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. 

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.

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.”