by Mike Smith
Less than three months later, a military officer who had served as Babangida’s deputy took advantage of the weak Shonekan and ousted him from power, installing himself as leader and beginning perhaps the most despicable period of Nigeria’s post-independence history. Sani Abacha, a northerner from Kano, set about enriching himself and his family by looting hundreds of millions of dollars from the treasury, trampling on the basic rights of the population and overseeing a brutal military and police force. Nigerians suffered daily from his rule, and Wole Soyinka, who has described Abacha as a ‘psychopath’, was forced to flee into exile out of fears for his life.33 Moshood Abiola, the winner of the 1993 election, was jailed a year after the annulled vote after declaring himself president.34 The regime’s execution in 1995 of the Niger Delta activist Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight others put Abacha’s outrageous behaviour in the international spotlight. Leaders worldwide, including the revered Nelson Mandela, condemned the executions and the Commonwealth suspended Nigeria’s membership. Nevertheless, Nigeria would have to live with Abacha for another three years. He died in 1998 in suspicious circumstances, supposedly having had a heart attack. Rumours swirled and continue to do so today, including whether he was in the company of Indian prostitutes at the time he died.35 In Lagos, there were celebrations to mark his death.
With Abacha gone, years of military rule and turmoil would finally draw to a close. All three military rulers since Buhari’s New Year’s Eve 1983 coup had come from the country’s north, but it had meant little in terms of progress for the average northern Nigerian, not to mention the country as a whole. The nation’s elite were siphoning off vast amounts of oil money and leaving the poor and working class to scrap for what remained. Nuhu Ribadu, who would later serve as head of the country’s anti-graft agency, estimated in 2006 that more than $380 billion had been stolen or wasted since independence – an amount greater than the total gross domestic product of a long list of countries, including Colombia, Iran, South Africa and Denmark.36
A transition to civilian rule was on the way, and this time it would not be annulled. That did not mean, however, that Nigeria was on the cusp of a new era of true democracy. There would be elections, but they would be marred by fraud and violence, and the corruption that had become so entrenched would continue to strangle hopes of progress. The 1999 vote led to a return of Olusegun Obasanjo, the former general and one-time military ruler from south-western Nigeria with extensive connections in the north. Election day was largely peaceful, but observers reported serious allegations of fraud, including ballot-box stuffing and altered results.37 Obasanjo had run as the candidate of the newly created Peoples Democratic Party, which would become an all-encompassing, nationwide behemoth with a multitude of competing interests. The party would essentially develop into a coalition of influential politicians, kingmakers and regional strongmen agreeing to line up under one banner to control power, with the understanding that the presidency would be rotated between north and south.
Obasanjo would be re-elected to a second term in 2003, again amid voter fraud allegations from observers,38 and his two terms delivered decidedly uneven results, with significant economic improvements, but a failure to tackle many of the problems plaguing Nigeria’s development. The prospect of a return to the bad old days of strongman rule was also raised with a push for a constitutional change that would have allowed him to seek a third term of office.39 The bid was denied by members of parliament, and Obasanjo stepped down after his two terms, clearing the way for a third straight election – at the time, the longest period of uninterrupted civilian rule since independence.
Meanwhile, the government had been collecting billions in oil revenue, prompting deep resentment in the Niger Delta region in the south, the heart of the country’s petroleum industry. Obasanjo would face a militancy in the Niger Delta that would eventually cut deeply into revenue from the nation’s prized resource.
The Delta had seen unrest before, particularly when protests and violence in the Ogoni community had led the oil giant Shell to abandon production there in 1993. The region remained desperately poor despite its natural resources, while its creeks and rivers had also been badly polluted by years of spills, often without any repercussions for the companies responsible. The Ogoni movement in the 1990s for a fairer distribution of resources had to a large degree been led by the activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose execution by the Abacha regime drew global condemnation. Shell would be accused of collaborating with the regime in the executions of Saro-Wiwa and his fellow protest leaders, an allegation it has always denied. It agreed to pay some $15.5 million in compensation in a lawsuit related to the executions and Ogoniland unrest in 2009, but did not admit guilt.40
When frustrations again boiled over in the Delta in the late 1990s and 2000s, the militancy would develop into a mix of many interests, including gang leaders seeking a slice of industry revenue, jobless youths and genuine activists. Pipelines were regularly blown up and foreign oil workers were kidnapped for ransom, resulting in a sharp reduction in Nigeria’s oil production. An umbrella group took shape named MEND – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta – that claimed responsibility for attacks and advocated for the region in statements emailed to journalists. Military raids had little permanent effect on the worsening militancy, and Obasanjo would leave behind a festering crisis in the Delta. With so much oil revenue at stake, it would be up to his successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, to find a solution.
