Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS.

By External Source
Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

Due to growing insecurity, Nigeria is gradually becoming one of the most dangerous places to live. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index identified the country as the third most affected by terrorism. There was a sharp increase in Boko Haram’s targeting of civilians by 25%, and killings by herdsmen increased by 26%, compared with the previous year. The two countries higher on the index are Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, 2,769 violent deaths were recorded between February 2020 and February 2021 in Borno State alone. Similarly, ransom-kidnapping by armed groups has increased substantially in the past five years. Over $18 million was paid as ransom for kidnapped victims between 2011 and 2020.

My research published last year highlights why children have become targets for the armed groups in northern Nigeria. This paper focuses on children in the Boko Haram conflict, which has for over 10 years ravaged the northeastern part of Nigeria and around Lake Chad

While insecurity is common in Nigeria, the northern region has been most affected. This is due to Boko Haram attacks, banditry, farmers-herdsmen conflicts, kidnappings and ethno-religious conflicts. Sadly, children have not been spared.

In the northeast, children have been murdered, abducted and used as sex slaves, forcefully recruited as child soldiers, and suffer from diseases and malnutrition at the Internally Displaced Persons camps. The United Nations says almost 4,000 children were killed in just a year, 2015 to 2016. UNICEF reported that an estimated 1.9 million people are displaced – and about 60% of them are children; many under the age of five.

The rising phenomenon has further manifested in the recent wave of attacks on schools and kidnapping of students.

My research published last year highlights why children have become targets for the armed groups in northern Nigeria. This paper focuses on children in the Boko Haram conflict, which has for over 10 years ravaged the northeastern part of Nigeria and around Lake Chad.

Despite the reality that children have increasingly become the face of insecurity in northern Nigeria, the literature has been silent on issues related to child security. My study therefore aimed to address the perspective of children in the conflict.

I found that children were of strategic interest to both the terrorists and the state security forces. I concluded that child security had not been given sufficient attention in Nigeria, and that child security should be included in peace-building efforts in northeastern Nigeria.

Children and conflict in northern Nigeria

The dimension of children in violent conflicts in northern Nigeria gained momentum in 2013 when Boko Haram adopted the strategy of direct attacks on schools, hospitals and centres for internally displaced people.

It started with the midnight raid of a dormitory in Gujba, Yobe State, leading to the murder of 44 schoolboys by the terrorist group in September 2013. Five months later, another boarding school was attacked, and 59 boys were murdered in the same state. In April 2014, 276 schoolgirls were abducted in Chibok in Borno State.

UNICEF in its 2018 report said that the group had kidnapped over 1,000 children since 2013. Between 2015 and 2016, the UN estimated that 3,909 children were killed.

In the past five years, the rise of banditry added a new and dangerous dimension to attacks on children. On December 11 2020, 333 students were kidnapped in Kankara, Katsina State. On December 20 2020, 80 students at an Islamic school were kidnapped in Mahuta, Katsina State. Twenty seven students were abducted in Kagara, Niger State, on February 17 2021.

The latest occurred on February 25 with the abduction of 317 schoolgirls in Jangebe, Talata-Mafara local government, Zamfara State.

Why children are prime targets

Our study used a qualitative approach, relying on data from institutional reports of intergovernmental agencies like the United Nations, United Nations Children’s Fund, and International Organisation for Migration; non-governmental agencies like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, Mercy Corps, Open Doors and media reports.

The research showed that children were of strategic interest to the armed groups for many reasons. First, targeting children proved effective as a tool to negotiate for the release of members of the group in prison and receive huge ransoms to purchase weapons and fund their operations.

Second, the armed groups were interested in children to gain local and international attention to show their strength, seek international collaborations with similar groups, and amplify their demands on the state authorities.

Third, children were useful for their military operations, especially for terrorist groups. They could plant explosives, act as human shields or suicide bombers, and spy on the other parties because they didn’t arouse suspicion.

Fourth, the attack on schools corresponded with the central ideology driving terrorism in the region, which was based on opposition to Western education. The increased attacks showed the plan was to make the region insecure for teaching and learning.

Fifth, girls were of interest to the armed groups for sexual exploitation. Abducted girls were sometimes raped or forced into marriages in the camps.

Nigeria must safeguard its children more

Child security has not been given sufficient attention in Nigeria. This explains the successful attacks on children in recent times. Child security underscores the essence of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, which Nigeria is a party to.

The government must show serious commitment to children’s security by tackling the rising problem of insecurity ravaging the country. The paper underscores the need for specialised programmes that can address the peculiar challenges of children involved in the conflict zones and not merely incorporate them into adult-focused or general programmes.

The international community, including important nongovernmental organisations promoting children’s rights and welfare, must also compel the authorities to secure the children and internationalise the problem of child insecurity in Nigeria.

Hakeem Onapajo, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Nile University of Nigeria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“We were so close you couldn’t put one finger between one person and the next, we were like razorblades in a pack”. Illustration @2019 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch.

By Jo Becker
Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

“Khadija” was just 8 years old when Boko Haram fighters attacked her village in northeast Nigeria and took her by force to their camp. Her abductors tried to marry her and other captives to members of the armed Islamist group, she told me. When the captives refused, they were locked in a room.  

They managed to escape a month later, but Khadija’s ordeal didn’t end there. Nigerian soldiers found her. But instead of returning her to her family, they detained her in a military prison for two years as a suspected Boko Haram member.

Boko Haram’s crimes in northeast Nigeria are notorious: abductions, forced marriage, suicide bombings, and attacks on schools perceived as providing “Western education.” But the victims of the insurgency also include thousands of children imprisoned by Nigerian authorities for suspected Boko Haram involvement, often with little or no evidence.

Since 2012, the United States has spent over US$100 million to help Nigerian authorities try to defeat Boko Haram. As part of its counter-insurgency efforts, Nigeria’s military has detained thousands of suspected Boko Haram members. Those detained since 2013 have included at least 3,600 children, the UN says.

In 20 years of human rights work, I’ve never come across conditions as bad as the children described at Giwa barracks, the main military detention facility in northeast Nigeria

In June I interviewed some of these children, including one 10-year-old boy who was detained when he was only 5 years old. What became clear is that most of these children were victims of Boko Haram. The government’s detention policies simply add another layer to their suffering.

One boy I met said he was detained for two-and-a-half years for allegedly selling yams to Boko Haram members. Other children told us soldiers arrested and detained them after they fled Boko Haram attacks on their villages, sometimes singling out adolescent boys perceived as being of fighting age. Several children said that soldiers accused them of being Boko Haram because they hadn’t left their villages soon enough after Boko Haram attacks. Girls who were abducted and forced to become Boko Haram wives have also been detained.

The vast majority of these children are never charged with a crime. Most are held for months and often years with no contact with the outside world. Their families often presume they are dead. Of the 32 children a colleague and I interviewed, none said they were ever taken before a judge or appeared in court. Only one said he saw someone who he believed might have been a lawyer.

In 20 years of human rights work, I’ve never come across conditions as bad as the children described at Giwa barracks, the main military detention facility in northeast Nigeria. They described cells so crowded that they were forced to sleep on their sides, packed tightly together in rows. “We were so close you couldn’t put one finger between one person and the next,” said one. “We were like razorblades in a pack,” said another.

They described beatings, overwhelming heat, and an overpowering stench from hundreds of detainees sharing a single open toilet. Many spoke of frequent hunger or thirst. Deaths were common, and many of the children said they saw soldiers carry bodies out of the cells.

Many of the children I met felt doubly victimized, first by Boko Haram for abducting them or attacking their village, and then by the government for detaining them. Many felt frustrated that the military did not adequately investigate their claims that they were not part of Boko Haram. “My years were wasted in suffering,” said one bitterly.

Illustration @ 2019 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch.

Several of Nigeria’s neighbors, including Chad, Niger, and Mali, have signed “handover protocols” with the United Nations to ensure that children detained by soldiers are swiftly transferred to child protection authorities for rehabilitation, family reunification, and community reintegration. Nigeria should do the same, and immediately release children in military custody to national child welfare authorities. The US, as a major supporter of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations, should urge Nigeria to take these steps.

Boko Haram has caused untold suffering for millions, and it’s possible some children may have committed serious crimes. If Nigerian authorities have credible evidence of criminal offenses by children, they should transfer them to civilian authorities for treatment in accordance with international juvenile justice standards.

Locking up children based on speculation or dubious evidence is not an effective way to counter Boko Haram’s violence. The former child detainees I met had no sympathy for Boko Haram or interest in fighting. They want to go to school or find work to support themselves. Instead of putting them in prison, Nigerian authorities should help them build their future.

Jo Becker is the children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch and author of “They Didn’t Know if I was Alive of Dead”: Military Detention of Children for Suspected Boko Haram Involvement in Northeast Nigeria. Follow her on Twitter at @jobeckerhrw.

Excerpt:

Fanta Mohamet, 14, writes on the blackboard at the school she attends in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for refugees in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

By IPS Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 2019 (IPS)

Fourteen-year-old Fanta lives in a tent in a settlement in Zamaï, a village in the Far North Region of Cameroon with her mother and two brothers. They came here more than a year ago after her father and elder brother were murdered and her elder sister abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The day members of the armed extremist group Boko Haram came to their home in Nigeria to search for her father, a police officer, was the day everything changed.

The fate of her sister is unknown but each year thousands of girls are abducted by the armed group and forced into marriage.

There are 1,500 other displaced people who live in the settlement in Zamaï – more than three fifths of whom are children. And while life remains difficult, Fanta has something many other children of violence in the region do not, she is able to continue her education despite the prevailing insecurity.

According to new report released Aug. 23 by the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF), nearly two million children in West and Central Africa are being robbed of an education due to violence and insecurity in and around their schools.

“Ideological opposition to what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of the disputes that ravage the region. As a result, schoolchildren, teachers, administrators and the education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. And region-wide, such attacks are on the rise,” UNICEF noted.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, are experiencing a surge in threats and attacks against students, teachers and schools.

Areas where schools are primarily affected by conflict. Courtesy: UNICEF

The report also noted:

• Nearly half of the schools closed across the region are located in northwest and southwest Cameroon; 4,437 schools there closed as of June 2019, pushing more than 609,000 children out of school.

• More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on schools globally in 2019 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.

• Between April 2017 and June 2019, the countries of the central Sahel – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures due to violence, from 512 to 3,005.

• And CAR saw a 21 percent increase in verified attacks on schools between 2017 and 2019.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Charlotte Petri Gornitzka and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Muzoon Almellehan travelled to Mali earlier this week and witnessed first hand the impact on children’s education.

“Deliberate attacks and unabating threats against education – the very foundation of peace and prosperity have cast a dark shadow on children, families, and communities across the region,” said Gornitzka. “I visited a displacement camp in Mopti, central Mali, where I met young children at a UNICEF-supported safe learning space. It was evident to me how vital education is for them and for their families.”

UNICEF has supported the setup of 169 community learning centres in Mali, which provide safe spaces for children to learn.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), a coalition of international human rights and education organisations from across the world, noted that in the past five years the coalition had documented more than 14,000 attacks in 34 countries and that there was a systematic pattern of attacks on education. “Armed forces and armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in educational settings, or along school routes, in at least 17 countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the same period.”  

In May, GCPEA released a 76-page report on the effects that the 2016-2017 attacks by armed groups on hundreds of schools in the Kasai region of central Democratic Republic of Congo had on children.

Based on over 55 interviews with female students, as well as principals, and teachers from schools that were attacked in the region, the report described how members of armed groups raped female students and school staff during the attacks or when girls were fleeing such attacks. Girls were also abducted from schools to “purportedly to join the militia, but instead raped or forced them to “marry” militia members”.

“Being out of school, even for relatively short periods, increases the risk of early marriage for girls,” GCPEA had said.

UNICEF raised this also as a concern for children affected by the conflict in West and Central Africa.

“Out-of-school children also face a present filled with dangers. Compared to their peers who are in school, they are at a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups. Girls face an elevated risk of gender-based violence and are forced into child marriage more often, with ensuing early pregnancies and childbirth that threaten their lives and health,” the UNICEF Child Alert titled Education Under Threat in West and Central Africa, noted.

Fanta Mohamet, 14, on her way home from school in Zamaï, a village near a settlement for displaced people in Mayo-Tsanaga, Far North Region, Cameroon on 28 May 2019. Courtesy: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

UNICEF has long been sounding the alarm about the attacks on schools, students and educators, stating that these are attacks on children’s right to an education and on their futures.

The agency and its partners called on governments, armed forces, other parties to take action to stop attacks and threats against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central Africa – and to support quality learning in the region.

The U.N. body also called on States to endorse and implement the Safe Schools Declaration. The declaration provides States the opportunity to express broad political support for the protection and continuation of education in armed conflict.

“With more than 40 million 6- to 14-year-old children missing out on their right to education in West and Central Africa, it is crucial that governments and their partners work to diversify available options for quality education,” said UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa Marie-Pierre Poirier. “Culturally suitable models with innovative, inclusive and flexible approaches, which meet quality learning standards, can help reach many children, especially in situation of conflict.”

UNICEF is working with governments across West and Central Africa to offer alternative teaching and learning tools, which includes the first-of-its-kind Radio Education in Emergencies programme. Other interventions also include psychosocial support, the distribution of exercise books, pencils and pens to children to facilitate their learning.

“Education is important. If a girl marries young, it’s dangerous. If her husband doesn’t care for her, with an education she can take care of herself,” Fanta said.

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

The abduction started a global campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Accounts by others who escaped from Boko Haram’s captivity confirm this.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Chibok girls who survived Boko Haram, Sa'a (left) and Rachel (right) at a press conference moderated by Vikas Pota, CEO, Varkey Foundation, at the Global Skills and Education Forum, Dubai. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
DUBAI, UAE, Mar 18 2017 (IPS)

Though still fearful for her life and the safety of her family, one of the girls who escaped abduction by Boko Haram in Nigeria has appealed to global leaders to intervene and help bring back 195 schoolgirls still being held by the terrorist network.

Next month it will be three years since the Nigerian militants abducted more than 270 girls from the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria.

Last October, the Boko Haram fighters freed 21 of the girls, including one with a baby that triggered global outrage and spurred the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

Telling our story

“We have to share our story and tell the world about it for the world to know,’ the student, using a pseudonym to protect her identity, Sa’a* (20) said at press conference on the sidelines of the two-day Global Education and Skills Forum.

Earlier SAA and another girl, identified as Rachel*, who lost her father and siblings to Boko Haram, told the Forum that the kidnapping of the schoolgirls was a painful episode that the world should not forget.

“The only thing we need to do is to ask the world leaders to bring back the girls. We cannot do anything other than speak out,” said SAA, who escaped from the clutches of Boko Haram. She jumped off a moving truck when the group attacked and burnt her school and books in Borno State in April 2014.

Sa’a, who was moved from Nigeria and is currently studying in the United States, said the traumatic ordeal should not be allowed to happen to any student. Her resolve to continue her schooling was the reason she has come out publicly about her experience.

“Every child needs to be educated and to go to school,” Sa’a said. “We must never forget this until all the girls are safely back. Next month it will not be three days but three years and they are not back. It is painful.”

Sa’a told the conference that after they were abducted and forced at gunpoint into trucks, she decided to jump off a moving truck together with a friend who sustained injuries. They were helped by a shepherd and made their way to safety.

Emmanuel Ogebe is a human rights lawyer and director of the Education Must Continue Initiative, which has assisted child victims and IDPs from conflicts, primary Boko Haram. Most of the victims are in Nigeria and a handful in the United States.

“Most venerable targets of Boko Haram have been educational institutions and religious institutions. Pastors have been killed in thousands and over 600 teachers have been killed by Boko Haram and we see vulnerability in both areas,” Ogebe told IPS.

“It is a painful situation of what happened to the girls because we understand that there were early warnings that the terrorists were going to strike and supported by the fact that teachers escaped and left the girls. The sense of failure to protect is very story in addition to the fact that the government did not protect the girls at school even when they were warned.”

Since January this year, Sa’a has started college under a project by the Education Must Continue Initiative, a charity which has helped about 3000 other internally-displaced children go to school. She now has an ambition to study science and medicine.

Hope persists

“My dream is to be a medical doctor in the future and inspire others and go back to my home country and help those kids to go back to school and assist others get the education they deserve,” Sa’a says.

Rachel, who is back at school in Nigeria, says she wanted to be medical doctor as well but would now like to be a top ranking military officer after what happened to her father and three brothers.

“I would like to contribute to a better nation. I am not conformable because of what I have seen and I feel bad,” Rachel said. “Some girls cannot go to school now because of what happened and do not value education because without education they can survive. This is sad.”

