There are now many ingenious versions of Al-Qaeda all over Africa. The most menacing at the moment appears to be Boko Haram, based in Nigeria. The manner in which Boko Haram is configured in the Nigerian media has much to do with the perception of the organisation as a branch of Al-Qaeda with international connections. And, the militant Islamist terrorist group's abduction of schoolgirls in the northeast Nigerian state of Bornu prompted Western and African leaders to convene a summit meeting in Paris last Saturday. The widely publicised tragic event triggered worldwide condemnation. The way Boko Haram behaves is widely viewed as appalling in any human, moral sense. And yet, there is a level on which it is seen by supporters in the Muslim northern states as being right. There is no doubt, for instance, that certain sections of the Nigerian security forces and some of the teachers at the school in Chibok where the schoolgirls were abducted knew beforehand of the imminent approach of Boko Haram militants. It was against this bleak backdrop that French President Francois Hollande declared at the Paris summit that Western and regional powers had pledged to share intelligence and coordinate action against Boko Haram. And the leaders meeting in Paris also vowed to establish a mechanism for joint security and intelligence operations in connection with the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, with neighbouring states coordinating security actions in conjunction with Western powers. Be that as it may, the security situation is getting out of hand in many parts of the vast country, Africa's largest economy and most populous nation. For instance, gunmen suspected to be nomadic ethnic Fulani herdsmen on Monday stormed a tribal meeting in northern Nigeria's Zamfara state and murdered 30 people in cold blood. Cattle rustling is a common practice, and tradition, in that part of the country, which is predominantly Muslim and straddles the arid Sahel belt of Africa. Nevertheless, the most disconcerting aspect of these increasing incidences of violence is that they have a certain sectarian aspect to them. The Muslim Fulani herdsmen, for example, tend to commit such atrocities in predominantly Christian enclaves in the mainly Muslim north of the country. The Paris summit brought together President Hollande, Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, and their counterparts from Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Hollande urged “coordinating intelligence, sharing information, border surveillance, and a military presence, notably around Lake Chad, and the capacity to intervene in case of danger”. He dubbed the new strategy a “global and regional action plan”. But even as the leaders met, a suicide bomber hit in the northern Nigerian metropolis of Kano. Again, there was a sectarian basis to the terrorist action. The Nigerian police claimed Monday that security forces thwarted a fresh attempt to detonate a car bomb in the city — a day after the suicide bomber killed four people in a mainly Christian district of the city. Nigeria is hard pressed to seek much closer cooperation with neighbouring Cameroon, Niger, Chad and Benin in the fight against Boko Haram. “Boko Haram is an organisation that is linked to terrorism in Africa and whose will is to destabilise the north of Nigeria, certainly, and all the neighbouring countries of Nigeria and beyond that region,” Hollande declared. Parallels were clearly drawn by the leaders meeting in Paris to other militant Islamist terrorist groups such as Somalia's Al-Shabab. Nigerian President Jonathan was quoted as saying that the authorities in the country have deployed more than 20,000 troops, plus aircraft and intelligence sources in the northeast parts of the country where Boko Haram is most active. Cameroon's President Paul Biya urged a more militant stance towards Boko Haram. Northern Cameroon is predominantly Muslim and shares the same ethnic groups as those in northern Nigeria. Ten Chinese nationals were abducted, presumably by Boko Haram, in northern Cameroon last Friday. “We're here to declare war on Boko Haram,” Biya trumpeted in Paris. The Nigerian government has been criticised for spending some $23 billion on security apparently without the country's security apparatus able to cope with the situation. A Nigerian soldier was quoted as saying that the Nigerian authorities supply them with weapons far inferior to those of Boko Haram. “They give us just AK47s to go into the bush to fight Boko Haram,” the anonymous soldier told Sky News and Associated Press. “Our equipment doesn't work and they give us just two magazines to go to the bush. Two magazines contain approximately 60 bullets.” Nigeria's military Division Seven is headquartered in Maiduguri, the capital of Bornu state where Boko Haram is most active. The Nigerian press reported that troops of Division Seven fired on the vehicle of their field commander, Major General Amadou Mohamed. There were other equally ominous reports about the infiltration of the Nigerian army by Boko Haram militants. If such reports are verified then Nigeria has a serious security problem. The Nigerian military cannot deploy only Christian soldiers in northern regions; that would foment sectarian strife. And yet the loyalty of some Muslim soldiers has been questioned. All this augurs ill. The lesson Boko Haram appears to be relaying to the world — and to Nigerian authorities in particular — is that there is a price for Christians trespassing on Muslim lands. The abducted schoolgirls were mostly Christian and were forced to convert to Islam. Moreover, Boko Haram condemns non-observant Muslims as infidels, and hence they are regarded as a takfiri group; that is, a militant Islamist organisation that condemns as infidels Muslims who do not rigorously practice the tenants of Islam, as they see them. The Nigerian political establishment, which maintains a delicate balance between Muslims and Christians, has been thrown off balance and the nation psyched out by the militant Islamist terrorist group. As perhaps intended, it has managed to upset Abuja's apple cart. Participants at the Paris summit announced that the United Kingdom would host a follow-up meeting next month to review the action plan. Yet while the Paris summit identified real problems, it offered few answers to the growing security concerns in Nigeria and neighbouring countries.
