by Mike Smith
‘He was trying to mislead people’, said one of the men, adding that he attended the mosque at the time and remembered seeing Yusuf. ‘He was saying that, automatically, people must leave Western education. He was emphasising that anything in government is bad, that any uniformed man should not be accepted.’
During a brief visit three years earlier in 2010, a security worker at the mosque told me that elders there had tried to convince Yusuf to follow a different path. ‘We did all we could’, the 65-year-old said. ‘Muslim clerics had spoken with him [about his views].’
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Yusuf started his own mosque by at first preaching in a makeshift set-up outside his home before using his father-in-law’s land to build his own complex nearby in the Maiduguri neighbourhood known as Railway Quarters.60 While it was widely known simply as the Markaz – Arabic for centre – Yusuf named it after Ibn Taymiyyah, the Islamic cleric born in the thirteenth century in Mesopotamia, in an area that is today part of Turkey. Ibn Taymiyyah’s movement sought a more austere form of Islam, as it existed at the time of the Prophet, and his ideas would later have a major influence on Wahabbism and Salafism.61
Yusuf’s group gradually came to be known as ‘Boko Haram’, not necessarily by its members, but by local residents and the news media who picked up on the idea that its leader was opposed to Western education. The most commonly accepted translation of the Hausa-language phrase is ‘Western education is forbidden’, though it can have wider meanings as well.62 The group would eventually refer to itself as Jama’atu Ahlus Sunnah Lid Da’awati Wal Jihad, or People Committed to the Prophet’s Teachings for Propagation and Jihad.
While Yusuf became notorious for opposing Western education, his underlying beliefs and the reasons why he attracted followers were somewhat more nuanced. His knowledge of the Qur’an and Islamic learning were believed to be sufficient, and he certainly knew enough to win over and preach convincingly to a small army of recruits. He felt that British colonialism and the creation of Nigeria had imposed an un-Islamic way of life on Muslims through all the various layers of a modern state – Western schools, a Western legal system, Western democracy, and on and on. He advocated the development of an Islamic state where Muslim principles and sharia law would be obeyed, and denounced northern Nigeria’s traditional leaders, including the sultan of Sokoto, the country’s highest Muslim spiritual figure.63 He is said to have expressed similar such ideas in a book he wrote, apparently all in Arabic.64
Whether he specifically emulated Usman Dan Fodio, the nineteenth-century jihad leader in what is today northern Nigeria, is up for debate. One Nigerian journalist who knew him contends that he did, saying Yusuf spoke of returning the lands of Dan Fodio’s Sokoto Caliphate to what he perceived as their former Islamic glory. Others are not so sure, saying Dan Fodio did not seem to feature prominently in his sermons. Some also point to ethnic differences, since Dan Fodio was Fulani while Yusuf was Kanuri. It is clear, however, that Yusuf admired a number of hardline clerics from elsewhere, as his decision to name his mosque for Ibn Taymiyyah and his references to various texts showed. His teachings were in line with Salafist thought, and those who have studied him label him as such.
He was a fundamentalist in the strictest sense of the word, believing very literally in all of what he took away from the Qur’an. He seems to have lacked, if not the capacity, then at least the will for metaphorical understanding and a practical approach to his beliefs. Like many other extremist leaders, he took verses of the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet out of context and bent them to fit his arguments. Describing Yusuf’s thoughts on education according to his sermons, an academic who analysed his rhetoric, based on dozens of recorded sermons, wrote: Following the common understanding of the Hausa word ‘boko’, Yusuf understood it to mean modern secular education brought to Nigeria by the British colonial administration, including agriculture, biology, chemistry, engineering, geography, medicine, physics, and the English language. For Yusuf it was ḥaram for Muslims to acquire, accept, learn, or believe any aspects of these subjects that contradicted the Qur’an and Sunna, while all other aspects that supported or did not contradict the Qur’an and Sunna were ḥalal (i.e., religiously permissible) for Muslims. In addition, Yusuf condemned the Nigerian educational system as ḥaram because it mixed men and women in the same classrooms.
His theories outside of education included an insistence that the world was flat.
Yusuf argued that the geographical conception of how rains occur contradicts Qur’an 23:18, where Allah says: ‘And we sent down water from the sky according to (due) measure, and we caused it to soak into the soil; and we certainly are able to drain it off (with ease)’. He also quoted a Hadith that says that whenever it rained the Prophet Muhammad would go outside and touch the rain because it was fresh – i.e., created anew by God. He stated that the geographical idea that the earth is spherical is a mere research finding that is void because it contradicts the clear text (nass) of the Qur’an – but without mentioning chapter and verse. 65
Yusuf would espouse similar views during a 2009 interview with the BBC, whose Hausa-language broadcasts are widely listened to across northern Nigeria. In the interview, he would also dispute the theory of evolution.