Rachel is a teenager that went to school in northeast Nigeria. Her father was a plainclothes policeman who had moved his family with him to a smaller town where he thought it would be safer. He was assigned to protect the local church. Rachel’s mum found a job working in the Education department of the church that her father was on security detail to.

Then one day in late 2014, Boko Haram terrorists attacked the church that her father had been assigned to protect.  Rachel’s father fled to his house to gather his children. Unfortunately, as they tried to escape, they ran into the terrorists who shot dead her father and three younger brothers on the spot. They were 14, 12 and 10 years old and in secondary and primary school, respectively.

Vikas Pota, Chief Execuive of the Varkey Foundation, the hosts of the Global Education Forum, said the Boko Haram question is wider than simply the question of the girls, and is related to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria and elsewhere. He said collective action was needed to make the world more inclusive thereby creating an environment to access education to all.

“I think it is ridiculous in today’s age that so many girls and all the human intelligence that exists that we do not know where these girls are. It shows we do not care,” Pota told IPS, adding that,” As a father, how can we tolerate this situation? I think the government not – just the Nigerian one but governments around the world – should help and make sure this situation is resolved.”

*True identities have been changed to protect their families.

The military crackdown on Boko Haram has destroyed the economy around Lake Chad. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24 2017 (IPS)

Years of violence and unrest in North-East Nigeria have left millions of people at risk of starving to death. Both the violent up surging of Boko Haram and the government’s harsh military crackdown have left already historically marginalised communities with next to nothing.

Some towns have already seen all of their children aged less than five years of age die from starvation, according to Toby Lanzer, the UN’s coordinator for the region.

The violence, which began in North-East Nigeria has spilled over into the three other countries bordering Lake Chad: Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

A donor’s conference in Oslo, Norway on Friday raised $672 million dollars for the crisis – well short of the target of $1.5 billion.

IPS spoke to Sultana Begum, Oxfam Advocacy and Policy lead for the Lake Chad Basin crisis, who was in New York ahead of the donor’s conference.

The emphasis on responding militarily to the crisis has left already historically marginalised communities worse off, Begum told IPS.

“It isn’t just Boko Haram. It is the governments and the militaries of the region and the way that they are fighting this war,” she said. “In order to cut off Boko Haram from food and supplies, they have also cut off the lifeline of the civilian population.”

International governments have also been providing military and counter terrorism support in the region, says Begum, but she hopes they will also help support Nigeria to increase the humanitarian response through providing the funding needed to help people affected by the conflict.

The military has also been funding vigilantes as a way to fight Boko Haram, a strategy which could potentially backfire and do further harm to local communities, according to a new report released Wednesday by the International Crisis Group.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has also been leading parts of the humanitarian response, such as running refugee camps, says Begum.

“New areas that the military has retaken, it is very militarized,” she says. “As soon as possible the military needs to hand (the camps) over to the civilian authorities, to humanitarians.”

However the vast majority of displaced people sheltered in the region are living in the homes of relatives, distant acquaintances and even strangers, who have opened their homes.

“These communities have been so incredibly generous some of them have taken 5, 6 families into their own homes,” said Begum.

“They’ve shared the little food that they have and they have very little themselves. They’ve really opened their hearts. Really they’re the heroes of the story, and they haven’t just been helping for 6 months, 5 months, many of them have been hosting these families in their homes for 2 to 3, sometimes 4 years. Some of the host communities hope that people will pay rent but people really can’t afford to pay rent.”

“There are some taking major, major risks to continue fishing.” — Sultana Begum – Oxfam. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS.

Begum says that these communities are hosting some eighty percent of the people who are displaced in the region even though they themselves have their own struggles.

“If you look at Maiduguri, for example its an urban area, its an area that is historically been neglected. There are already issues to do with do people not having enough services like access to water, education.”

These host communities ”are really struggling themselves now,” says Begum. “They don’t have that much. There’s an economic crisis in Nigeria on top of everything else that’s going on. You know the price of food is really high. They have very little themselves and they need assistance.”

Sultana also notes that it’s important to recognise that people living on the edge economically may begin to see these groups as an option.

“When research has been done in terms of peoples’ motivations for joining Boko Haram, especially youth and young men in particular, the motivations are often to do with economics,” she said.

“Boko Haram offers them money. They offer them motorbikes. They offer them incentives. They offer them wives. You know these are all things that young men, they want. They need jobs, they need livelihoods and they want to get married and they want to have families and things like that. And those are opportunities they weren’t being offered.”

“So we’re hearing less about the ideological reasons why people are joining Boko Haram and more issues around the financial incentives.”

However in some cases the military crackdown has taken away what little economic opportunities these communities have.

Over the border in Niger, Begum says that emergency measures have destroyed the economy in the Diffa region.

“The two major economies are smoked fish and small pepper production.”

The small pepper “was so lucrative for the region,” people called it ‘red gold’.

“The emergency measures that were bought in banned fishing, banned the selling of fish, basically restricted peoples access to fuel and fertilizer, banned motorbikes, brought in curfews. So what that meant was that people stopped fishing. Most of these fishermen relied on fishing for 89 percent of their income,” she says.

“There are some taking major, major risks to continue fishing.”

“Some people have been killed by Boko Haram (or) they have been picked up by the military and accused of being Boko Haram, put into detention, or have disappeared.”

“The farmers are taking part in illegal trade. They are out trying to get hold of fuel and fertilizer illegally.”

This week the UN warned that North-East Nigeria alongside Yemen and Somalia, are at imminent risk of famine, after South Sudan on Monday became the first country to declare famine since 2012. In North-East Nigeria alone more than 5 million people now face serious food shortages, according to the UN.

In all of these four countries the current food crisis is considered man-made, the result of years of unresolved conflict.

However, despite their roots in conflict, much more than a military response is needed to end these crises.

Update: This article has been updated to include information about the funds raised in Oslo. An earlier headline has also been corrected.

Toby Lanzer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel speaks at the International Peace Institute. Credit: L Rowlands / IPS.

By Lyndal Rowlands
Jan 30 2017 (IPS)

Children under five years of age are not surviving due to severe food shortages in some parts of the Lake Chad region, says Toby Lanzer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel.

“I saw adults sapped of energy who couldn’t stand up, I saw an entire town devoid of two-year olds, three-year olds, four-year olds, and when we asked where are the children – and I get upset when I say this – we were told that they had died, they had starved.”

This was the situation Lanzer saw on a visit to the town of Bama in Northern Nigeria in 2016. He described the visit at a discussion with policy makers, diplomats and journalists at the International Peace Institute – a New York think tank – on Wednesday 25 January.

The crisis has left millions of people living on the edge in the Lake Chad basin, due to a combination of abject poverty, climate change and violent extremism, said Lanzer. Four countries – Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria – border Lake Chad, which has shrunk dramatically since the 1960s.

“Around Lake Chad there are now well over 10 million people who I could categorise as desperately in need of … life-saving aid,” he said, including 7.1 million people categorised as “severely food insecure.”

In response to a question from IPS, Lanzer described how ongoing violence in the region has contributed to the food shortages:

“About 85 percent of people across this part of the world depend on the weather and agriculture livestock – it’s an agro-pastoralist community.”

“If your movement is confined you may not plant and communities across the Lake Chad basin have lost the last three planting seasons if you don’t plant than you don’t harvest and if you don’t harvest than you don’t have food,” he said.

“If your cattle or your goats or your livestock isn’t moving cows that don’t walk get sick and they die and then you’ve lost your livelihood,” he added.

Lanzer, whose humanitarian career has seen him work in Sudan, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and the Central African Republic said that the poverty in the Lake Chad region is some of the worst he has witnessed.

“I don’t think I’ve been to villages before where people don’t have flip-flops, where people don’t have plastic,” he said.

However Lanzer noted that ongoing violence in the region – including due to extremist group Boko Haram – was one of the biggest factors disrupting the lives of people in the region.

Els Debuf, Senior Adviser and Head of Humanitarian Affairs at the International Peace Institute said that although the crisis in the Lake Chad region is one of the most severe it is also one of the most under-reported.

She noted that despite the region’s extreme poverty, communities were also sheltering refugees and internally displaced persons:

“Close to two and half million refugees and internally displaced people – the vast majority of whom are children – are sheltered throughout the region by communities who are themselves among the poorest and most vulnerable in the world,” she said.

The governments of Norway, Nigeria and Germany are planning a pledging conference to raise funds for the crisis in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region on 24 February in Oslo, Norway.

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi is received at the Minawao Camp in Cameroon’s Far North region on Dec. 15, 2016, where some 60,000 refugees have fled attacks by Boko Haram. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
MINAWAO CAMP, Cameroon, Dec 16 2016 (IPS)

Tears spring to Aichatou Njoya’s eyes as she recalls the day Islamic militants from Boko Haram arrived on her doorstep in Nigeria.

“It was on May 24, 2013. My husband was sleeping in his room while I was on the other side of the house with our six children. The youngest was only one month old,” she mutters, pausing to collect herself.The funding gap for refugees and IDPs in Cameroon now stands at 62.4 million dollars.

Njoya told IPS when the armed insurgents broke into the house, they grabbed her husband and dragged him into her room. “They brought him in front of us and put a machete to his neck and asked him if he was going to convert from Christianity to Islam. They asked thrice, and thrice he refused. Then they slew him right in front of me and our children,” she said, still holding back tears.

The widowed refugee said an argument ensued among the assailants as to whether to spare her life or not. They finally agreed to let her live. The next day she escaped with her children to the hills and trekked for several days until they reached the border with Cameroon, where the UNHCR had vehicles to transport refugees to the camp. The camp had just been set up, she says.

Njoya, now 36, has been living in the Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon’s Far North region for more than three and a half years now, with scant hope of returning anytime soon.

IPS spoke with Njoya and others during the Dec. 15 visit of Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner for the United Nations Refugee agency UNHCR, to the camp. Grandi called for the financial empowerment of Nigerian refugees to help them cope with insufficient humanitarian aid.

The camp hosts about 60,000 Nigerians who have fled their homes since 2011 because of attacks carried out by the Islamist terror group, Boko Haram.

Grandi spoke with refugees, representatives of national and international NGOs, and officials of the Cameroonian government who gathered to welcome him. Cameroon is the third country he is visiting as part of his tour of countries of the Lake Chad Basin affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Grandi said his visit was intended to encourage donors to provide more aid to affected countries and governments to work together to reinstate peace in the region and facilitate the return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) their homes.

“We have made efforts to improve aid, but aid is still insufficient. I have listened to complaints of these refugee women who say they do not have any income generation activities and I think the UNHCR and its partners should begin working in that direction. Help them help themselves,” he said.

He had just listened to representatives of the refugees and refugee women discussing the difficulties they face on a daily basis, including food and water shortages, scarcity of wood, insufficient medicines, and insufficient classroom and medical staff in health units in the camp.

Growing population, funding gap aggravate living conditions

According to Njoya, and every other refugee who talked to IPS, including Jallo Mohamed, Bulama Adam and Ayuba Fudama, living conditions are growing worse by the day. They all complain of joblessness. Njoya says even when they leave the camp with refugee certificates as IDs, Cameroonian security officers still stop them from going out.

“This hinders the success of the income generation activities we are yearning for,” she said.

“When we just got here, they gave each refugee 13 kg of rice monthly. It was later reduced to 10 and last month (November 2016) it dropped further. The rationing for wood has also declined.  Nowadays when you go to the health unit for headache, they give you paracetamol. If you have a fever, they give you paracetamol. If you have stomach ache or anything else, they give you the same tablets. And when you go there at night, there is no one on duty,” says Jallo Mohamed.

Reports say there are periods when as many as 50 births are recorded per week in the Minawao camp.

“You can’t blame them. They sleep early every night because they do not have TV sets or other forms of entertainment. That is why the birth rate is as it is,” said a medic at the camp who asked not to be named.

Cameroon currently hosts more than 259,000 refugees from the Central African Republic and 73,747 Nigerians. Funders led by the U.S., Japan, EU, Spain, Italy, France and Korea were able to raise only 37 per cent of a total of 98.6million dollars required in assistance for refugees and IDPs in Cameroon this year – a funding gap of 62.4 million dollars, according to the UNHCR factsheet.

The funding gap for requirements of Nigerian refugees, according to the UNHCR, stands at 29.7 million dollars. Nevertheless, High Commissioner Grandi remains positive that empowering refugees to earn incomes will improve living standards at the Minawao Camp.

Regarding the wood shortage, he said he saw fuel-efficient cooking stoves in Niger and Chad and will encourage stakeholders in Cameroon to introduce the models in the camp. He also reassured refugees that an ongoing water project will provide the camp and host communities with clean pipe-borne water.

The High Commissioner’s mission to Cameroon also includes the launching of 2017 Regional Refugee Response Plan for the Nigeria Refugee Situation.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets with Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

With over 1.5 million displaced, 800,000 of whom are children, and continuously escalating violence in northeastern Nigeria, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the humanitarian situation as “particularly worrying” during a visit to the country.

Speaking at a press conference on Aug. 24 following a meeting with newly-elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Ban expressed concern over the “troubling” violence perpetrated by armed extremist group Boko Haram and its impact on civilians.

In an impact assessment report released in April 2015 on the conflict in Nigeria, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that in 2014 alone, more than 7,300 people have been killed at the hands of Boko Haram.

As a result of the conflict, access to health services, safe water, and sanitation is extremely limited in northeastern Nigeria. UNICEF found that less than 40 percent of health facilities are operational in the conflict-stricken region, increasing the risk of malaria, measles, and diarrhoea.

Malnutrition rates have soared in northern Nigeria, accounting for approximately 36 percent of malnourished children under five across the entire Sahel region.

UNICEF also reported that women and children are deliberately targeted and abducted in mass numbers for physical and sexual assault, slavery, and forced marriages.

Ban reiterated these findings during a dialogue on democracy, human rights, development, climate change, and countering violent extremism in Abuja on Aug. 24, marking the 500^th day of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.

“I am appealing as U.N. Secretary-General and personally as a father and grandfather. Think about your own daughters. How would you feel if your daughters and sisters were abducted by others?” said Ban while calling for the girls’ unconditional release.

Though the Chibok kidnapping was by far Boko Haram’s largest abduction, Human Rights Watch reported in its 2015 World Report on Nigeria that the extremist group has abducted more than 500 women and girls since 2009.

Amnesty International has also reported brutal “acts which constitute crimes under international law” committed by Nigerian government forces, including the abuse, torture, and extrajudicial killings of detainees. In one case, the national armed forces rounded up a group of 35 men “seemingly at random” and beat them publicly. The men were detained and returned to the community six days later, where military personnel “shot them dead, several at a time, before dumping their bodies.”

Corruption has also been a serious problem within the police force and the government. The International Crisis Group stated that the country has lost more than 400 billion dollars to large-scale corruption since independence in 1960.

“The most effective way to root out this disease is a transparent, fair, and independent process to address corruption in a comprehensive way,” said Ban in his keynote address to the dialogue.

The U.N. chief also stressed on the importance of collaboration in addressing such violent crimes and in alleviating the humanitarian situation, announcing increased humanitarian operations and the provision of training for military operations.

But he dismissed the sole use of military force, stating: “Weapons may kill terrorists. But good governance will kill terrorism.”

Since Boko Haram’s radicalization in 2009, at least 15,000 people have been killed.

The group is opposed to secular authority and seeks to implement Sharia law in northern Nigeria, where widespread poverty and marginalization may also have been contributing factors to the extremists’ rise.

According to Nigeria’s Millennium Development Goals Report, the north has the highest absolute poverty rate in the country, with approximately 66 percent of people living on less than a dollar a day, compared to 55 percent in the south.

In fact, in an April New York Times op-ed, Buhari stated that countering Boko Haram will not only require increased military operations, but also increased attention to social issues such as poverty and education.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Africa's children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

“Poverty has become part of me,” says 13-year-old Aminata Kabangele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

Aminata, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, told IPS that she has had no option but to resign her fate to poverty.

Despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, African children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent.“Poverty has become part of me. I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me” – Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo

“In every country you may turn to here in Africa, children are at the receiving end of poverty, with high numbers of them becoming orphans,” Melody Nhemachena, an independent social worker in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Based on a 2013 UNICEF report, the World Bank has estimated that up to 400 million children under the age of 17 worldwide live in extreme poverty, the majority of them in Africa and Asia.

According to human rights activists, the growing poverty facing many African families is also directly responsible for the fate of 200,000 African children that the United Nations estimates are sold into slavery every year.

