in 1960, with the intentions to subjugate every other civilization or cultures in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the expansive empire collapsed following the invasion of the British colonialists around the 1903. Not surprisingly, Yusuf is averse to the current social system which he believed is an imposition by the colonial master, arguing that “our land was an Islamic state (Northern Nigeria) before the colonial masters turned it to a Kafir land” (cited in Onapajo and Uzodike, 2012: 27).
Like most Nigerians, Boko Haram is quite dissatisfied with the endemic corruption that characterizes Nigerian government. Hence, the sect sees in the failure to implement Sharia Law across states as plausible explanation for failure to curb the endemic corruption within the Nigerian society. In addition, Boko has been largely dissatisfied with the weak Sharia re- introduced in the 12 northern states in 1999, given how it has not been able checkmate the corruption. Hence, the Ibn Taymiyya’s formulation, which gives Muslim rights to revolt against inept and corrupt state have been the adopted platform for mobilization by the group (Umar 2013:24).46 Therefore, amidst obscurity surrounding the sect’s main objective, the clearest state thus far is to Islamize Nigeria in order to change the status quo given the sect’s dissatisfaction not just with the northern states but the entire country, which it believed has been compromised by westernization (Brinkel and Ait-Hida, 2012).
46 See Euben and Zaman (2009: 135)
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Boko Haram is averse to western liberalism in its entirety as long as it contradicts Islam. Like the Afghanistan Taliban the sect aims at creating:
an independent state that comprises all the characteristics of the modern state, including a government, population, territory and strong security base, which would be run by its ideology. It also advocates an economic system that would basically be characterized by trading and farming as alternatives to the modern economic system characterized by capitalism (Onapajo and Uzodike, 2012: 29).
As far as the sect’s areas of operation are concern, the core northern states such as Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Kano, Kaduna, and Bauchi, among others, have been predominantly affected. Nonetheless it has vowed to detonate bombs in the ‘evil’ southern cities of Nigeria which it has dubbed the “axis of evil”. These include Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Enugu (Onapajo and Uzodike, 2012).