‘There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam’, he was quoted as saying. ‘Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain. Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism.’66
Yusuf may have lacked the learning of Sheikh Ja’far and other Nigerian Muslim leaders, but his charisma and ability to win over followers was not in doubt. Judged from videos of him, his chubby face and inviting speaking style gave him the air of a kind older brother who knew something you did not and was willing to help you by sharing it. He was able to attract followers both through his charisma and because hopelessness among the region’s young men made them open to hearing his call. He painted an image of his followers standing firm in the midst of an evil world, with him as the enlightened leader – a cult of personality in many ways. While he may not have always directly spoken about government corruption, he was certainly anti-establishment and his attacks on Nigeria’s secular and traditional authorities were set against the backdrop of crushing poverty that were the everyday reality of his followers. Strict sharia law may seem like a promising option to those in such circumstances.
Even some non-Muslims found themselves agreeing with what they interpreted as Yusuf’s anti-government rhetoric. Anayo Adibe, the lawyer for Yusuf’s father-in-law Baba Fugu Mohammed and a Christian born in Lagos, was living in Maiduguri at the time, running his law practice. He would meet regularly with Mohammed at his home and would sometimes cross paths with Yusuf, though he said they did not know each other and never had conversations. He was, however, familiar with some of his preachings, or at least second-hand versions of it, with talk of his rise having spread throughout Maiduguri. He said he understood Yusuf’s anti-government sentiment since corruption was, and remains, maddening, though he stressed he did not support his decision to pursue violence.
‘Even myself, I agreed with him – completely’, the 41-year-old Adibe, thin and bald-headed with a grey-flecked goatee, told me one afternoon at his bare-bones law office in Abuja, where he moved after the situation became too tense in Maiduguri. As we spoke, there was no electricity in his office thanks to another of Nigeria’s repeated power cuts. The windows were open and the sound of horns bleating outside on Abuja’s roads occasionally echoed into the building. Adibe, his voice calm but insistent, explained further: ‘Because his preachings were usually against the ruling class, and you don’t need any special kind of education, or even come close to him, to agree with him, particularly when you consider the level of pov
erty in the land at that time. His preachings were [...] things that people could identify with.’
Kyari Mohammed, who has closely followed Boko Haram as head of the Centre for Peace and Security Studies at Modibbo Adama University in Nigeria, held a similar view. For him, Yusuf’s crusade against Western influence resonated in Maiduguri and elsewhere because all many young people in north-eastern Nigeria know of Western-style democracy is what they have been subjected to: elites filling their pockets while the masses of poor struggle to survive.
There were of course other factors that helped feed Yusuf’s movement. One was political thuggery, with politicians in the north-east, like their counterparts in the Niger Delta in the south, using local gangs to intimidate opponents and rig elections. Once elections ended and politicians stopped paying them off, the ‘militias’, bitter over being abandoned, were said to have joined with Yusuf. One politician who has come under particular scrutiny over the issue is Ali Modu Sheriff, the former governor of Borno state. Ahead of the 2003 elections, he was a member of the Senate, becoming Borno governor after the April 2003 polls and serving for two terms. Sheriff has been accused of using and abandoning thugs who went by the name ECOMOG – co-opting the name of a West African military force – and as a result contributing to the development of Boko Haram. He has repeatedly denied the allegations. A Nigerian government committee appointed to look into the Boko Haram crisis described the problem in detail, as highlighted in a White Paper produced from its findings.
‘The report traced the origin of private militias in Borno state in particular, of which Boko Haram is an offshoot, to politicians who set them up in the run-up to the 2003 general elections’, the White Paper drafted by a panel headed by Interior Minister Abba Moro said, according to an account by Nigeria’s Sunday Trust newspaper.
The militias were allegedly armed and used extensively as political thugs. After the elections and having achieved their primary purpose, the politicians left the militias to their fate since they could not continue funding and keeping them employed. With no visible means of sustenance, some of the militias gravitated towards religious extremism, the type offered by Mohammed Yusuf. 67
There have also been allegations that Sheriff promised he would institute strict sharia law in order to gain the backing of Boko Haram followers in the 2003 vote before later reneging.68 In 2014, with elections months away, the ex-governor would again be accused of financing elements of Boko Haram by an Australian mediator seeking the release of more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls. The mediator, Stephen Davis, also accused a former army chief of staff of sponsoring the insurgents. Both men forcefully denied the accusations.69
Another factor some argue helped supply Yusuf with followers involved the young Qur’anic students known as almajiris, who travel from rural areas to study under Islamic teachers in cities and towns, including Maiduguri. The system has long been in existence and has been described as producing promising students in line with tradition – Usman Dan Fodio was himself a travelling scholar, for example. But it has been criticised more recently as unadapted to the modern world, without enough supervision of schools and their teachers. There have been allegations of families in northern Nigeria too poor to care for their children on their own sending them to live at schools that sometimes amount to little more than shacks, with the students then sent begging on the streets for alms. However, many caution against blaming almajiris for the rise of Boko Haram, and they are correct in saying that no one is sure whether they constituted a significant number of Yusuf’s followers. Nevertheless, the government panel on Boko Haram called for the almajiri schooling system to be modernised since it may be producing young people susceptible to becoming extremists.70
The number of followers Yusuf had has never been authoritatively determined, though a military estimate said there were 4,000 in 2009 at the time of his uprising.71 The government White Paper said most members were poor and aimless young people, though the military has claimed that earlier on it included educated adherents such as university professors and civil servants. Borders in the north-east are porous, and it is certainly not out of the question that young men from Chad, Niger or Cameroon were also part of the movement, but attempts by some to blame the problem on foreigners have never been backed up with proof.