“Many families in Africa are living in abject poverty, forcing them to trade their children for a meal to persons purporting to employ or take care of them (the children), but it is often not the case as the children end up in forced labour, earning almost nothing at the end of the day,” Amukusana Kalenga, a child rights activist based in Zambia, told IPS.

West Africa is one of the continent’s regions where modern-day slavery has not spared children.

According to Mike Sheil, who was sent by British charity and lobby group Anti-Slavery International to West Africa to photograph the lives of children trafficked as slaves and forced into marriage, for many families in Benin – one of the world’s poorest countries – “if someone offers to take their child away … it is almost a relief.”

Global March Against Child Labour, a worldwide network of trade unions, teachers’ and civil society organisations working to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour, has reported that a 2010 study showed that “a staggering 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years worked in cocoa farms of Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of their physical, emotional, cognitive and moral well-being.”

“Trafficking in children is real. Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children,” Gabon’s Social Affairs Director-General Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga told a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire in 2012.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 human trafficking report.

In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, a study of child poverty showed that over 70 percent of children are not registered at birth while more than 30 percent experience severe educational deprivation. According to UNICEF Nigeria, about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

“These boys and girls, some as young as 13-years-old, serve in the ranks of terror groups like Boko Haram, often participating  in suicide operations, and act as spies,” Hillary Akingbade, a Nigerian independent conflict management expert, told IPS.

“Girls here are often forced into sexual slavery while many other African children are abducted or recruited by force, with others joining out of desperation, believing that armed groups offer their best chance for survival,” she added.

Akingbade’s remarks echo the reality of poverty which also faces children in the Central African Republic, where an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 boys and girls became members of armed groups following an outbreak of a bloody civil war in the central African nation in December 2012, according to Save the Children.

Violence plagued the Central African Republic when the country’s Muslim Seleka rebels seized control of the country’s capital Bangui in March 2013, prompting a backlash by the largely Christian militia.

A 2013 report by Save the Children stated that in the Central African Republic, children as young as eight were being recruited by the country’s warring parties, with some of the children forcibly conscripted while others were impelled by poverty.

Last year, the United Nations reported that the recruitment of children in South Sudan’s on-going civil war was “rampant”, estimating that there were 11,000 children serving in both rebel and government armies, some of who had volunteered but others forced by their parents to join armed groups with the hopes of changing their economic fortunes for the better.

Meanwhile, back in the Tongogara refugee camp, Aminata has resigned herself. “I have descended into worse poverty since I came here in the company of other fleeing Congolese and, for many children like me here at the camp, poverty remains the order of the day.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Flooding in Nigerian villages is just one of the effects of climate change that the country will have to address in drawing up its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) for the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris in December: Credit: Courtesy of NDWPD, 2011

By Ini Ekott
LAGOS, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Nigeria seems in no haste to unveil its climate pledge with just four months to go before the U.N. Climate Conference scheduled for December in Paris.

However, unlike Gabon, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya – the only African nations yet to submit their commitments – Nigeria has just commissioned a committee of experts to draw up targets and responses for its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs).

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September."The whole exercise [of preparing INDCs] will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases” – Samuel Adejuwon, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment

Ahead of that date, Nigeria says its goals are clear: balancing post-2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cut projections with its development peculiarities, according to Samuel Adejuwon, deputy director of the Federal Ministry of Environment’s Department of Climate Change in Abuja.

Nigeria is Africa’s fourth largest emitter of CO2, and there is no doubt climate change is already a problem it faces.

From the north, encroachment of the Sahara is helping to fuel a bloody insurgency by the jihadist group Boko Haram, as well as resource conflict between farmers and pastoralists in its central region, while the rise in ocean levels and flooding are affecting the south.

In a report issued in October 2014, the Mapelcroft global analytics company said that Nigeria, along with Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines, were the countries facing the greatest risk of climate change-fuelled conflict today.

Nigeria’s hopes for slashing its emission levels as part of its INDCs face several tests.

One is that for an economy almost solely dependent on oil – which accounts for a major portion of its 500 billion dollar gross domestic product (GDP), Africa’s highest – the commitment it takes to Paris will reflect how jettisoning fossil fuel cannot be an urgent priority and why doing so will require significant time and resources.

“The whole exercise will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases,” says Adejuwon.

Another test is Nigeria’s energy shortage. The country produces about 4,000 megawatts for 170 million people, leaving much of the population reliant on wood, charcoal and waste to fulfil household energy needs such as cooking, heating and lighting.

In 2014, Nigerians used at least 12 million litres of diesel and petrol every day to drive back-up generators, according to former power Minister Chinedu Nebo. The country’s daily petrol consumption (cars included) stands at about 40 million litres, according to the state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Cutting the level of pollution that this consumption causes will require big investments in renewable and cleaner energy, says Professor Olukayode Oladipo, a climate change expert and one of three consultants drawing up the INDCs for the government.

Last year, former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the country needed 14 billion dollars each year in energy investments and related infrastructure.

Oladipo argues that the key to the issue lies in striking a balance between a future of lower greenhouse emissions and immediate developmental realities.

“Every country is now exploring how to use less energy … in an efficient manner, how to rely on renewable energy sources.” In Nigeria, we are looking at “how to be able to drive our economy through reduced energy consumption without actually reducing the rate at which our economy is growing.”

Last year, minister of power Chinedu Nebo said that while solar panels were welcome for use in shoring up generation in distant communities, the government will deploy coal in addition to the hydro power currently in use.

“There is no doubt that the potential is there. Clean coal technology can give us good electricity and minimum pollution at the same time,” he said.

Insecurity

Oladipo also stresses that besides fuel, Nigeria’s climate plans will focus on agriculture, partly to diversify from oil and also as a response to growing resource conflict.

“We are not saying it is the only determinant of crisis,” he says of climate change stoking conflict over resources, “but at least it is adding to the degree and the frequency of the occurrence of these conflicts.

Apart from Boko Haram activities in the north which have been responsible for at least 20,000 deaths, clashes between pastoralists and farmers over land has killed thousands in Nigeria’s central region in recent years.

In the latest attack in May this year, herdsmen from the Fulani tribe slaughtered at least 96 people in the central state of Benue, Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported.

The government agrees that climate change is one of the causes of the frequent bloodletting, alongside factors like urbanisation, but not much has been done to address the problem.

Oladipo says he believes that Nigeria’s new leader, Muhammadu Buhari, will do more to address fundamental climate change issues, point out that in his inaugural address on May 29, Buhari pledged to be a more “forceful and constructive player in the global fight against climate change.”

However, Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation argues that proposals put forward by Nigeria and Africa can barely be achieved if the developed nations – the biggest polluters – fail to act more to meet their commitments and cut down on their emissions.

“Nigeria should insist that industrialised nations cut emissions at source and not place the burden on vulnerable nations,” says Bassey.

Urging action from those nations, including the United States, will form a key element of Nigerian and African INDCs, adds Oladipo.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Boko Haram, fleeing to a new hideout, has abandoned hundreds of women and girls in the Sambisa forest where the high school girls from Chibok were initially taken over one year ago. It is not certain, however, that the freed girls and women were part of the 200 plus kidnapped victims of Boko Haram, officials say.

Over the past few weeks, Nigerian troops claim to have rescued about 1,000 women and girls. “Many of them told us that they have been hungry for days,” said Sani Datti, spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency.

However, kidnapping is still advancing and at least 2,000 new women and girls have been taken by the militants, according to Amnesty International.

Less mentioned are the boys seized and forced to become child soldiers. As many boys have been kidnapped as girls but the military hasn’t reported freeing boys in any significant number.

Boko Haram may have abandoned the girls but continues to occupy territory beyond Nigeria. A video released last month announced a new name (Iswap) for Islamic State’s West Africa Province and a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).

“It would be naive on the part of Nigeria’s authorities to think it is on the brink of victory,” wrote Tomi Oladipo for BBC Lagos. Sambisa forest is mine-infested and it is likely the Iswap fighters know this terrain better than the military does, he wrote. “The Nigerian military is likely to face its toughest battle yet,” he affirmed.

The head of the United Nations Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin, discussed the rehabilitation of the rescued women and children. He said his organisation had put in place a formidable team to restore the dignity of the girls, who were facing severe psychosocial trauma.

Interviews with some of the rescued girls appeared on the BBC website. According to the former hostages, Boko Haram fighters began pelting the women with stones when they refused to flee with their captors. Some were killed in that incident, the women said. Others were killed inadvertently by the military during the rescue operation.

“Soldiers did not realize that we were not the enemies,” and some women were run over by their trucks,” survivor Asama Umoru told the news station.

“Every day, we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn,” said Asabe Umaru, a 24-year-old mother of two.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Cameroon’s government under President Paul Biya is bearing down on a separatist movement fighting for the rights of a minority English-language region, using as its weapon a sweeping new anti-terrorism law introduced at the end of last year.

The separatist Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) – which is demanding an independent Southern Cameroons made up of Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions – has been targeted under the new law, which forbids public meetings, street protests or any action that the government deems to be disturbing the peace.

Map showing location of Southern Cameroons (highlighted). Credit: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

English-speaking Cameroonians make up over 22 percent of the country’s population of 20 million.

Long desired by Western powers for its beauty and natural resources, Cameroon was first occupied by the Germans in 1884. After the First World War, the French and British carved it up between them as League of Nations mandates – four-fifths went to France, the rest to the United Kingdom.

A federation was declared in 1961, followed by the annexation of the English-language region into the United Republic of Cameroon, with its capital in Yaounde in 1972. Dissension continues to seethe, however, in the English-speaking regions which resent the lack of control over their assets.

Over the years, Cameroon has downplayed its problems with the English-speaking regions, while making token placements of a few of their citizens in its administration.

Secessionists say this relationship of inequality has led to impoverishment of the territory and its population and a diminishment of their educational and cultural heritage, while feeding the flame of ethnic strife between the people of the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

The extraction of oil and the expropriation of Cameroon’s substantial oil revenues is frequently cited as the touchstone for frustration and anger among those of the struggling south.The separatist Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) has been targeted under Cameroon’s new anti-terrorism law, which forbids public meetings, street protests or any action that the government deems to be disturbing the peace

In this regard, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) gave Cameroon a “failing grade”, ranking it 47^th out of 58 countries for such weaknesses as enabling environment, safeguards and quality controls, and reporting practices.

“Cameroon’s national oil company (SNH) dominates the sector,” NRGI reported. “It is directly controlled by the Presidency … The largest revenue streams are collected by SNH and transferred quarterly to the national treasury after subtracting the company’s operational costs – meaning that some oil revenues never reach the treasury.”

Aside from publishing environment impact assessments, Cameroon provides very little information on its extractive sector, noted NRGI, while it performed near the bottom of rankings on measures of budgetary openness and the rule of law.

Oil exploration, production and refining all take place in Southern Cameroons, while oil-derived revenues are paid to the state coffers directly in Yaounde.

Against this background, and since Cameroon’s President Paul Biya endorsed an anti-terrorism law in December 2014, the SCNC has not been able to organise any major gathering.

An attempt this month, on Apr. 3, ended with the arrest of Nfor Ngala Nfor, SCNC Vice National Chairman, and six others in Buea, Southwest Region.

Andrew Kang, who had hosted the SCNC leaders, told IPS from his hospital bed at the Buea Regional Hospital that security forces barged into his house while he and the guests were about to have a meal. “We were not even permitted to eat our food. They just beat us, ordered us to move and led us to the station. We spent four days in a prison cell and only regained freedom at about 5 pm on Apr. 6.”

Kang denied the government’s charges of promoting secession and rebellion which had been levelled against the group.

Talking to IPS, Martin Fon Yembe, a member of the SCNC and human rights activist, said that while the government made it seem that the new anti-terrorism law was designed to boost the fight against Boko Haram, the main aim was to stop the holding of SCNC meetings and gatherings.

“Everyone knows that law was put in place to hinder the activities of the movement and there is no gainsaying the fact that it poses a problem,” he said.

A U.S. State Department human rights report on Cameroon in 2013 referred to security force torture and abuse, denial of fair and speedy public trials and restrictions on freedom of assembly and association. “Although the government took some steps to punish officials who commit abuses in the security forces and in the public service, impunity remained a problem,” said the report.

Meanwhile, thousands of Southern Cameroonians are currently in exile in Europe and the United States and thousands more are on the run because of their support for the separatist movement.

The Biya administration, on the other hand, presents a picture of a country unswervingly headed for growth. In a document titled Cameroun Vision 2035, a long-term vision is described which envisages the consolidation of democracy, enhancement of national unity, economic development and increasing employment.

Under a three-year plan, unveiled in December, Cameroon will spend 1.75 billion dollars “to meet the immediate needs of the population,” focusing on sectors such as road infrastructure, health, agriculture, energy and security.

“The special programme, evaluated at 925 billion CFA francs, is financed through the mobilisation of the required resources from local and international financial institutions at sustainable rates,” Prime Minister Philemon Yang said without giving further details.

In the latest twist to the South Cameroons issue, a meeting this month of Cameroon’s English-speaking lawyers gave notice that an All-Anglophone Lawyers Conference would be held shortly in Bamenda, chief city of the Northwest Region, “to develop strategies at safeguarding the Common Law and to map out the way forward for the Southern Cameroons territory,” the Cameroon Concord reported.

The news online was met with over a dozen enthused readers. “Machiavelli Ayuk” of the University of Buea wrote: “This is the kind of action that the marginalised Anglophone people love to hear. At last we have some Educated Elites in the Anglophone zone…”

The comment was followed by “Fast Man”, a self-described fieldworker, who wrote: “I hope the lawyers use their intelligence and remember their oath. We will never go anywhere under French hegemony. God bless the Southern Cameroons and its citizens…”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

General Muhammadu Buhari holding a broom at a campaign rally. Photo credit: By Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Flickr: Wahlkampf in Nigeria 2015)/CC BY-SA 2.0

By Lisa Vives
NEW YORK/ABUJA, Apr 2 2015 (IPS)

After several tension-filled months, a majority of Nigerians swept in an opposition leader and former military man, Muhammadu Buhari, to succeed incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, whose failure to contain a terrorist wave in the northern states doomed his re-election chances.

Buhari had previously ruled Nigeria from January 1984 until August 1985 – a period in which there were widespread accusations of human rights abuses – after taking charge following a military coup in December 1983.

The Mar. 28 elections were observed by teams from the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union. Carl LeVan, an assistant professor at the School of International Service, American University in Washington, DC, took part in the National Democratic Institute’s election observation mission from the United States.“[President Muhammadu] Buhari has an unprecedented opportunity to recast the Muslim face of Africa at a time when violent terrorist movements have both perverted Islam and distorted Western foreign policies meant to be more multifaceted” – Carl LeVan, member of a U.S. observation mission for the Mar. 28 presidential election in Nigeria

Speaking with IPS, LeVan, author of Dictators and Democracy in African Development (2015), remarked on the surprise success of Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) party that was only formed in February 2013.

“The defeat of Africa’s largest political party, the People’s Democratic Party, will bring the All Progressives Congress (APC) into power after barely two years of organising, mobilising and coalition building. (Muhammadu) Buhari will enter office with a strong mandate from the voters, having won four out of the country’s six geopolitical zones, and the APC will enjoy a comfortable majority in the Senate.

“Though a northern Muslim from Katsina, his support included the predominantly Yoruba southwest, where President Goodluck Jonathan recent delivered bags of cash to traditional rulers according to news reports and where the militant Odudwa Peoples’ Congress launched a wave of thuggery in recent weeks.”

The election upset was especially poignant for Nigerians of the northern states, the area most devastated by Boko Haram terror attacks. While some of the vote counting was impeccable, not all of the voting went smoothly. Observers told of protestors objecting to perceived rigging, harassment, ballot boxes snatched and over-voting.

“Even before the results were announced,” said LeVan, “voters in the north reacted with jubilation, and militant groups, including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, began surreptitiously re-arming in the creeks of the south. Sources I met with over the weekend in Rivers State say they have seen caches of weapons in camps backed by militants such Ateke Tom and others.

“In addition to such seemingly minor procedural problems, the public was locked out of some collation (vote counting) centres. We also received credible reports of serious harassment. A soldier was killed in some of the violence in Port Harcourt, and a large protest took the state electoral commission by storm on Sunday.”

The opposition victory has been achieved but some are already wondering what the new leader, not known for his adherence to human rights, will prioritise.

According to LeVan, “Buhari has a mandate, and his most urgent challenge is to neither misinterpret nor abuse it.