In 2009, an amnesty programme was launched for Delta militants, offering stipends and job training to those who agreed to give up their arms. All of the major gang leaders and thousands of their followers participated, leading to a steep reduction in violence and allowing production to rise to previous levels of around 2 million barrels per day. But while the amnesty succeeded in its goal of boosting oil production, conditions in the delta have not changed and the possibility of a return to violence once payments to gang leaders are reduced or stopped altogether remains a serious concern. Indeed, certain gang leaders are reputed to have been made extremely wealthy by the amnesty and related deals, having not only collected stipends from the programme, but also lucrative contracts for ‘pipeline surveillance’ or ‘waterways security’. It has also reinforced the idea that those who create problems in Nigeria can be paid to stop, providing an incentive for people with little hope of otherwise finding their way out of poverty.
Nevertheless, because it has calmed the violence, the Niger Delta amnesty programme has been cited by some as an example of what could be done in the north-east to bring at least a temporary end to Boko Haram’s insurgency and halt the horrific attacks that have killed thousands. Unfortunately, the problem is far more complicated.
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Mohammed Yusuf is believed to have been born in 1970 in Jakusko in Yobe state in north-eastern Nigeria, where the savannah begins to fade into desert. His family origins are something of a mystery, though those who were familiar with him and others who have investigated his movements say his parents seemed to have been poor, perhaps subsistence farmers. He eventually found his way to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and the most important city in the region.41
It was in Maiduguri where an influential trader, Baba Fugu Mohammed, would act as something of a foster parent to Yusuf. They were from the same ethnic background – they were Kanuris, the largest ethnic group in Borno state – and Mohammed had a reputation for taking people in at his large compound. He had amassed his wealth mainly through dealings in agricultural products such as gum arabic and beans.42 He engaged in regular legal battles with the authorities and others over land rights when they sought to encroach on his property, and his lawyer, Anayo Adibe, said some of his cases were among those taught at his law school.
Yusuf, according to his own account, did not have any formal Western education.43 He eventually married one of Mohammed’s daughters, who was one of several wives and, by some accounts, the most prominent since she was the daugh
ter of his foster-father. He would worship at Maiduguri’s Indimi mosque, an impressive structure with stained glass, marble tiling and two minarets, situated in a relatively upscale district of the city and named for the wealthy businessman who financed it. It was at Indimi where Yusuf is believed to have encountered a cleric in the Wahhabi-Salafist tradition named Ja’far Mahmud Adam, who was widely known as Sheikh Ja’far.
The cleric was based in Kano several hundred miles away, but sometimes visited Maiduguri and Indimi to preach. His strong critique of Nigeria’s establishment Sufi Muslims gained him a following in the north. The bespectacled cleric was well versed in Islamic studies, a graduate of the Islamic University in Medina, but was not averse to Western-style education and attended secular schools while growing up. He was influenced by Nigeria’s Izala44 Islamic reform movement, an organisation that grew out of the teachings of another cleric, Abubakar Gumi, in the 1960s and 1970s. It would become powerful and attract a number of highly educated Muslims, but the emergence of a new generation and various ideological disputes eventually led it to fracture. Adam was one of several bright, younger figures to strike out on their own.45
Amid such turbulent change in northern Nigeria, a populist movement in the 1970s and 1980s that was far less intellectually driven would also emerge, led by an itinerant preacher originally from Cameroon but based in Kano. It would spark deadly riots and serve as a prelude to the later rise of Boko Haram. It became known as the Maitatsine movement, the Hausa name given to its leader, Muhammadu Marwa, and which translates roughly to ‘The Anathematiser’ or ‘the one who damns’.46 He had declared himself a prophet and interpreted the Qur’an in odd ways, and the movement was driven in part by class and ethnicity, with Marwa a non-Hausa in an area where Hausas dominated. Those factors combined with the hangover from an oil boom in the 1970s, which brought about an economy utterly dominated by the petroleum industry and the corruption that came with it. Initial riots broke out in 1980 in Kano and killed more than 4,000 people, with Marwa also left dead. Rioting in other locations in subsequent years would kill several thousand more.47
Debates over Islamic sharia law also occurred when a new constitution was being debated in the late 1970s. There were already local sharia courts dealing with civil matters and personal status law, but a push from some in the north sought the creation of a federal sharia appeals court and led to a bitter dispute between Christians and Muslims hashing out the new constitution.48 The issue arose again after the 1999 return to civilian rule, with northern states moving to incorporate sharia criminal law. It was a combination of political opportunism on the part of local politicians as well as sincere campaigning by Islamic reformers. Today, sharia law is official policy across most of northern Nigeria at varying levels, though it is selectively enforced. While a number of people have been sentenced to death by stoning for crimes including adultery, it seems such sentences have all been overturned or reduced later. At least two amputations have been carried out, with a man convicted of stealing a cow having his hand cut off in 2000 and another for the theft of bicycles.49 More recently, after Nigeria’s federal government enacted a law outlawing homosexuality in 2014, sharia authorities in the north carried out a witch-hunt, resulting in a number of people being flogged for being gay, with some protesters demanding that they be stoned to death.50 Both the new law and the action by the sharia courts have drawn international outrage.
