Sins of commission or of omission? Whose fault is it: that of the Nigerian government, which has failed to contain the Islamist terrorist threat, or that of the terrorists themselves? Whatever the case may be, Nigeria's Islamist terrorist organisation Boko Haram has again raised its ugly head, as this week's massacre demonstrated. The violence had already escalated in 2013 as Islamist terrorists across the sprawling African Sahel region had spread terror, forcing people to submit to strict Islamic Sharia laws. The democratic process in the Sahel region of Africa cannot run its course as a result of such blackmail, though Boko Haram and other such groups do not care about either Nigerian democracy or the ballot box. Instead, the group murdered more than 50 university students in cold blood in the northern Nigerian state of Yobe this week. The perpetrators of this heinous crime scrupulously did not attack female dormitories at the college they attacked, as if this act somehow lent their crime legitimacy. Instead, the terrorists attacked the College of Agriculture in the Muslim-majority northern Nigerian state on Sunday, killing the students as they slept. When Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, it was estimated that the initial toll suggested that at least 50 overwhelmingly Muslim students had been murdered in the attack. However, the Nigerian military were still pulling bodies from the building. Tragically, the attack came just three days before Nigeria was due to celebrate the anniversary of its 53rd year of independence. Instead of celebrations, however, Africa's most populous nation, with an estimated 160 million people, had to witness a massacre as more than 200 gunmen stormed the Yobe college. The gunmen were said to be of a variety of nationalities from the sweeping swathes of the arid Sahel region of West Africa. Boko Haram, which means “Western education is a sin,” is notorious for staging terrorist attacks across northern Nigeria, especially on schools as the group abhors Western education. The group has intensified its attacks on mainly Muslim civilians in recent weeks in revenge for a military offensive against it. The group claims to act on behalf of Muslims, but the vast majority of its victims are also Muslim. It has been battling to topple the governments in the northern Nigerian states in order to establish an Islamic state, governed and ruled by Islamic Sharia Law. Nigeria is a federation of 38 states, and 12 states in the northern half of the country have declared their adherence to Sharia Law. According to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, speaking in the aftermath of the tragedy, “the threat of terrorism in a few states in the north-eastern part of our country has proven to be a challenge to national stability. But we will spare no effort in addressing this menace. We are therefore confronting it with every resource at our disposal with due regard for fundamental human rights and the rule of law.” Thousands of Nigerians have been slaughtered since Boko Haram launched its uprising in 2009, turning itself from a movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia bent on destruction. Boko Haram terrorists also destroyed classrooms, hostels, administrative blocks, staff quarters and cars belonging to the college in last week's attack. The group is believed to be affiliated to Al-Qaeda, and in addition to the bodies still being found in the college buildings the authorities warned that they were still recovering bodies from the surrounding bush. Jonathan, a Christian, declared on Nigerian television that the attack had been “irrational”. He asked the terrorists rhetorically “why did you kill them? Was it based on ethnic sentiments? In that case, what ethnic groups did the students come from? Was it because you don't like the face of the president? If you kill them, has the president changed? Is this a political act?” The president said that the militants had intensified their campaign four months after a state of emergency had been declared in north-east Nigeria on 14 May. He also warned that “the crisis has been contained, but now they have been looking at soft spots and local places where you would not expect them to hit,” among them educational colleges. He vowed that the country's security forces would pursue the terrorists and bring them to book. Women, children and the elderly have been treated with utter disregard. Students are singled out for special retribution. Since Boko Haram believes that only the Quran should be studied in schools, any Western schooling is particularly abhorred. The attack by Boko Haram came just a week after the organisation had carried out another attack at Benishek, a provincial town in the neighbouring Muslim-majority Borno state, in which several people were killed and livestock and villages destroyed. Similar attacks also occurred in other parts of the Sahel region this week. In Mali's historic city of Timbuktu, Islamist terrorists torched houses and caused havoc among the predominantly Muslim population. The traditional female attire in the overwhelmingly Muslim Sahel from Senegal, Mali and Guinea in the west, to Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and northern Nigeria in the east, is the “booboo”, a billowing, loose gown, traditionally colourful, and woven of fine cotton, with women usually leaving one shoulder bare. The niqab is rarely donned by Muslim women in these hot and arid areas. Nevertheless, in recent years militant Islamist groups such as Boko Haram have been trying to enforce the wearing of the niqab on women followers. The hijab, or Muslim head cover, has also been becoming increasingly common in the past two decades. For the governments of the region, Boko Haram and other Al-Qaeda-affiliated organisations are part of a programme to counter what the groups regard as “Westernisation” or “Western decadence”. This programme, while it has laid bare some of the structural and institutional weaknesses of the states of the region, has shown that the groups themselves have no qualms about showing themselves to be cold-blooded killers.