“According to an Afrobarometer poll released on Mar. 23, 40 percent of Nigerians say the president ‘should be allowed to govern freely without wasting time to justify expenses’, and 25 percent say the president should ‘pass laws without worrying about what the National Assembly thinks’. Sixty-eight percent are not very or not at all satisfied with the way democracy is working.”

Recalling a recent national election won by a former dictator, LeVan said that “the last time Nigeria elected a former dictator, Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, he spent his first term battling the National Assembly and quelling violence in the region that largely voted against him. But he also began building institutions and establishing trust with his sceptics.

“The last time Nigerians had Buhari at the helm, the jubilation quickly gave way to frustration, repression, and economic failure.

“Buhari’s ‘honeymoon’ will therefore be critical, and probably even shorter lived than his memories of 1984. He will need to do more than make grand rhetorical gestures to democracy; he’ll need to practice it and educate his own supporters about the advantages of the justice and fairness it offers, even where the cost may be the kind of efficiency the Afrobarometer respondents appear to be longing for.”

LeVan also urged the new president to “go south” in view of the fact that Nigeria has often been a divided country with loyalties to different regional centres and different religious and ethnic affiliations, because this would send a “valuable message to northerners that he is everyone’s president.”

By “going south”, he said, the newly-elected president “could also include a clear transition plan or policy for the status of the ongoing amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants, who need reassurance that they do not need an Ijaw president [like President Goodluck Jonathan] in order to have “resource control” taken seriously, or to have environmental clean-up and developmental needs addressed.

“The sooner and more clearly they hear this message, the less likely will be the re-ignition of the Delta rebellions … This is also important because in a country partly divided along religious lines between north and south, Afrobarometer reports that trust in religious leaders at 29 percent is higher than in the National Assembly, governors, local governments, or even traditional rulers (16 percent).

“Christian Igbos in the east (who overwhelmingly rejected the APC) and minorities in the south need to know they can trust Buhari, and he needs their cooperation to govern peacefully and practically.”

LeVan also suggested that Buhari should “reset” national security strategy, perhaps by ”replacing key members of the national security establishment.

“While some continuity may help preserve institutionalised knowledge, particularly with regard to the recent ‘surge’ against Boko Haram, the mishandling of the Chibok girls’ kidnapping reduced confidence in the national security team, and the pressure applied to the electoral commission prior to the election delay has contributed to the perception that some soldiers and many advisers are partisan.”

Boko Haram has been displaced but not defeated, LeVan warned, and this means creating a “credible counter-insurgency strategy”.

Among others, such a strategy would include “sustained high-level interactions with the multinational coalition partners, and a repairing of bridges to the United States, United Kingdom and other allies with a stake in Nigeria’s peaceful prosperity.”

In this context, said LeVan, a visit to the United States and the United Kingdom would be beneficial to reconnect with a disenchanted diaspora. “This will be important in the United States, where leadership in Congress has interpreted Boko Haram as a war against Christians, rather than a complex insurgency with many different victims and deep historical and socio-economic roots.

“Buhari has an unprecedented opportunity to recast the Muslim face of Africa at a time when violent terrorist movements have both perverted Islam and distorted Western foreign policies meant to be more multifaceted.”

LeVan also advised Buhari to pick a “credible, competent and diverse economic team”, noting that “in early 2014, the government of Nigeria (along with the World Bank and others) highlighted trends in economic diversification. The near crisis triggered by the decline in oil prices since then suggests either these claims were overstated or much more work needs to be done.

Buhari could reform the refinery and oil importation mechanisms, commit to publishing all of the federal governments revenue transfers to subnational units each month (like it used to), and pick a combination of experts from academia, the private sector and the bureaucracy to get the economy back on track.”

“A few obvious steps,” concluded LeVan, “would go a long way: reaffirm the independence of the Central Bank (whose governor was replaced last year), stabilise the currency, and consult the National Assembly about budget plans and fiscal crises … The rest is up to the Nigerian people, who spoke on Mar. 28. Voting was just the beginning.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Any views expressed by persons cited in this article do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

With kidnappings and violent attacks almost a daily occurrence in Nigeria, the disappearance of an American missionary appears to have stirred a new wave of outrage among the international community at the worsening conditions in the West African country, once considered a rising star and the largest economy on the continent.

Phyllis Sortor, a reverend with the Free Methodist Church USA, was taken from Hope Academy in Kogi state, central Nigeria, where she had been working since 2005.

The kidnapping was probably not the work of Boko Haram, said Philip Obaji Jr., a freelancer and founder of 1 GAME, an advocacy group that fights for the right to education for disadvantaged children in northeastern Nigeria.

Kogi state police commissioner Adeyemi Ogunjemilusi announced that a ransom of around 300,000 dollars had been demanded by Tuesday afternoon, barely 24 hours after the kidnapping, which is not typical for Boko Haram.

“Kidnapping is big business here in Kogi. Most of the times, ransoms are paid to secure the release of abductees,” Ahmed, a local journalist, said in an interview. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a ransom is paid to secure Ms. Sortor’s release.”

On the same day as Sortor’s kidnapping, a Chinese construction worker was abducted from his work site by armed men. All of southern Nigeria is prone to kidnappings, and public officials, their relatives, and foreign workers are regularly abducted for ransom. An estimated 1,500 kidnapping cases are reported every year.

Meanwhile, it has been nearly one year since over 270 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants in Chibok, Nigeria.

Local activists have been stepping up their demands that the government make the disappearance of the Chibok girls the top priority. “Our rallies are the reason why [the government] remembers,” organizer Funmi Adesanya told TIME magazine, “but I don’t think they are really doing anything about it.

While President Goodluck Jonathan and his national security advisor promised to end the Boko Haram threat before elections now scheduled for March 28, the new multinational force of Cameroon, Chad and Niger appears to be drawing new and dangerous fire from the insurgents.

On Saturday, some 5,000 Cameroonians marched in their capital, Yaounde, and denounced the violence caused by Boko Haram.

“It was important to tell Cameroonians that we are at war and a part of the country is suffering,” newspaper editor Gubai Gatama told Al Jazeera. “About 150,000 people have been displaced by the conflict, some 200,000 Nigerians are in refugee camps and 170 schools in Cameroon have been closed,” he said. “I am sure Boko Haram has got the message that the people are united against them.” Two hundred Cameroonian soldiers have been killed in the cross-border skirmishes so far.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

A group of Nigerian refugees rests in the Cameroon town of Mora, in the Far North Region, after fleeing armed attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on Sep. 13, 2014. Credit: UNHCR / D. Mbaoirem

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Far North Region, Jan 14 2015 (IPS)

“I’d quit my job before going to work in a place like that.” That is how a primary school teacher responded when IPS asked him why he had not accepted a job in Cameroon’s Far North region.

James Ngoran is not the only teacher who has refused to move to the embattled area bordering Nigeria where Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on the isolated region.“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. " -- Mahamat Abba

“Many teachers posted or transferred to the Far North Region simply don’t take up their posts. They are all afraid for their lives,” Wilson Ngam, an official of the Far North Regional Delegation for Basic Education, tells IPS. He said over 200 trained teachers refused to take up their posts in the region in 2014.

Raids by the Boko Haram insurgents in the Far North Region have created a cycle of fear and uncertainty, making teachers posted here balk at their responsibility, and forcing those on the ground to bribe their way out of “the zone of death.”

Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened Cameroon in a video message on YouTube, warning that the same fate would befall the country as neighbouring Nigeria. He addressed his message directly to Cameroonian President Paul Biya after repeated fighting between militants and troops in the Far North.

Shekau was reported killed in September by Cameroonian troops – a report that later turned out to be untrue.

As the Nigerian sect intensifies attacks on Cameroonian territory, government has been forced to close numerous schools. According to Mounouna Fotso, a senior official in the Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education, over 130 schools have already been shut down.

Most of the schools are found in the Mayo-Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava and Logone and Chari Divisions-all areas which share a long border with Nigeria, and where the terrorists have continued to launch attacks.

“Government had to temporarily close the schools and relocate the students and teachers. The lives of thousands of students and pupils have been on the line as Boko Haram continues to attack. We can’t put the lives of children at risk,” Fotso said.

“We are losing students each time there is an attack on a village even if it is several kilometres from here,” Christophe Barbah, a schoolmaster in the Far North Region’s Kolofata area, said in a press interview.

The closure of schools and the psychological trauma experienced by teachers and students raises concerns that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education will be missed in Cameroon’s Far North Region.

Although both government and civil society agree that universal primary education could attained by the end of this year in the country’s south, the 49 percent school enrolment rate in the Far North Region, compared to the national average of 83 percent, according to UNICEF, means a lot of work still needs to be done here.

Mahamat Abba, a resident of Fotocol whose four children used to attend one of the three government schools there, has fled with his entire family to Kouseri on the border with Chad.

“I looked at my kids and lovely wife and knew a bullet or bomb could get them at any time. We had to run away to safer environments. But starting life afresh here is a nightmare, having abandoned everything,” he told IPS.

Alhadji Abakoura, a resident of Amchidé, adds that the area has virtually become a ghost town. “The town had six primary schools and a nursery school. They have all been closed down.”

Overcrowded schools

As students, teachers and parents relocate to safer grounds, pressure is mounting on schools, which have to absorb the additional students with no additional funds.

According to UNICEF figures for Cameroon, school participation for boys topped 90 percent in 2013, while girls lagged behind at 85 percent or less. However, participation has been much lower in the extreme northern region.

According to the Institut National de la Statistique du Cameroon, literacy is below 40 percent in the Far North, 40 to 50 percent in the North, and 60-70 percent in the central north state of Adamawa. The Millennium Development Goal is full primary schooling for both sexes by 2015.

“Many of us are forced to follow lectures from classroom windows since there is practically very limited sitting space inside,” Ahmadou Saidou, a student of Government Secondary School Maroua, tells IPS. He had escaped from Amchidé where a September attack killed two students and a teacher.

Ahmadou said the benches on which three students once sat are now used by double that number.

“It’s an issue of great concern,” Mahamat Ahamat, the regional delegate for basic education, tells IPS.

“In normal circumstances, each classroom should contain a maximum of 60 students. But we are now in a situation where a single classroom hosts over one hundred and thirty students,” he said. “We are redeploying teachers who flee risk zones…we are getting them over to schools where students are fleeing to.

“These attacks are really slowing things down,’ Mahamat said.

Government response to the crisis

The Nigerian-based sect Boko Haram has intensified attacks on Cameroon in recent years, killing both civilians and military personnel and kidnapping nationals and expatriates in exchange for ransoms.

To respond to the crisis, Cameroon has come up with military and legal reforms. A new military region was set up in the country’s Far North Region. According to Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, “The creation of the 4th Military Region is meant to bring the military closer to the theatre of threats, and to boost the operational means in both human and material resources.”

Military equipment has been supplied by the U.S., Germany and Israel, according to press reports.

Mebe Ngo’oo said Cameroon will recruit 20,000 soldiers over the next two years to step up the fight against the terrorists. Besides the military option, Cameroon has also come up with a legal framework to streamline the fight against terrorism. An anti-terrorism law was passed by Parliament in December, punishing all those guilty of terrorist acts by death.

But opposition political leaders, civil society activists and church leaders have criticised it as anti-democratic and fear it is actually intended to curtail civil liberties.

Edited by Lisa Vives

Legislators in Cameroon have voted in a draft law proposing the death sentence for all those guilty of carrying out, abetting or sponsoring acts of terrorism. The draft law, which is now being examined by the Cameroon Senate, call for punishment acts of terrorism committed by citizens, either individually or in complicity, with death.

The draft law also prescribes the death penalty for persons who carry out “any activity which can lead to a general revolt of the population or disturb the normal functioning of the country” and for “anyone who supplies arms, war equipment, bacteria and viruses with the intention of killing.”

The same applies for people guilty of kidnapping with terrorist intent, as well as for “anyone who directly or indirectly finances acts of terrorism” and for “anyone who recruits citizens with the aim of carrying out acts of terrorism.”“This [anti-terrorism] law is manifestly against the fundamental liberties and rights of the Cameroonian people … In the guise of fighting terrorism, the government’s real intent is to stifle political dissent” – Kah Wallah, leader of the Cameroon People’s Party

The draft law also punishes people and companies found guilty of promoting terrorism, as well as people who give false testimony to administrative and judicial authorities in matters of terrorism, with various fines and prison terms.

The anti-terrorism law has sparked a wave of criticism across the political chessboard – from opposition political leaders to civil society, church ministers and trade unions.

“This law is designed to terrorise the people and kill their freedoms,” opposition leader, John Fru Ndi told IPS.

Kah Wallah, the lone female leader of a political party in Cameroon [the Cameroon People’s Party], added that “the government is taking us back to the worst days of the most barbaric dictatorship … This law is manifestly against the fundamental liberties and rights of the Cameroonian people … In the guise of fighting terrorism, the government’s real intent is to stifle political dissent.”

For Maurice Kamto, a former cabinet minister who resigned to form the Movement for the Revival of Cameroon (MRC), President Paul Biya – now in power for 32 years – is afraid of any popular up-rising that could put his stay in power in jeopardy.

“The president has certainly learnt from the lessons coming from Burkina Faso. A similar uprising here will sweep his failed presidency under the carpet,” he said. Facing mounting pressure, President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso was forced to resign on Oct. 31 after 27 years in office.

Various opposition political leaders and civil society exponents have vowed to fight the proposed law to its logical end. “Cameroonians must resist and say no to this other manoeuvre … We will fight this law by every means,” Ndi said, without elaborating.

However, Jean Mark Bikoko,  president of the Public Service Workers’ Trade Union, already has an idea on how to proceed. In a strongly-worded statement released on Dec. 3, Bikoko said that the law “is a veritable declaration of war against the people … The anti-terrorism law has provoked the ire of civil society and we will protest on December 10 – International Human Rights Day.”

But the government has said it will not falter in the fight against terrorism. Justice Minister Laurent Esso told MPs that “Cameroon will never be complicit to those whose only agenda is to cause mayhem and destabilise the normal functioning of the state.”

Counting the costs

In the north of the country, Cameroon’s military are combating cross-border raids by Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram. On May 17, President Biya along with other regional leaders and French President François Holland said they were declaring war against Boko Haram.

Cameroon has since deployed thousands of troops in the country’s Far North Region and plans to send still more troops. Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o and Delegate General for National Security Martin Mbarga Nguele have announced that some 20,000 defence and security forces will be recruited within the next two years to reinforce the fight against Boko Haram.

However, as the security crisis in the country continues to worsen, Cameroonian authorities have been counting the costs, not only in terms of human loss, but also in terms of the impacts of the crisis on the economy.

During a special parliamentary plenary session on Nov. 27, Ngo’o said that since the crisis escalated eight months ago, Cameroon has so far lost some forty soldiers, but killed about one thousand Boko Haram fighters. “Our defence forces have simply been formidable,” he said.

But the economic costs of the war are heavy. According to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, “the most affected sectors have been the tourism, transport, trade, agriculture and livestock sectors.”

He said  that “almost all tourism enterprises have been shut down, the number of tourists visiting attraction parks like the Waza National Park and the Rhumsiki Mountains have gone down drastically, and the hotel occupation rate has dropped from 50 percent before the crisis to just 10 percent today.”

In addition, there has been a sharp drop in customs revenue. Although customs officials have not tallied the losses, they say they are astronomical.

“There was a border custom post in the Far North Region that used to give us a monthly income of CFA 700 million (1.4 million dollars).That customs post has been closed down. Can you imagine what the state is losing yearly in customs revenue? It’s enormous,” said the Director-General of Customs, Lissette Libom Li-Likeng.

Government spokesman and Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told journalists in Yaounde that in view of the human, economic and psychological losses that Cameroon has been incurring as a result of Boko Haram, a stringent law is necessary to contain the militant group.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Scene from an Ebola treatment facility run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Guéckédou, Guinea. Credit: UN Photo/Ari Gaitanis

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

The simultaneity presented by the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus on one hand and militant barbarism ostensibly in the name of Islam on the other present the international development community – particularly the United Nations and international NGOs – with challenges, as well as opportunities.

At first sight, the two are unrelated phenomena. One appears to be largely focused on the collapse of health services in three countries, and to a lesser extent, on economic and political ramifications thereof.ISIS claims religion in its very name, ethos and gruesome actions. Can the international humanitarian and development worlds afford to continue to ignore religious dynamics – precisely because of the extent to which their actions challenge human rights-based actions?

The other, i.e., ISIS/ISIL/IS, appears to be a complex basket of geopolitical conflagrations involving a violently militant political Islam, weak governance dynamics, botched uprisings, transnational youth disaffection, arms proliferation — all to name but a few.

So what is the connection and why is this relevant to international development and humanitarian engagement?