‘The sect draws the bulk of its membership from [motorcycle taxi drivers] and the vast army of unemployed youths, school drop-outs, and drug addicts that abound in the affected areas’, the government White Paper said. It added that ‘the federal, state and local governments should as a matter of priority, initiate and design appropriate measures for mass economic empowerment. To this end, the federal and state governments should immediately address the issue of unemployment in the face of the large number of jobless youths in northeast zone.’72
While there were more than enough rudderless young men in Maiduguri and its surroundings for Boko Haram to draw from, Yusuf’s movement required more than just members. He also needed money, and determining where he received it from has long been one of Nigeria’s great parlour games and the impetus for grand conspiracy theories, including from those who suspected Yusuf of acting on behalf of powerful politicians. It is important to distinguish between Boko Haram under Yusuf and its re-emergence after his death, when such questions would become far more complicated and suspicions over links to foreign groups would deepen.
First, a significant amount of its financing under Yusuf is believed to have come from members themselves, including those encouraged to sell their goods and property and commit to the cause. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the group also provided some form of welfare assistance to its particularly impoverished members, with the Nigerian state failing to supply any basic level of social programmes or safety net, and that this could have strengthened Yusuf’s standing among the poor.73
One specific instance that has given rise to conspiracy theories involved a high-profile member named Buji Foi, a former Borno state commissioner for religious affairs under Sheriff who later became a Boko Haram member. Foi was suspected of financing the group, and some have sought to link Sheriff, the former Borno governor, to Boko Haram through him, alleging that the governor funnelled money to Yusuf through his commissioner.74 Sheriff, again, has always denied this, and Foi was killed in 2009 following the uprising. A shaky video purportedly showing police summarily executing him was posted online.75 ‘Buji Foi was a politician [...] And he was out of my cabinet two years before the Boko Haram crisis and, if I would be held responsible for anything done by anybody who served in my cabinet, then nobody can govern any state in Nigeria’, Sheriff told local journalists in 2011.76
Beyond Nigeria, there have been claims of Osama bin Laden supplying seed money to Boko Haram in its early years through intermediaries. It should be stressed, however, that such claims are questionable and no proof has ever been offered for them.77 Bin Laden, however, did in 2003 name Nigeria as one of several countries ready for ‘liberation’.78
In 2012, allegations also emerged in Britain and Nigeria that Boko Haram had benefited from money from a London-based Islamic charity named as the Al-Muntada Trust Fund. An inquiry by Britain’s Charity Commission found no organisation by that name, but it did locate an Al Muntada Al-Islami Trust. The commission turned up no evidence of such activity, and the Trust has strongly denied it.79
With or without prominent backing, Yusuf was able to build a formidable movement, with recordings of his sermons being sold in the markets and circulated among sympathisers. The police repeatedly arrested him, but he does not appear to have ever been convicted of a crime. The government White Paper noted two occasions when a court in Abuja discharged him and followers welcomed him home in celebration. It said that ‘the reception accorded him upon his return to Maiduguri attracted a mammoth crowd that temporarily undermined state authority, and served as an avenue for him to attract additional membership into the sect’.80 He also participated in debates where he defended his beliefs and interpret
ations of the Qur’an. The academic who studied his recorded sermons quoted him as saying in one such debate: ‘The system of modern education that the Europeans brought to Nigeria contradicts Islamic faith. I am not the first to say so for earlier scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah as well as modern scholars of Islam have also said so.’ The academic then paraphrased Yusuf: ‘When asked whether he had studied in schools, he responded that he never even attended primary school, and that he obtained his information about modern subjects from the British encyclopedia.’81
Adam became increasingly frustrated with Yusuf and publicly questioned his teachings, seeking to point out what he saw as his former student’s hypocrisy. In particularly scathing comments, Adam sought to portray Yusuf as a dilettante misleading his followers with potentially dangerous consequences. He said: You are not a prophet. You have not yet proven your faith or moral character to your neighbours. If it took Prophet Muhammad 23 years preaching Islam, for how many years have you preached before you decided to judge Muslims as unbelievers because they have Western education or because they work for the government? You did not have sufficient religious knowledge, or even enough general knowledge. You only know your little town. What do you know about the history of various struggles for Islam? [...] Nearer to home, how many battles did Usman Dan Fodio fight? Apart from Fodio’s name, what do you know about his battles? In how many battles did he participate in the fighting? [...] Above all, right now, what plans do you have?
