DYSTOPIA IN THE NIGERIAN NORTHWEST (1)

DYSTOPIA IN THE NIGERIAN NORTHWEST (1)

It has now become a singsong in Nigeria to awake to news of some heinous event of mass killings or abductions such as the recent abduction of 279 Girls in a secondary school at Jangebe, a remote part of Zamfara State. This atrocity, coming on the heels of abductions from another School in neighboring Niger State and a previous one in Katsina states in which 344 boys were abducted  was yet another sad reminder of how insecure the Northwestern part of Nigeria has become over the years. This series of articles will explore the state of affairs in terms of the history, factors responsible, and what future events may alter this descent into chaos that has the North Western part of Nigeria in a vice grip that is gradually becoming a full blown insurgency like Boko Haram in the North East of Nigeria. This first article will explore the history of this wide reaching problem  and subsequent articles will touch on some of the factors exacerbating the crisis and what sorts of solutions might help in the short, medium and long terms.

Trouble in the Sahel

The history of this sad state of anomie in Nigeria can be primarily traced to the Libyan crisis that has distabilized the entire Sahel region south of Libya since the regime change offensive of the western states primarily led by France to remove the Quadaffi regime. 

The distabilization of what was once a regional millitary power of sorts (in Libya) and inability of the countries involved in the offensive against Quadaffi to secure Libya's vast millitary weaponry has led to massive proliferation of light arms downwards from Libya to Nigeria. The entire Sahelian region from Mali through Niger onwards to Northern Nigeria and Northern Burkina Faso are suffering pangs of serious violence leading to monumental insecurity of lives and property such as not been seen before in the area.  According to the International Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer in September 2020, increasing violence in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has led to a 62 per cent spike in deaths and more than a million[1] people being forced to flee their homes in the past year 2019. This rise in fighting is jeopardizing access to basic services, including health care, and affecting a fragile economy even as COVID-19 poses new threats.

This distabilization has led to the emergence and growth of None state Actor Groups or NSAG, basically an acronym for what used to be called terrorist groups mostly from the Islamic religion and cultures in this subregion of Africa. There are 2 main NSAGs that have come to prominence in the Sahel region, they are the Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and what was formerly called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) but now more formally known as Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP), an attempt by the once globally disruptive Islamic State (IS) or Daesh to merge it with its other affiliate already involved in the now decade old (Boko Haram) insurgency in the North Eastern Nigerian State of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe in its own style of Geographical franchising of its religious terror network despite there being no visible operational link or coordination between the two entities. It is important to note also that the insurgency in the North East was similarly aided by the "Libyan problem" because despite there being a local grievance in the extra-judicial killing of Muhammed Yusuf the original founder of the Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad sect (now more commonly known as Boko Haram) that sparked off the insurgency, it is not likely the problem would have grown to a level in which at a point it threatened Nigerian National sovereignty with the declaration of an independent Islamic Caliphate in Gwoza in 2014 along with concurrent dislodgement of constitutional security agencies from large portions of Nigerian terrain and adoption of tax collection and Governance by the insurgency in areas under their total control. 
 
It is true that there have always been historical local grievances and religious violence in the Northwest region even before now, for example the Maitatsine crisis of the 1980s and various flare ups such as the Miss World riots in Kaduna State in 2002 (which the author of this article was personally caught up in but lived to tell the story), but the continued influx of light arms initially from Libya's armouries and now also increasingly including captures from sovereign state armies and intervention forces in the region (such as a raid on the Indelimane Base in the Northeastern region of Gao, Mali on 01/11/2019 in which over 50 soldiers were killed and the army base was sacked) has led to continuous violence in the region with the Northwest part of Nigeria now swallowed up in the cycle of violence due to the porous nature of its land borders with other countries in the region allowing influx of arms through long existing historical Nomadic movements mainly by the Fulani ethnic group. This unhealthy mix of light arms proliferation and historic nomadic transhuman movements has created a keg of gunpowder already going off in the North West and also sporadically affecting other parts of Nigeria too.

May unity, dialogue and a thirst for peace help Nigeria and the wider Sahel subregion in tackling this difficult problem that continues to claim many lives.