In a sign of the tensions that had been building by the early 2000s, a comment in a newspaper column helped lead to rioting in the northern city of Kaduna that killed around 250 people. The column had suggested that the Prophet Muhammad would have been happy to have selected a wife from a Miss World pageant that was to be held in Nigeria. Many saw the column as blasphemous, exacerbating already existing ethnic and religious divisions in Kaduna.51
Mohammed Yusuf came of age within this ferment. Crudely educated but evidently curious, he would become a student of the more learned and disciplined Sheikh Ja’far, who was about a decade older. Some have called him his ‘intern’ or protégé, and one imam has said that Adam had labelled him the ‘leader of young people’.52 It seems, however, that their master–student relationship was always doomed. Adam, at least publicly, was a much more practical man, advocating for Muslims to work within the system to bring change. Rather than opposing Western-style education, he instead argued that Muslims must be equipped with such knowledge in order to be in a better position to face their opponents and transform society. He also did not believe Muslims should refuse to accept positions within a secular government since doing so would leave them powerless and dominated by non-believers.53 Yusuf would turn out to be far more radical on both of those points, plus a range of others, and that would set the two men on a collision course. They seemed to have split by around 2003, and the beginnings of what would later become known as Boko Haram were emerging.
It was that year when another radical named Mohammed Ali, said to be a Borno native who may have studied in Saudi Arabia, led a group of young people who had been followers of Yusuf on an imitation of the Prophet Mohammad’s withdrawal to Medina, or hijra.54 Ali and Yusuf had fallen out for unclear reasons. The group set up a camp in a remote part of Yobe called Kanamma, and by one account, it included 50 to 60 members who lived in tents and mud huts. Other accounts put the number at as many as 200. As described in a US diplomatic cable, they were said to have initially been unarmed, trading peacefully with local residents, but a dispute erupted when a local chief insisted they pay for fishing rights at a pond. Locals then demanded that the group leave the area, and the police were said to have arrested some of them on 20 December 2003. Less than two weeks later, on 31 December, the group launched a series of attacks on police stations, stealing weapons along the way, including at least five AK-47s from police in Kanamma.55 The wave of violence lasted four days, and Ali was said to have been among those killed in the unrest. More attacks would occur in September 2004 in Borno state, leading to a clash with soldiers near the border with Cameroon. It was also around this time when a certain number of Nigerian extremists would seek training in northern Mali with the group that would later become known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
It is unclear whether Yusuf played any role in the violence at the time and he would later deny it. In any case, he was already known to the authorities through his preaching in Maiduguri and was suspected of being involved. In a 2006 interview with two of my AFP colleagues, Yusuf said that he had not advocated the 2003–4 violence. ‘These youths studied the Qur’an with me and with others’, Yusuf would say, referring to the group that left for Kanamma: Afterwards, they wanted to leave the town, which they thought impure, and head for the bush, believing that Muslims who do not share their ideology are infidels [...] I think that an Islamic system of government should be established in Nigeria, and if possible all over the world, but through dialogue. 56
The group began to be known as the Nigerian Taliban around the time of the 2003–4 attacks. There were claims that the name was given to them by local officials because they had called their camp in Kanamma ‘Afghanistan’, though that story has been disputed and different versions have been offered.
Yusuf would again perform the hajj in Mecca in 2004; he would himself say that he travelled to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004.57 His return home this time, however, was delayed because he was wanted back home over the Nigerian Taliban violence. A negotiation would be required to allow him to fly back, and the then deputy governor of Borno state would step in to mediate. The deputy governor, Adamu Dibal, would say later that Yusuf approached him in Saudi Arabia, where Dibal had been leading a pilgrimage, and asked for assistance in getting home, telling him that he was non-violent and had been wrongly accused. Dibal reasoned that intelligence officers could gain important information from Yusuf if he were back in Nigeria.
‘Through my discussions with him [...] and through my contacts with the security agencies, he was allowed back in’,
Dibal said in a 2009 interview with Reuters news agency.58 ‘It is true he was brilliant. He had this kind of monopoly in convincing the youth about the Holy Qur’an and Islam.’
It was apparently not the only meeting Yusuf would have during his extended stay in Saudi Arabia. Another important discussion would occur in which Yusuf would be confronted by his old master. Sheikh Ja’far Adam and several others met with Yusuf to try to convince him to renounce his radical beliefs. During the meeting in Saudi Arabia, Yusuf is said to have promised to change his ways and tell his followers he had been wrong. He would return home in 2005, but would not keep his promise to Adam.59
Back in Nigeria, Yusuf had become isolated from more mainstream Muslim leaders, having been kicked out of Indimi mosque after angering its hierarchy. Members of Indimi were reluctant to speak in detail about Yusuf during my two visits there out of fear of retaliation by Boko Haram, as well as not wanting to be associated with the notorious sect leader, though they have provided a general idea of what led to his expulsion. In October 2013, I spoke to a small group of men gathered in a room at the back of the mosque, including one who identified himself as an imam. Dressed in loose-fitting robes and wearing no shoes in accordance with Muslim tradition as they sat casually on the floor, they recalled that Yusuf had been there around 2002 and 2003.