In a Strategic Learning Exchange organised by several United Nations bodies, and attended by U.N. development and humanitarian staff, and their counterparts from a number of international faith-based development NGOs, which took place in Turin, Italy last week, the confluence of these challenges was tackled head-on.

The U.N. and faith-based NGO staff present work both in their headquarter organisations as well as on the ground in countries in Africa, Asia, and the Arab region.

In both sets of cases, there are realties of overstretched service providers seeking to respond, in real time, to rising death tolls, collapsing state-run services, and the actual inability to deliver basic necessities to communities struggling to stay alive because of diverse, but nevertheless man-made, barriers.

Some of these are run by those carrying arms and demarcating territories as off limits while those within them are imprisoned, tortured, killed, terrorized, and starved. Other barriers are made of communities hiding their ill and their dead, distrusting and fearing those seeking to help, and anguished over the loss not just of loved ones, but also of care-takers, sources of income, and means of protection.

But there are other barriers which the last few weeks and months have revealed as well, some of which present long-term challenges to institutional and organisational cultures, as well as to the entire ethos of international humanitarianism and development as we know it today.

The response to the Ebola virus, first and foremost, focused on the medical aspects – which was/is urgent and unquestionable.

But it took months before international aid workers realised one of many tipping points in the equation of death and disease transmission: that burial methods were key, and that even though there are manuals which seek to regulate those methods so as to ensure medical safety, there was relatively less attention paid to the combined matter of values, dignity and local cultural practices in such crisis contexts.

Burying the dead in a community touches the very belief systems which give value and meaning to life. How those infected with Ebola were buried had to be tackled in a way that bridged the very legitimate medical health concerns, but also enabled the family and community members to go on living – with some shred of meaningfulness to their already traumatised selves – while not getting infected.

When this particular dilemma was noted, faith leaders have been hastily assembled to advise on burial methods which bridge dignity with safety in these particular circumstances. But the broader and more long-term roles of ‘sensitising’ and bridging the medical-cultural gap between international aid workers, local medical personnel and over-wrought communities have yet to be worked out.

And the opportunity to address this medical-cultural gap (which is not new to development or humanitarian work) extends beyond burials of the dead and medical care for the living, to providing psycho-social support, and ensuring economic livelihoods. In these areas, too, faith-based NGOs have roles to play.

The militancy of ISIS and the repercussions of the war currently being waged both with and against them presents a similar set of cultural challenges to national and international actors.

This cultural feature was reiterated with cases from the same Arab region involving Hizbullah, Hamas, and now ISIS. How to navigate practical roadblocks controlled by parties you are not supposed to be talking to as a matter of principle, and who question the very legitimacy of your mandate, as a matter of practice – precisely because it does not ‘do religion’ and is part of a ‘Western secular agenda’?

Yes, there are manuals and protocols and procedures governing the provision of services and rules of engagement – in compliance with international human rights obligations. Yet, some hard questions are now glaring: should any form of ‘dialogue’ or outreach be possible between those who speak human rights law, and those who wish to speak only of “God’s laws”?

Are there lessons to be learned from prior engagement with (now relatively more mainstream) Hizbullah and Hamas, which may have resulted in a different trajectory for the engagement with ISIS today, perhaps?

Boko Haram’s actions in Nigeria and al-Qaeda’s presence (and elimination of Bin Laden) in Afghanistan have highlighted a link between religious dogma and critical health implications. Unlike with Ebola however, a possible role for faith leaders – and other faith-based humanitarian and development actors – has not been solicited. At least, not openly so.

And yet, could these roles shed some light on the particular ability of some religious actors to maneuver within humanitarian emergencies in these specific circumstances?

Could a clearer appreciation of the potential value-added of faith-based interventions – which have to be distinguished from those of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, etc. – increase understanding of and dealing with a world view that is costing lives, now and in the future?

ISIS claims religion in its very name, ethos and gruesome actions. Can the international humanitarian and development worlds afford to continue to ignore religious dynamics – precisely because of the extent to which their actions challenge human rights-based actions?

And if the international community makes a choice to deal with any religious overtones – and is not capacitated in its current frameworks to do so – whose assistance will be needed to call upon, in which fora and with what means?

There are answers to some of these questions already percolating in several policy-making corridors, inherent in the experience of many cadres working with faith-based/ faith-inspired development NGOs, and academics who have devoted decades of research.

What was clear from the discussions in Turin, and other roundtables on religion and development, is that these questions have to be posed, because the answers belie multiple opportunities.

All opinions expressed belong to the author, and are not representative or descriptive of the positions of any organisation, Member State, Board, staff member or territorial entity.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant against the extremist group Boko Haram and to report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 31 2014 (IPS)

Motari Hamissou used to get along well with his pupils at the government primary school in Sabga, an area in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s North West Region.

In the past, Hamissou also lived in peace with his neighbours. No one was bothered by his long, thick beard or the veil his wife, Aisha Hamissou, wore, or the religion they followed.

According to the 2010 general population census, Muslims constitute 24 percent of this Central African nation’s 21 million people, most of whom live in Cameroon’s Far North, North and Adamawa Regions; all on the border with Nigeria. Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a stronghold of the Nigerian extremist group, Boko Haram.

But the intermittent attacks and abductions perpetrated by Boko Haram in Cameroon’s North West Region has destroyed the peace and accord that Hamissou enjoyed with his pupils and neighbours.

The most recent attack by the group was on Jul. 27 when the wife of Cameroon’s Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali was kidnapped in the northern town of Kolofata. The group is said to have increased its attacks from Nigeria into neighbouring Cameroon. Since the group first took up arms five years ago for a Muslim state in Nigeria, more than, some 12,000 people in that West African nation have died in the crisis, according to figures from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Now Hamissou’s own pupils call him “Boko Haram” in reference to the group. The name, Boko Haram, means “Western education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa.

“They see our beards or the veils our wives [wear] and immediately link us to the sect,” Hamissou tells IPS.

“I am a teacher. I teach Western education. How can I teach Western education and at the same time say that it is forbidden? That’s incomprehensible,” he adds.

Arlette Dainadi, a 12-year-old schoolgirl who attends the same primary school that Hamissou teaches at, tells IPS some of her peers have gone as far as taking off her veil and shouting: “Boko Haram! Boko Haram!”

Aisha Hamissou tells IPS that even adults have taken to name-calling.

“I can’t move and interact freely with other people without being called names. People call me Boko Haram,” she explains, almost bursting into tears.

In a concerted effort to distance themselves from the extremist group, Muslim groups and leaders in Cameroon, including the Association of Muslim Students and the Cameroon Council of Imams, have been organising workshops, seminars and public demonstrations to sensitise the general public about their stance against the extremist sect.

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, tells IPS that Boko Haram’s campaign against Western education, as well as the atrocities it exacts on innocent people, has nothing to do with Islam.

“Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Departing from these precepts is actually against Islam,” he says.

Members of the Cameroon Council of Imams and Muslim leaders have embraced “Boko Halal”,”an Hausa idiomatic expression which means education is allowed or permitted as contained in the Quran.

Islamic teacher and religious leader Sheik Abu Oumar Bin Ali tells IPS that Muslim scholars have been major drivers of education.

“Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a leading Muslim scholar who founded the branch of mathematics known as algebra… So it’s stupid for anyone to link Muslim with a hatred for Western education,” he says.

But Ahmadou Moustapha, a traditional Muslim ruler in Cameroon’s Far North Region, tells IPS that Boko Haram has definitely been recruiting young Muslims in the region.

“They come here and forcefully whisk away our young people,” Moustapha explains.

“I believe they go and intoxicate them with their hate beliefs.”

According to Professor Souaibou Issa, from the University of Ngaoundere in Cameroon’s Adamawa Region, the group is even more dangerous because “you never know what their linkages are, you don’t know what exactly their focus is, and you don’t know who the actors are. There is widespread suspicion, and the states are fighting invisible enemies.”

Mallam Djibring called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant and report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals.

Editing by: Nalisha Adams

A meeting session of the #BringBackOurGirls daily protest campaigners at Maitama Amusement Park, Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Credit: Ini Ekott/IPS

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

The search for the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamist extremist group, Boko Haram, could be hampered by a series of policy and information flip-flops by the government, the latest one of them being a public disagreement on policy between the president and the military chief.

The extremist group abducted close to 300 school girls nearly two months ago on Apr. 14 in Chibok, northern Nigeria. The abduction triggered a global campaign and a massive social media movement under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. The United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel have sent experts to Nigeria to assist in rescuing the girls.“If both sides say no force, no negotiation, that means no one is willing to do something. What we would like to see is all options are on the table- including negotiations." -- Ubong Ben, of Facts and Figures

Indeed the lack of clear policy could be the reason why on Monday Jun. 9, news broke here that suspected Boko Haram members seized at least 20 women from the Garkin Fulani community, a nomadic settlement near Chibok.

Details of the latest raid remain sketchy with neither the Nigerian military nor the government commenting on the attack. But local vigilantes and witnesses say armed men loaded the women onto trucks and drove away on Thursday, Jun. 5.

With the initial global spotlight on the Apr. 14 abduction receding, the government also appears to be back-peddling on its rescue effort.

But perhaps what could be considered the first government blunder came when the military claimed to have freed all but eight of the girls just two days after the Apr. 14 kidnapping. That claim was retracted after the head of the school, from where the girls were abducted, complained.

Since then, the government and local officials have faltered over the actual number of abducted girls, with the figure climbing from less than 100 to close to 300.

To date, the actual number is not certain, leaving many to use in-approximate descriptions like “more than 200 or nearly 300”.

However, on May 26 the army announced that it knew where the first group of abducted school girls were. But in the last week there have been no official updates from the government, and no news of breakthroughs. Officials merely say “efforts are ongoing, the government is doing all it can to free the girls.”

But this week critics accused the military is spending valuable time targeting the media as it seized newspapers and accused the press of undermining national security through its reporting of the abductions. The military, however, says its siege on the media is a “security operation”, and denies it has anything to do with news content.

But an apparent split between the president and the military chief over the choice tactics for the release of the girls could also be hampering the efforts to rescue them. This apparent split is seen here as underscoring a longstanding lack of a coherent strategy against a deadly group that has killed more than 12,000 over five years, according to President Goodluck Jonathan. 

The president has branded the group the “Al-Qaeda of West Africa”.

Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014. They called on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

Jibrin Ibrahim, a political scientist and a leading Nigerian civil rights activist who leads the now famous #BringBackOurGirls daily protest in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, handed a grim warning about the conflicting remarks by Jonathan and his military chief, Alex Badeh, about whether to use force or negotiations with Boko Haram.

Boko Haram has offered to swap the girls in exchange for hundreds of its detained fighters; and has threatened to sell or marry off the girls if the government does not respond.

Jonathan vowed this month in a major televised speech to free the girls kidnapped in April.

But both sides must agree immediately on a tactic, said Ibrahim.

“If the military says they won’t use force, and the president says he has ruled out the negotiations with the group, then that is a dead-end because those are the only two options on the table,” Ibrahim told IPS. Even the #BringBackOurGirls daily protest itself was handled badly by the government when on Jun. 2, the FCT Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, banned the protests. However, the ban was overruled a day later by Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar.

Ibrahim said he would personally prefer negotiations with Boko Haram, an option that Jonathan has long ruled out.

Previous attempts by the military to conduct rescue efforts in other abduction cases have ended on a bloody note, with one involving the killing of an Italian and a Briton by their captors.

“The danger in the double speak is that it may not only send wrong signals to the terrorist group but may also push them into taking more vicious steps in their bid to bring the government to its knees,” Eric Ojo, of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa, told IPS.

Driven by a religious fundamentalist ideology, and an ambition to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram, whose name literally translates as “Education is Forbidden”, took the girls into captivity from a secondary school in Chibok where they were preparing for a final examination.

Nigeria’s senate president, two ministers, and another senior information official, have openly disagreed with the government’s line of action of either to swap detainees with Boko Haram, or to stick to the use of force.

Special Duties Minister Taminu Turaki, and the director general of the National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri, have said that the government was prepared for talks.

Jonathan himself was quoted by Britain’s Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, as saying downright he would not consider a prisoner swap or negotiation with Boko Haram.

He was supported by senate president David Mark, the country’s number three, and Interior Minister Abba Moro.

However, government sources said secret negotiations that would have resulted in the exchange of detainees by both sides, failed to go through last month after the talks were called off by Jonathan.

Critics view the conflicting positions as typical of a government accused of lacking a response to a deadly group that threatens the country’s soul.

“The government must keep its house in order,” Ubong Ben, of Facts and Figures, a Nigerian accountability outfit, told IPS.

Ibrahim said the disagreement and dilly-dallying could prove harmful to the abducted girls.

“If both sides say no force, no negotiation, that means no one is willing to do something. What we would like to see is all options are on the table- including negotiations,” he said.

But some Nigerians analysts also believe the government may deliberately be distorting its information to confuse Boko Haram, while secretly exploring all options.

“It is a possible game plan,” said Joseph Fayeye of the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies.

“What is certain is that the government will also consider diplomatic steps that are not known to the public,” he told IPS.

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Mohammed Lere

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, May 25 2014 (IPS)

As the African Union is set to celebrate its 51st birthday on May 25, it does so as the continent remains caught up in a tide of terrorist conflicts, which many analysts feel the AU has done little to resolve.

“With unsolved conflicts dotted across our continent, really the efficiency of the AU is at stake and highly questionable. We don’t need a rocket scientist to tell us that the AU is wanting, considering the terror attacks in East and West Africa,” independent political analyst Evelyn Moyo tells IPS.

The Somali extremist group, Al-Shabaab, has waged a terror campaign in the Horn of Africa nation and across East Africa, with attacks spreading to neighbouring Kenya. The Sept. 21, 2013 attack on Kenya’s Westgate Shopping Mall claimed over 67 lives and left more than 175 people wounded. The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kenya’s port city and popular tourist destination of Mombasa also experienced a number of terrorist attacks from Al-Shabaab, with the United Kingdom, U.S. and French governments issuing warnings to their citizens not to travel there.

In West Africa, the region has been rocked by instability thanks to the Nigerian-based extremist group, Boko Haram. The group, which is also linked to Al-Qaeda, gained international attention after the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state on Apr. 14. The Nigerian government has struggled to contain Boko Haram’s attacks and the extremist group has attacked neighbouring countries, including Cameroon. There are also fears of instability in parts of neighbouring Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana and even Central African Republic.

Political analyst Malvern Tigere feels the AU has done little to contain the terrorism threat on the continent.

“We have had a situation where the AU has paid a deaf ear to the severity of spreading terrorist attacks across West Africa. On Sept. 21, 2013, Al-Shabaab killed 72 people in a popular Kenyan shopping mall, and what did AU do about that? Is it a trivial thing to have close to 100 people massacred at one go?

“There are terror attacks in Kenya, there are terror attacks in Nigeria, there are also terror attacks in Somalia and all these are mounted in countries with membership to the AU. [There has been] no clear solution from the organisation to thwart such acts, which truly renders the AU spineless,” Tigere tells IPS.

But Zambia’s independent political analyst, Michael Mwanza, disagrees.

“The AU, which was formerly the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), played a pivotal role in ending colonialism and minority rule in Africa. It was AU that gave weapons, training and military bases to colonised African nations fighting for independence,” Mwanza tells IPS.

Over half a century ago, the OAU was formed in Ethiopia on May 25, 1963 and was tasked with resolving colonial conflicts. It was replaced by the AU on May 26, 2001.

“The organisation played a major role in bringing sanity across Africa,” adds Mwanza.

A Tanzanian diplomat in Zimbabwe, speaking on the condition of anonymity for professional reasons, agrees with Mwanza.

“It’s not all doom and gloom in the AU. The organisation played a role to broker Zimbabwe’s Unity government in 2009, bringing peace and stability to a country that was almost sliding into anarchy. It was the AU that in 2011 helped to have Cote d’Ivoire opposition leader Alassane Ouattara recognised as president after then leader Laurent Gbagbo had refused to hand over power after losing at the polls,” the Tanzanian diplomat tells IPS.

Zimbabwean political observer Denis Nyikadzino points out that the AU “does not often resort to using force to bringing calm in conflict situations here, but it uses dialogue and I see nothing wrong in that.”

But Rwandan civil society activist, Otapiya Gundurama, feels that the AU has over the years become lax, leaving the developed world to play the rescue role in African conflicts.

“Over the years, the AU has folded its hands and has become used to having the super powers intervening in its conflicts. That is why instead of the AU creeping instantly to thwart Boko Haram insurgents, we have the U.S., Israel and France deploying military personnel at the border between Chad and Nigeria to help find the kidnapped girls,” Gundurama tells PS.

Observers, however, say that AU on its own cannot resolve all the conflicts brewing on the continent.

“Africa has the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and surely the AU is not the Holy Spirit to singlehandedly end African conflicts,” Harare-based political commentator Innocent Majawaya tells IPS.

Ernst Mudzengi, political analyst and director of Media Centre Zimbabwe, pinned the raging conflicts in Africa on unequal distribution of the continent’s natural resources.

“Despite the AU’s presence, Africa has continued to witness conflicts caused by ineffective governments with few people benefitting from the continent’s natural resources,” Mudzengi tells IPS.

But as the AU anniversary coincides with Africa Day, Catherine Mukwapati, director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network, a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, says there is little to celebrate.

“We have leadership crisis in Africa where certain leaders believe they have the mandate to rule ceaselessly and people therefore hunger for leadership renewal, resulting in many people finding no reasons for celebrating Africa Day,” she tells IPS.

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Mohammed Lere

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, May 20 2014 (IPS)

Multiple car bombs killed dozens Tuesday in the central Nigerian city of Jos, Plateau state, days after a security summit in France where African leaders committed to a “war” on Nigeria’s Islamist rebels, Boko Haram.

Both the attack and the recent security summit have done little to address the resentment against Nigerian authorities over their initial indifference to the abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14.

Casualty figures of the Jos bombing are not clear yet, but an emergency official told IPS that the toll is “very massive”. Some say as many as 200 people were killed because the attack occurred in a market. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but it is suspected to be the work of Boko Haram.

The local population holds little expectation of an immediate triumph over Boko Haram, as many feel the Paris talks offered little hope in finding the abducted schoolgirls.

“The bitter truth is their life-threatening situation is handled as an irritation by those that should care,” Oby Ezekwesili, a former education minister and leader of a daily sit-in in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, tweeted on Monday. “Bitter as it is to swallow, truth is those who should find them still denigrate the agony of their parents.”

After 35 days of searching, there is still no clue about the whereabouts of the schoolgirls despite surveillance and intelligence assistance from the United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel.

But pressure is growing on the government as at least four people were killed on Sunday, May 18, in a another suspected Boko Haram bomb blast in Nigeria’s northwest Kano state. Kano state has been a relatively peaceful area and was last attacked by Boko Haram in 2012.

The blast, at a busy bar in a predominately Christian area, raised fears the insurgents may be moving from their stronghold in Borno state, which lies nearly 600 kms east of Kano state.

Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014. They called on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

Here in Nigeria activists plan to march on Thursday to President Goodluck Jonathan’s office to present a “charter of demands”. Amongst other things, they will demand more engagement of the authorities with the families of the abducted girls, and greater security in Boko Haram’s strongholds.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden”, has frequently attacked schools, symbols of the state, churches and markets in their campaign to create an Islamic state.

Jonathan has been widely criticised for his handling of the crisis.

Nigeria itself has been blamed for not taking the campaign against Boko Haram seriously enough until the abduction of the Chibok girls.

“The government and military establishment would have to honestly own up that defence and security allocations have not been utilised for the purpose of building an army capable of tackling the Boko Haram menace,” Benson Eluma of the Institute of African Studies at Nigeria’s University of Ibadan told IPS.

The summit in Paris was the first public effort outside of Africa to rally nations against Boko Haram, which is now regarded as a threat to West and Central Africa.

The presidents of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin, promised to share intelligence on Boko Haram, monitor their common borders, and coordinate action against the group. A common intelligence platform is to be stationed in Chad in the joint action against Boko Haram.

Nigeria currently maintains a multinational military task force around the Lake Chad Basin area, near Borno state. Troops are drawn from all Nigeria’s neighbouring countries, with the exception of Cameroon.

One of Nigeria’s main challenges remains this country’s barely cordial relationship with Cameroon, which is based on decades of territorial friction. Cameroon, is seen by the Nigerian government, as a strategic hideout for insurgents fleeing raids here.

While Nigeria has an agreement with Niger — and is working on one with Chad — to allow Nigerian troops cross into neighbouring countries in pursuit of insurgents, there has been no such understanding with Cameroon.

Despite the perceived limitations, the Paris summit is expected to be a game changer in the fight against Boko Haram.

“We have shown our commitment for a regional approach. Without West African countries coming together we will not be able to crush these terrorists,” Jonathan said.

For the first time since the insurgency began five years ago, he released the official figure of the death toll. According to Jonathan, some 12,000 people have died in the crisis — more than double the 5,000 initially believed to have been killed.

The summit, convened by French President François Hollande, has also generated concerns about Africa’s inability to solve its problems.

The continental body, the African Union, has been largely silent about the crisis of Boko Haram and the missing girls. However, the Economic Community of West African States, the West African regional body, has stated its resolve to jointly fight the terrorist group.

Regardless of where assistance comes from, any decision against Boko Haram for a lasting solution cannot be entirely through brute military force, says Eluma.

“Abubakar Shekau [Boko Haram’s leader] and Boko Haram epitomise everything that is wrong with our society, including our hatred of difference, our discrimination against girls and women, the abominable state of education in the country, the porosity of our borders, the complicity of agents of the state in undermining both the state and the people, the political and social instrumentalisation of violence in Nigeria … which leaves us vulnerable to whatever ill wind that blows from distant places.”

Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014. They called on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

By Ini Ekott
ABUJA, May 16 2014 (IPS)

Tomorrow Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan will meet other heads of state at a security summit in Paris, France to focus on ways of combatting Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group which kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April.

But questions have been raised about whether the abductions and the deaths of thousands could have been avoided had Jonathan acted decisively three years ago. Jonathan has drawn criticism from lawmakers and human rights groups, who accuse him of being partisan in handling the security threat.

Boko Haram translates to “Western education is forbidden”, which is the central creed that has driven its members to attack school after school. And while girls attending school are often abducted, boys have been slaughtered for pursuing their education.

In one of the most horrifying attacks yet, in late February the group’s fighters murdered nearly 50 students in a secondary school in Yobe state, one of the three most-affected states in Nigeria’s northeast. Rights group Amnesty International says that in 2014 alone, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in what appears to be the bloodiest year since the brutal insurgency began in 2009.

But the mass kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14, brought international attention to the terror campaign in this West African nation.

A massive social media movement under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has lasted weeks, and the United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel have sent experts to Nigeria to assist in rescuing the girls.

A massive social media campaign under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has lasted weeks. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for their release. Courtesy: UNICEF

But Jonathan’s response to the kidnapping was slow. The president’s supporters and the ruling People’s Democratic Party have routinely dismissed the terrorist attacks as the handiwork of the president’s opponents — mainly from the predominately Muslim north — who they say are out to derail Jonathan from seeking reelection next year.

The president’s supporters speak of the attacks as being confined to a remote part of the country, implying they can be ignored.

And Jonathan has not dispelled these sentiments, indeed, he appears to back them with his inaction. The Chibok abduction came hours after a car bomb by Boko Haram killed at least 75 people in the capital, Abuja.

A day after the incident, the president travelled to north-western Kano state for a political rally, where he was photographed singing and dancing.

Many others feel he only acted weeks later after the abduction of the girls came to the attention of the international media.

But many feel Jonathan should have acted three years and 5,000 deaths ago.

On Christmas Day 2011, Boko Haram militants killed at least 44 worshippers by detonating a car bomb outside a church in Abuja. At the time, Jonathan vowed to respond forcefully against Boko Haram, which had already murdered nearly 1,000 people.

Jonathan said the organisation had grown “cancerous, and Nigeria being the body, they want to kill it,” he said, vowing to “crush” group within months.

But the extremist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, buoyed by the government’s apparent failure to end the budding insurgency at the time, boasted that his group would continue targeting symbols of state.

Boko Haram’s latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Ayo Bello

A list of targets, motivated by the group’s ambition of creating an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, came under under attack. Three years on, Shekau’s threat, rather than Jonathan’s, has held largely true.

The group has attacked schools, churches and villages, causing increasing devastation. It has slaughtered students and kidnapped scores over the years. Its most infamous attack is now the kidnapping of the 276 schoolgirls in Chibok.

This week, Nigeria’s House of Representatives approved Jonathan’s request to extend emergency rule in the country’s states most affected by the conflict for another six months.

Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states have already been under a state of emergency for more than a year now. The Senate is expected to vote on the request Tuesday, May 20. Both houses have to agree for the decision to be effective.

But Jonathan’s request for this extension of the emergency rule has drawn criticisms from lawmakers.

The current state of emergency has done little to deter Boko Haram in these states and in fact the group has escalated its terror campaign. It culminated in daring attacks on military bases, two car bombs at a busy bus terminal in Abuja, and several raids on schools and villages.

The failure of the military to stop the attacks is primarily a result of its poor human rights record, which has alienated the local population, according to William Miles, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, U.S.

“Too many of the rank-and-file members of the Nigerian military view northeastern Nigeria as alien territory, with a potentially hostile local community,” Miles, who is also a member of West African Research Association, at the African Studies Centre at Boston University, tells IPS.

“Without a good rapport between the local populace and the national military, it is too difficult to obtain the most important assets in combatting domestic terrorism — local informants and a functional intelligence network,” he points out.

Indeed, international rights groups have accused the Nigerian military of conducting summary executions.

Amnesty International said the Nigerian security forces executed 600 Boko Haram detainees when the sect’s fighters stormed a military facility in Maiduguri in April. The military said it had no choice.

Beyond the human rights concerns, the military has also come under criticism for being poorly equipped and for its dwindling morale.

While the military budget has now increased, years of underfunding the military to avoid coups has taken on a troubling dimension. On Wednesday, May 14, troops opened fire on the motorcade of a senior military commander, Ahmed Mohammed.

Mohammed was the General Officer Commanding Borno state’s 7 Division, which was recently created to fight Boko Haram.

They blamed him for the deaths of at least four soldiers killed in an ambush by suspected Boko Haram militants while patrolling Chibok. Local reports say the soldiers said they were compelled to travel through the area at night without proper armour. Mohammed has since been redeployed.

The bombing of the U.N. building in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, claimed 23 lives and wounded 81 people on Aug. 26, 2011. Credit: Chris Ewokor/IPS

The Nigerian government has struggled to contain Boko Haram’s attacks to this country as the extremist group has attacked neighbouring countries, including Cameroon. It has led to fears of instability in parts of neighbouring Chad, Niger, Cameroon, Benin, Ghana and even Central African Republic.

“The destabilisation of any nation in the West African sub-region is a threat to the security of all the other surrounding nations,” Ghana’s President John Mahama said after the Chibok kidnappings.

Mahama has pledged a robust response to Boko Haram, through the Economic Community of West African States, a regional body.

This week, Cameroonian officials told IPS that the Central African nation, which borders Nigeria’s northeast, has been infiltrated by Boko Haram.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance said nearly 300,000 people in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states – 70 percent of them women and children – have fled their homes since early 2013. About 60,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger since May 2013, according to U.N. Refugee Agency.

Despite the mounting challenges, the Nigerian government will win the war with the broadened foreign support, says Christian Ichite, a research fellow at Abuja’s National Defence College.

“Efficient kinetic measures against insurgents are driven by intelligence and technology from professionals,” Ichite tells IPS.

“In this respect, Nigeria has requested for and is receiving assistance from the U.S., U.K, France, China, Israel and the Eurpoean Union.

“There is therefore renewed hope that Nigeria will succeed in dealing with this menace.”

Senior defence officials say that Cameroon has been infiltrated by Nigeria’s Islamist extremist group Boko Haram and there are fears that this central African nation, known for its stability, is drifting into chaos.

“Right now, we are being infiltrated by Boko Haram. The military has decided to strengthen the intelligence system to effectively counter this threat, which seems to be gaining local support,” Colonel Didier Badjeck, spokesperson for the Cameroon Ministry of Defence, told IPS.

Governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Augustine Awa Fonka, told IPS that the precision with which the extremist group attacked a military post in the region on May 5, lends credence to the fact that the attack was carried out with the help of local informants.“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning.” -- Cameroonian El Hadji Numbao

Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a Boko Haram stronghold. In March, the government set up a number of military posts along Cameroon’s northwestern border with Nigeria in response to Boko Haram’s insurgency.

But on 2am, May 5, over 30 suspected Boko Haram insurgents struck the Kousseri military post in Far North Region and killed a Gendarmerie officer and a civilian being held in custody. Several people were wounded as the group freed one of their members, who was also being held at the post.

“In all of the cases [of Boko Haram attacks], especially the attack on the military post, there are quite a number of arrests that have been made. The attack couldn’t have been carried out without local informants and we believe we are going to identify these accomplices,” Awa Fonka said.

He admitted that the attack on the military was spreading fear among locals.

“The forces of law and order are there to protect the population. When they [the military] are now being attacked, it destabilises everyone,” he said.

He described the attackers as “faceless” terrorists would could only be tracked down with help of locals. He added that “every measure will be put in place to track down the attackers, or at least get their accomplices.”

Attacks in Nigeria have also resulted in refugees fleeing to safety in Cameroon. On May 6, Boko Haram — which means “Western Education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa — raided a market in the Nigerian border town of Gambourou. More than 200 people, including four Cameroonians, died in the attack. Around 3,000 Nigerians, many of whom were wounded during the violence, crossed over to the Cameroonian town of Fotokol.

“The forces of law and order cannot do it alone. They need the population to denounce people of doubtful origin who are in their neighbourhoods. We need to unite, because a nation unified against its enemy is invincible,” Awa Fonka said.

But the readiness of locals to cooperate remains in doubt.

“People are suspicious of each other. You can’t possibly trust even your nextdoor neighbour because you do not know with whom they sit and dine,” Alamine Ousman, a resident of Kousseri, Far North Region, told IPS.

“But we know that Boko Haram members are here among us — they move about like anyone else, and you can’t even tell they are from Boko Haram.”

Many in the region remain afraid for their lives and are reluctant to volunteer any information about Boko Haram’s members.

Hawe Aishatu, who escaped the attacks in the Far North Region and fled to the capital, Yaounde, cast a furtive glance before she spoke in a subdued tone.

“It can mean death talking about these people. They are fundamentally evil,” she told IPS.

The recent attack on the Kousseri military post forced El Hadji Numbao and his family to flee the town. He told IPS that if the insurgents had the nerve to attack military posts, then ordinary people like himself were not safe.

“It’s so scary,” Numbao said just as he stepped off a train at Yaounde station.

“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning,” he said.

Adouraman Halirou, a university don and specialist on border issues, told IPS that he feared Cameroon, which frequently prided itself as being a fountain of peace in a troubled African continent, may be drifting into chaos.

He urged the government to make use of all its available human and technical resources to stem the threat.

“The conflicts, the crises and the tensions plaguing the region, particularly Nigeria, have not failed to have repercussions in our country,” Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary told IPS.

Military posts have also been set up on the country’s eastern border with Central Africa Republic (CAR) as Cameroon has also faced attack there. In Cameroon’s East Region over 18 locals were kidnapped on May 2 by insurgents from CAR.

“Cameroon is subject to attacks perpetuated from neighbouring countries, and by nationals of those countries,” Tchiroma Bakary added.

Until then Cameroonians like Numbao will continue to flee for safety.

“I have left everything back-my businesses, my cattle…everything. But I am happy my seven children and three wives are safe,” Numbao said. He has relocated to the capital with his entire household.

A moment of silence is held May 6, 2014 in Washington, DC for the 234 missing Nigerian school girls. Credit: Senate Democrats/cc by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 9 2014 (IPS)

The fate of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by the violent Islamist Boko Haram group from the northern Nigeria town of Chibok in mid-April has become something of a public sensation in the United States since the beginning of the month.

Politicians and activists are calling for strong action by the U.S. to help the Nigerian government locate and rescue the girls, while the main television network have been leading their periodic news summaries and nightly newscasts with the latest information on the kidnappings for the past week.“The question is not so much one of inattention but one of tardiness in recognising that this is a sensational story." -- Andrew Tyndall

And Boko Haram, whose leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened in a widely viewed video earlier this week to sell the girls into slavery, has emerged from a state of almost-total obscurity – despite the growing concern about its violence and links to other radical Islamist groups in North Africa and the Sahel among Africa specialists in and outside the government — to a remarkable notoriety among the general public on this side of the Atlantic.

“The media didn’t pay attention to the story when it first happened,” noted Emira Wood, an Africa specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies here. “Now you have [First Lady] Michelle Obama tweeting a photo of herself displaying the hashtag #BringBackOur Girls and Angelina Jolie speaking out about it.”

“Nigeria is not something on the radar of most American news organisations or the consciousness of most Americans, who, after all, would be quite hard-pressed to even locate Nigeria on a map,” according to Steven Livingston, a political communications expert at George Washington University, who credited Nigeria’s civil society groups and their use of social media for thrusting the story into the global spotlight.

“In this case, the story is easy to understand at an emotional level, especially for parents, and, after all, Boko Haram are not good guys, so you don’t have to understand a lot. You can just sign on and feel good about it,” he told IPS.

In that respect, he noted, the story is similar to the “Kony 2012” phenomenon, a 30-minute internet video seen by tens millions of viewers here and designed to promote stronger U.S. military efforts to capture the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that has terrorised parts of Uganda and central Africa for more than a decade.

Even before the Kony 2012 campaign, the administration of President Barack Obama had deployed some 100 combat-equipped troops to the region in a multi-national campaign to track, disrupt, and ultimately capture Kony and his top lieutenants. Unsurprisingly, he is coming under pressure to take similar action to rescue the kidnapped girls.

Thus far, Obama has authorised dispatching up to 10 U.S. military and intelligence personnel to set up a “coordination cell” to work alongside Nigerian security forces as well as advisers from other countries whose offers of assistance have reportedly been accepted by President Goodluck Johnson.

U.S. officials have also said Washington has deployed surveillance assets to the region where the girls may have been taken, including northern Nigeria and neighbouring areas of Cameroun, Chad, and Niger where Washington maintains a drone base.

Some lawmakers, however, are calling for stronger action. “More can be done by this administration,” said Republican Sen. Susan Collins, told CNN Wednesday. “I would like to see Special Forces deployed to rescue these young girls.”

Similarly, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that sending advisory team should be “just the first step” and that she would “support whatever actions are necessary to locate, capture and eliminate the terrorists responsible for this reprehensible act.”

All 20 women senators signed on to a letter calling for tougher actions against Boko Haram. Several of them re-introduced the bipartisan International Violence Against Women Act in the Senate Thursday, a bill that would make gender-based violence prevention and response a top priority for U.S. diplomats and aid programmes.

As noted by Wood, the story was initially ignored by the mass media here and made its first appearance on network news only last Thursday, more than two weeks after the abduction, according to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the ‘Tyndall Report’, which tracks weeknightly news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks.

“The question is not so much one of inattention but one of tardiness in recognising that this is a sensational story,” he told IPS.

“It’s a general rule that sub-Saharan stories — especially those in which Americans are not involved — are under-covered by the mainstream national newscasts. However, in this instance, that general rule should not have applied,” especially given the involvement of a violent Islamist group allegedly tied to Al Qaeda in an action aimed at denying girls their right to an education – the abductees were kidnapped from a boarding school where they were taking exams.

“The issue of girls’ education in Muslim societies has already proved itself as an attention-grabbing story,” he added, noting the lavish media attention received last year by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who led a global campaign for girls’ education after recovering from an attack by the Taliban.

Since last week, however, “the story has absolutely taken off and gotten the intensity of coverage that it should’ve gotten from the word ‘go’,” he told IPS.

Since last Thursday, he said, the story has received 32 minutes of coverage on the three networks – or more than 10 percent of their total coverage. After narrating reports from here, two of the networks sent reporters to Nigeria this week. That compares with 12 minutes total coverage of Kony 2012 in that year.

That total is still just over half the coverage given to the dominant story out of sub-Saharan Africa so far in 2014 – the trial of Oscar Pistorius, the white South African track star accused of murdering his girlfriend.

The Pistorius case also received a total of 51 minutes of U.S. network news coverage last year, making it second-biggest story out of the region in 2013, after coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death and funeral. But, Tyndall noted, the Nigerian story appears poised to continue drawing media attention for the foreseeable future.

Both Livingston and Wood expressed concern that all of the media attention and clamour for stronger action could prove counter-productive, especially if it results in direct U.S. military action. Livingston noted that it could “feed into the Boko Haram narrative that the Nigerian government is just a puppet of the Western oil interests, the U.S., and the British.”

Wood noted that Washington’s decision to add the group to its terrorist list late last year actually helped boost their profile among the disaffected and poor youth in the region. “A more militarised response could make things worse, both in rescuing the girls and in failing to deal with the root causes of the crisis,” she said.

Meanwhile, right-wing forces also sought to take advantage of all of the attention. In a FoxNews column published Wednesday, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton stressed that the kidnapping offered a “grim reminder” of the threat posed by radical Islam, claiming that the administration had ignored its growth across North Africa and the Sahel.

The neo-conservative Weekly Standard assailed former secretary of state (and likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton for allegedly resisting earlier recommendations by lower-level officials to put Boko Haram on the terrorism list.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Today more than 200 schoolgirls will wake up to another day in an unthinkable nightmare. Three weeks ago, they were seized in the night by armed men dressed as soldiers who said they were there to protect them.

In reality, the men were militant extremists who kidnapped them and set their boarding school on fire. The girls’ whereabouts continue to be unknown. We are racing against time and every moment counts. We need the government of Nigeria to act fast and we need the support of the world.

This happened in Chibok, a town in northeastern Nigeria. Imagine if it had taken place in your community.

This horrific act offends our common humanity and demands global outrage and action. We have a responsibility to rally behind the parents, people and government of Nigeria and bring the girls back home to safety.

The violation of the rights of womenand girls on such a scale, no matter who they are and where they are, requires the whole world to stand up and take action. We are racing against time and every moment counts. We need the government of Nigeria to act fast and we need the support of the world.

We must send the message loud and clear that no girl can be abducted.

Human rights are indivisible and universal. Yet, women and girls continue to be systematically targeted, assaulted, trafficked and enslaved on a massive scale. Globally, one in three women will experience violence in her lifetime.

For women and girls in every country, violence and the fear of violence is a daily reality. In conflict zones and in the presence of armed extremists, violence is an even bigger threat.

The abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria is shocking and deserves an urgent global response. While some girls escaped, jumping from the jeeps, and made their way home to tell the story, most of the kidnapped girls remain missing.

Their parents, teachers and friends continue to demand their release. Meanwhile, reports are circulating that the girls have been sold as brides and trafficked as sex slaves across Nigeria’s borders. 

In Nigeria and elsewhere, parents and marchers took to the streets wearing red, demanding answers and action. There has been a deluge of social media posts, demanding the girls’ urgent and unconditional release and return home. The hashtags, #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurDaugthers, are spreading around the globe.

These girls were targeted for the simple reason that they went to school. They were exercising their right to education. They were kidnapped by the Islamist group, Boko Haram.

Attacks against children and the targeting of schools cannot be justified under any circumstances and should be condemned by all.

Girls and young women belong in school and should stay there without fear of violence, so they can play their rightful roles as equal citizens of the world. Schools are and must remain places of safety and security, where children can learn and grow in peace.

Women and girls have the right to live free from intimidation, persecution and all other forms of discrimination and to participate fully and equally in public and civic life.

We cannot allow extremists to trample these rights and take us and our societies backwards.

We stand with people worldwide who believe that every person is equal in inherent worth and dignity and human rights. We stand with the parents and families of the abducted girls. If we do not respond effectively, those who prey on women and girls are emboldened to continue their crimes.

The world must come together and make every possible effort to rescue these girls, bring their captors to justice, and, more importantly, do everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the Executive Director of UN Women and Babatunde Osotimehin is the Executive Director of the UN Population Fund.

Boko Haram's latest bomb attack in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 14, 2014, claimed 75 lives. Courtesy: Ayo Bello

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

Nigerians are beginning to adjust to the sad reality that they live in a country where suicide bombers and terrorists could be lurking around the next corner thanks to a ready supply of advanced weapons smuggled through the country’s porous borders. 

Last week, Ngupar Kemzy’s cousin, Andy Nepli, told him that he planned to spend the Easter holidays with him.

But two days later, on Apr. 14, 32-year-old Nepli was one of the 75 people killed in two powerful explosions at a crowded bus station in Nyanya, a suburb in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons.” -- Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development

Many of the victims were so badly wounded that it was difficult to identify them.

“We only knew it was him after checking his clothes and seeing his identity card,” Kemzy, who rushed to the scene, told IPS. “Human body parts were littered all over the place,” he said.

On the same night, Nigeria was forced to contend with yet another horror when 129 schoolgirls were abducted from their hostel in Chibok, Borno State in the country’s northeast.

Boko Haram, a group waging a violent campaign for the imposition of Islamic rule in this West African nation, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group is suspected to also be responsible for the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok.

Bombings, abductions and a scorched earth policy of burning down entire villages and killing the inhabitants are some of the violent techniques used by the extremist group.

Boko Haram, which is believed to have links with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Somali-based Al-Shabaab, is mainly active in northeastern Nigeria

Global human rights movement Amnesty International says 1,500 people were killed within the first three month of this year by Boko Haram and “uncontrolled reprisals by Nigeria’s security forces.”

A transformation to modern weaponry is said to have aided the escalation of the crisis in the country.

Besides Boko Haram, several other armed ethnic militia operate in Central Nigeria. And armed groups have moved from using crude weapons like sticks, machetes, cudgels, and dane guns to more lethal and advanced weapons like machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

“Those using these modern weapons have attained a boldness they never would have had if they were handling crude weapons,” Steve Obodokwe, of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development, told IPS.

“With their modern weapons, armed groups have been able to gather the courage to attack even military barracks,” said Obodokwe.

There is a ready supply of weapons smuggled into Nigeria through its porous borders. Some weapons are believed to have entered the country following armed conflicts in countries like Libya and Mali.

Former Nigerian defence minister Olusola Obada says some of the smuggled weapons were those looted from Libyan armouries during the 2011 crisis to oust the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi (1942 – 2011).

It is also believed that some of the weapons, especially those being used by Boko Haram, entered Nigeria through Al-Qaeda’s network.

“It is not out of place to suggest that some of the weapons in Nigeria were supplied by Islamist groups in Somalia and Mali,” says Obodokwe.

With its links to Al-Qaeda and a good supply of arms, Boko Haram has successfully carried out several high-profile terrorist attacks in Nigeria. These include attacks on military bases and the 2011 bombing of both the national police and United Nations headquarters in Abuja.

“The consequences of these successful attacks is that Boko Haram has demystified Nigeria’s security agencies,” Ifeanyi Okechukwu, national coordinator of the West Africa Network for Peace Building, which works with international organisations to prevent armed conflict, told IPS.

He says the success of Boko Haram has encouraged other groups here to pick up arms against their opponents, knowing that security agencies are incapable of stopping them.

The great cost to Nigeria

The conflicts in Nigeria have come at great cost. The International Crisis Group, an independent organisation working to prevent deadly conflicts, says the Boko Haram’s insurgency alone has “displaced close to half a million people, destroyed hundreds of schools and government buildings and devastated an already ravaged economy in the northeast, one of Nigeria’s poorest regions.”

The organisation fears that with no end in sight, the insurgency could spill over “to other parts of the north and risks reaching Niger and Cameroon, weak countries poorly equipped to combat a radical Islamist armed group.”

Some Nigerians are beginning to lose faith in the ability of security agents to stop Boko Haram and other militant groups in the country. But the government has continued to assure the populace that it will win the war against terror.

“Terror will not stop Nigeria from moving. The terrorists and those who are sponsoring them will never stop this country from moving, we will continue to move from strength to strength,” President Goodluck Jonathan said at a political rally a day after the Abuja bus station bombings.

Nigeria is scheduled to hold general elections next year.

Here, the buildup to elections is usually characterised by politicians arming their supporters in their quest for power. But with so many armed groups and with so many illegal firearms already in circulation, the build-up to next year’s elections might just stretch Nigeria beyond its limits.

Nigeria's security forces barricade institutions and police stations to prevent further attacks by Boko Haram. Credit: Ahmed Usman/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. government has designated the Nigeria-based militant groups Boko Haram and Ansaru as terrorist organisations, prohibiting U.S. citizens from interacting or aiding the groups.

Boko Haram and Ansaru are widely believed to be behind extremist terrorist attacks that have claimed thousands of lives in Nigeria in recent years, amidst a fight with the central government and its army over the role of Islam in Nigerian society."What really matters here is the fact that the Treasury Department will be able to go after the assets of these groups in U.S. banks." -- Douglas A. Ollivant

Response to the designation has been mixed, with some welcoming the decision while others warn that the move could end up hurting U.S. interests.

“This decision is very welcome and is a great step forward for the U.S., and I’m sure it will be fully upheld in Nigeria,” Samuel Okey Mbonu, the executive director of the Nigerian-American Leadership Council (NALC), a Nigerian advocacy group here, told IPS.

“At the same time, it is clear that this decision should have come long before now … I think that the U.S. has actually underestimated Boko Haram over the years.”

Boko Haram formally formed in 2009 in an attempt to impose Islamic law in all 36 Nigerian states, and has since carried out repeated attacks against both the military and civilians. Last week, such an attack reportedly killed at least 30 people.

Ansaru, considered a branch of Boko Haram, formed in early 2012. Since then it has proven itself a major force, managing to infiltrate Nigerian military structures on numerous occasions. Ansaru has also extensively targeted Western targets, including kidnapping foreigners working and living in Nigeria.

Both are believed to have ties to Al-Qaeda affiliates in Africa.

Still, others have long warned the State Department against making such a designation. Brandon Kendhammer, an expert on African politics and a faculty member at Ohio University, says the new announcement will make it increasingly difficult for those who, like him, study these groups.

“[The designations] will make it difficult for people … in the academic environment who want to study these movements,” Kendhammer told IPS. “Now it’s going to be very hard to contact their members or even to just work with communities where members might be present.”

Kendhammer’s concerns are not isolated. In May 2012, he was joined by a group of 24 other academics from across the U.S. in writing a letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the Obama administration to refrain from designating Boko Haram a terrorist organisation.

In the letter, the group of experts argued that a “designation would internationalize Boko Haram, legitimize abuses by Nigeria’s security services, limit the State Department’s latitude in shaping a long term strategy and undermine the U.S. Government’s ability to receive effective independent analysis from the region.”

“We surely have more information about Boko Haram than we did at the time of the letter, but it’s clear that the State Department still hasn’t articulated very well what type of connections the group has with other jihadist organisations,” Kendhammer says.

Big stick

Still, analysts now suggest that Wednesday’s decision will have a sizable impact on the group’s activities.

“In practice, the designation means that no American citizen can give any kind of material support to the group, and that no American can help them in any way, shape or form,” Douglas A. Ollivant, a retired U.S. Army officer and a senior national security fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank here, told IPS.

That includes both financial support and the provision of expertise, Ollivant says.

“But what really matters here is the fact that the [U.S.] Treasury Department will be able to go after the assets of these groups in U.S. banks – and, if the United Nations will pass a resolution, also in foreign banks,” Ollivant says.

The designations come at a time in which the domestic situation in Nigeria is still far from stable.

“What we need to understand is that Nigeria is a very complex and diverse country, where any government in power needs to carry every region along in its policies,” the NALC’s Okey Mbonu says.

“That means that sometimes the government is not going to wield the big stick on certain issues because it does not want to alienate certain regions.”

Indeed, Boko Haram’s strongholds are in northern Nigeria, which Okey Mbonu says is also the most politically influential region in the country. That has made any settlement between the Nigerian government and the group particularly difficult to achieve.

“It is clear that these extremist groups get most of their recruits from disaffected youth who are not fully integrated within the Nigerian socioeconomic environment,” Okey Mbonu says. “The central government will have to develop policies that will enable it to catch these youth before they get recruited.”

“So far,” he says, “the Nigerian government hasn’t been very good at that.”

The security forces barricade institutions and police formations to prevent further attacks by Boko Haram. Credit: Ahmed Usman/IPS

By Ahmed Usman
KANO, Nigeria, Nov 3 2012 (IPS)

A recent military curfew imposed on the violence-wracked north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum has not only made life unbearable for residents, but it has also reduced their chances of survival.

 Hundreds of civilians are living in fear in the town in Yobe State after the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, a sect that wants to impose Sharia law on the country, waged an assault there on Oct. 18, resulting in the death of more than 30 people.

The attack led the government to impose a curfew on the town that leaves residents only nine hours of daytime to be outdoors. Since Oct. 22 people have not been allowed to leave their homes from 4pm to 7am.

Dr. Bawa Abdullahi Wase, a senior research fellow on ethnicity, inequality and human security, told IPS that in a developing country like Nigeria a large number of people have to go out every day to look for food at markets and other places.

“Seven out of every 10 people have to look for food every day and the curfew could reduce their chances of survival.

“Of course there would be a shortage of food. And if someone is critically ill or natural disasters like a fire occur it would be difficult to get assistance from neighbours before the fire fighters arrive,” Wase said on the phone from Jos, in Plateau State.

Kabiru Sulaiman, a resident of Potiskum, said the town, which is the biggest commercial centre in Yobe State, has changed entirely since the curfew was imposed.

“All the shops and markets are closed even before 4pm. Movement has been restricted, and our lives really are in a sorry state,” Sulaiman told IPS.

According to fellow resident Zakari Adamu, who is also the head of the non-governmental organisation Nigeria Fight for Justice in Yobe, life is becoming difficult as the lives of people in Potiskum have begun deteriorating since the curfew was implemented.

“The town has returned to calm, it is time for the Yobe government to relax this curfew,” Adamu told IPS by phone.

Abubakar Mohammed is a businessman from Potiskum who fled to Kano State because he could not endure the difficulties caused by the curfew and the fighting between Boko Haram and Nigerian forces.

“I have relocated to Kano because life was miserable in Potiskum. Businesses are not doing well, incomes dwindle and people always live in fear of attacks from either Boko Haram or the military,” Mohammed told IPS in Kano.

Civilians caught up in the fighting have accused the country’s Joint Task Force (JTF) of attacking them. It is a claim that has been supported by Amnesty International, which issued a statement on Thursday Nov. 1 accusing Nigerian forces of human right abuses.

“Every injustice carried out in the name of security only fuels more terrorism, creating a vicious circle of murder and destruction,” said the organisation’s secretary general, Salil Shetty, in a statement issued to the press.

In an emailed statement, JTF spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Sagir Musa denied the claims.

Meanwhile, children in Potiskum are unable to attend school as the Sabon Layi Primary School, King Abdulaziz Primary School and the Senior Science Secondary School are among the schools burnt down in the recent attack in a war that seems to be focused against the idea of Western education. Boko Haram means “western education is sin”.

Adamu visited the scene and reported that many schools have been affected by the Islamists’ attacks.

“I have seen approximately five schools burnt down in Potiskum,” he said.

While residents in Potiskum complain about the curfew; the state government of Yobe said it would not be lifted anytime soon.

“The curfew is still there from 4pm to 7am and it is meant to protect lives and property,” Abdullahi Bego, special adviser on press affairs and information to the governor of Yobe, told IPS in a telephone interview.

Security analysts say the government did not take adequate action on intelligence reports on Boko Haram before they became so prominent in the country. If they had, they could have rooted out the Islamists or reduced their activities years ago, James Kura Garba, a security analyst and retired State Security Service chief based in the northern state of Kaduna, told IPS.

“There were intelligence reports since before the Boko Haram mayhem started that these gunmen were receiving training at camps outside Nigeria. But the government did not act,” Kura said.

“The government has erred by not using intelligence reports in a timely fashion; they could have crippled the activities of Boko Haram or reduced them to the barest minimum,” Garba said.

Garba, who lamented the government’s failure to secure lives and property, said it should intensify its efforts and people should cooperate with security agencies by giving vital information.

Meanwhile, the attacks continue. On Sunday, Oct. 28, a suicide bomber hit St. Rita’s Church in the western state of Kaduna. The explosion resulted in the death of more than 10 people and injured several others, including children.

Though no group has yet come forward, Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for similar attacks in the past.

By Ahmed Usman
KANO, Nigeria, Oct 16 2012 (IPS)

Locals in the city of Maiduguri in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno have intensified their calls for the military to withdraw from the town, the stronghold of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, after claims that they are being maltreated and abused.

The people residing in Maiduguri have been paying a heavy price for the Islamists’ guerrilla war, as the security forces accuse them of non-cooperation and shielding the Islamists.

“We are terribly disturbed by the wave of incessant retaliatory attacks by security forces on us,” local resident Bulama Abbagana told IPS.

“Even if we were in a state of war with a rival country, civilians should not be killed and maimed in the way the military is doing,” Abbagana angrily told IPS over the phone.

Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is sin”, has for the past three years been attacking government institutions, including suicide bombings of the United Nations building in the capital, Abuja. The worst attack was the Jan. 20 assault at the ancient city of Kano that claimed over 180 lives.

Boko Haram has adopted a Taliban style approach and is alleged to have links with Al Qaeda in North Africa. They want to impose Islamic law in a country sharply divided between a majority Muslim north and Christian south.

One resident who does not want his name in print for fear of reprisals told IPS: “We wish to be left with Boko Haram, we would have incurred less trouble than with the military.”

Maiduguri, the headquarters of Boko Haram activity in Nigeria and the staging point for the insurgents, appears to have become a battleground.

The most recent attack was on Monday, Oct. 15 when sustained strikes on the city by government soldiers resulted in a number of bomb explosions and the lockdown of the city centre. On Sunday, Oct. 14 the city was rocked by a roadside blast and two separate gun attacks that killed at least four people including a local chief, residents and the military said.

Prior to this, on Oct. 8, indiscriminate shooting allegedly committed by the members of the Joint Task Force resulted in further violence.

It is claimed that Nigerian troops in Maiduguri went berserk after their patrol vehicle was hit with an Improvised Explosive Device, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant, and injuring others. They were alleged to have started shooting indiscriminately in a densely-populated area of Lagos Street.

Residents say over 30 people were killed in the assault, and houses, businesses and shops were burnt down and vandalised.

“If you see the level of damage on our burnt houses and shops, you may shed tears,” Bana Modu, whose own house suffered severe damage, told IPS.

The feud between Nigerian security forces and residents in Maiduguri has reached its climax, with both sides pointing a finger of blame at each other.

The security forces claim that residents are not helping in the fight against Boko Haram. In several instances, the military have complained bitterly, accusing civilians of colluding with the attackers, as Islamists have launched attacks on them from rooftops and trees.

In turn, local residents complain that the security forces regard every person in civilian clothes as an enemy.

“Whenever there is a bomb explosion, the security used to besiege the area and beat any one found in their way. Some are killed in the process,” banker Abubakar Mohammed told IPS over the phone.

Businesses here have been crippled in the last three years.

“Many people have fled the area. I don’t have anywhere to go, but I could have left to escape from the attacks from two fronts: Boko Haram and the security forces,” Msheliza Dalwa told IPS.

The government of Borno state, where the crisis erupted in 2009, has shown no interest in withdrawing the troops, and has merely urged the security forces to respect individuals.

“Believe me, if the federal government withdraws the Joint Task Force from Borno, all of us will be chased out of the state by insurgents,” state Governor Kashim Shettima said, addressing journalists on the topic of the recent assault.

Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Right Congress, a local human rights group in Nigeria, told IPS: “The Nigerian security forces have been using disproportionate force which we see of equal magnitude with that of Boko Haram.”

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, no fewer than 2,800 people have been killed in the attacks largely claimed by the Islamists since the violence began in 2009. A report released by the global rights watchdog last week says Boko Haram’s assaults could be described as crimes against humanity.

“We will be happy to punish those committing wanton killings before the International Criminal Court so that those involved will not go free,” Ibarhim Badamasi, a resident in Maiduguri, told IPS.

The Joint Task Force is accused of embarking on house-to-house searches to hunt down the insurgents, and is alleged to have engaged in secret detentions.

“Some people arrested are dying in military cells without food, even the way people are being tortured could lead to the death of many,” a suspect arrested and subsequently released told IPS on condition of anonymity.

The security forces have denied committing killings and torture while restoring order. In a press statement to reporters, Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa said his men did not kill or assault civilians.

“There are no established or recorded cases of extra-judicial killings, torture, arson and arbitrary arrests by the JTF in Borno state,” Musa said in a statement.

“Very few cases of unprofessional conduct by some personnel are documented and those concerned have been punished while others are undergoing legal processes and Court Marshal,” he added.

The JTF has declared success in the fight against Boko Haram. It claims to have arrested over 60 members on Oct. 7 and killed a commander called Bakaka or “one-eyed man”, who is said to be close to the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau. It also claimed to have killed the sect’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa.

However, in a video message posted on YouTube, Shekau refuted the claims of Qaqa’s death. He only admitted that some members have been killed and their wives arrested by Nigerian forces.

A recent report by a U.N. panel of experts highlights the connection between the recent political instability in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, and suggests that radical Islamists with links with Al Qaeda’s North Africa branch are attempting to strengthen their presence across Africa, Boko Haram included.

On the International Day of Peace, Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka visited the United Nations – and called for armed intervention against the terrorist group Boko Haram in his home country of Nigeria.

“This is a violent organisation,” Soyika told IPS. “What do you do with them? I am sorry, but you must fight them.”

On Sep. 21, 2012 the International Day of Peace was celebrated with a debate about how to build a global culture of tolerance. Invited to participate were such superstars  as actor Forest Whitaker, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and Wole Soyinka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

After his speech, Soyinka spoke to IPS about the situation in his native Nigeria, where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is responsible for thousands of deaths and the bombings of several churches in Nigeria in recent years. The group seeks to establish sharia law in the country. Their presence is particularly strong in the north of the country.

“We have an organisation which closes down schools, shoots faculty teachers, knocks out children and turns most of the north into an educational wasteland. How can we reach the children there? We must first get rid of Boko Haram,” Soyinka lashed out.

“We have a contradiction,” he acknowledged. “How do we get rid of Boko Haram? Violence must become involved. That is a dilemma.”

Calling for armed intervention on Peace Day may certainly seem like a paradox. But Soyinka’s call for attacking Boko Haram in order to stop the group’s attacks on schools made more sense after Friday’s debate, where speaker after speaker highlighted the importance of education to enable a global culture of peace to grow.

As stipulated in the 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, the United Nations’ primary goal is to “create and maintain world peace” through economic, social and political agreements, and in the worst cases through military intervention.

In order for such a framework to succeed, a foundation of peace and a culture of tolerance must to be built. A cornerstone in building this culture is inculcating respect for others in children.

“The real weapon of mass destruction is ignorance,” said British-Iranian philanthropist Nasser David Khalili, one of the speakers during the event to emphasise the importance of schooling building a culture of peace. “The solution must be education.”

Another important point came from Jeffrey Sachs, professor of sustainable development at Columbia University. “As an economist it strikes me… how hunger and poverty are incendiary parts of war,” Sachs said. In the Sahel region of Mali this summer, for example, a famine sparked conflict between nomads and farmers over access to water.

Sachs drew attention to the fact that critical issues such as these receive too little attention, describing the great frustration he felt as he failed to raise money from the World Bank on behalf of Mali. “Shout Al-Qaeda, and you get millions for missiles. But try to do something preventive, and you do not get anything.”

He urged global leaders to invest in “development rather than military”. Globally, “we are spending more than 10 times more on the military than we do on development,” Sachs said. “In the U.S. the rate is 30 to one.”

U.N. Women‘s Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri continued with the theme of social justice in order to achieve peace, highlighting the importance of including women in poverty eradication programmes. “Women bear the brunt of poverty,” Lakshmi said.

After her speech, Lakshmi told IPS that it is important to remember that even religious freedom has its limits, in reference to the use of religion as an excuse for acts of violence. “We believe that no religion sanctions, or in any way justifies, violations of human rights and women’s rights,” she stressed.

Film star and UNESCO goodwill ambassador Forest Whitaker concluded the event. “We must never believe that it is right to inflict pain against others, even if we do not agree with them,” he said.

In its first legal action against the northern Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, the U.S. State Department Thursday designated three of the group’s alleged leaders to its global terrorism list.

The move will freeze any U.S.-based assets held by Abubakar Shekau, Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi and forbids any U.S. individuals or companies from engaging in transactions that would benefit the three individuals in any way.

While Shekau was “the most visible leader” of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad – Boko Haram’s official name – al-Barnawi and Kambar have “close links to al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM) which has already been designated a “Foreign Terrorist Organisation”, the State Department said in a release.

“These designations demonstrate the United States’ resolve in diminishing the capacity of Boko Haram to execute violent attacks,” the release stated, noting that more than 1,000 people have been killed by alleged members or associates of Boko Haram in the past 18 months.

The designations come amid reports of escalating violence allegedly perpetrated by Boko Haram against a variety of targets, including Christian churches and federal government facilities, primarily in the northern and central regions of Nigeria.

The latest wave of attacks, in which at least 50 people were killed, took place Sunday against three churches in Zaria and Kaduna, setting off retaliatory raids by Christian groups.

A delicate issue

Nigeria, the dominant power in West Africa and the oil- and gas-rich Gulf of Guinea, provides the United States with about eight percent of its total oil imports, making it Washington’s biggest trading partner on the African continent.

It is also one of only three sub-Saharan African countries – along with South Africa and Angola, another major oil exporter – with which the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has established high-level bi-national commissions.

While security in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria has long dominated U.S. concerns about the country’s stability, the emergence of Boko Haram, whose name has been translated as “Western education is sacrilege”, in the predominantly northern region of the country has sparked growing concern, particularly in the Pentagon and its nearly five-year-old Africa Command, or AFRICOM.

In his first visit to Nigeria as AFRICOM commander in August 2011, General Carter Ham charged that the group had made contacts with AQIM and that it was conceivable that those two groups could form a “loose” partnership with Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, another group tied to Al Qaeda that has, however, been in retreat over the last several months.

Just ten days after Ham’s visit, Boko Haram took responsibility for a suicide attack on the U.N. compound in the capital, Abuja, killing at least 23 people in what was its first assault on a foreign target. An attack on a Catholic church on Christmas day of that year was followed by a series of attacks that killed more than 180 people in Kano on January 20.

Since then, a growing number of lawmakers – mainly Republican – on Capitol Hill have called for putting Boko Haram on the State Department’s terrorism list. The action could presumably require banks handling remittances to Nigeria and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that provide development or humanitarian assistance to groups active in northern Nigeria, in particular, to come under greater scrutiny.

Curtailing America’s foreign policy options

In May, two dozen U.S.-Nigeria scholars and analysts wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which they warned against listing Boko Haram as a “foreign terrorist organisation” primarily because it would “limit American policy options to those least likely to work”.

Such a blanket designation, they wrote, would “internationalise Boko Haram’s standing and enhance its status among radical organisations elsewhere”. They noted that despite its claims of contacts with Al Qaeda-affiliated groups, “Boko Haram overwhelmingly remains a domestic problem.”

Moreover, such a listing would also “give disproportionate attention to counter-terrorism in bilateral relations at a time when economic ties are expanding and a robust multi-faceted relationship has emerged”.

They added that in April, U.S. Special Operations Command held a three-day conference on Boko Haram, suggesting to some observers that the Pentagon was usurping the State Department’s authority to direct bilateral ties.

Such a designation would further risk militarising the conflict with Boko Haram in a country with a history of both authoritarian military rule and serious abuses by security forces of human rights.

The authors noted that the extrajudicial execution by security forces of the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, “was immediately followed by Boko Haram’s radicalisation, splintering, and increased propensity for large-scale violence”.

Since then, police repression may have further radicalised the group and helped it recruit new members from northern Nigeria’s increasingly marginalised Muslim population.

Treading carefully

Contacted by IPS Thursday, several signers of the letter expressed some relief that the State Department designated the three individuals, rather than Boko Haram as a whole.

“In the best of all possible words, nothing would’ve been done, but there is growing concern [about Boko Haram] both on Capitol Hill and among the larger American public, particularly in light of the attacks on churches which are now taking place almost every Sunday,” said John Campbell, a veteran diplomat and Nigeria specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Campbell noted that the government of Nigerian President Goodluck Johnson had opposed designating the entire group as terrorist when its representatives met with their U.S. counterparts last month. “All of this has led to the sense that the American government has to do something.”

“I think it’s far better that the administration singled out three individuals than designate all of Boko Haram,” he added, noting that the group was highly diffuse.

“From what I’ve seen, this designation makes good sense,” said Peter Lewis, another signatory who heads the Africa Studies programme at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) here. “If we can identify individuals who are…directly organising and sponsoring terrorist activity, then they should be targeted by sanctions and legally designated as terrorists.”

“I don’t think this will endanger the possibility of dialogue,” Lewis said. “It’s a fairly large and diverse network, and there may be elements with whom dialogue is possible and who may be willing to put down their arms for some kind amnesty or other inducement,” he told IPS.

“The most counter-productive strategy would be to porohibit all contact with any elements of the organisation, because this would rule out any negotiations, dialogue, or back-channel discussions that could reduce the violence,” Lewis added.

Campbell warned that much depended on how Thursday’s action would be interpreted in Nigeria itself, particularly in the predominantly Muslim north, Boko Haram’s stronghold.

“Screaming headlines that the U.S. government condemns Boko Haram could be very misleading,” he said.