The model of terrorism, especially suicide bombing, says that all suicide bombing attacks have three things in common: (1.) Secrecy – indeed, Boko Haram and its local groups operate in secrecy to prepare bombers and target areas; (2.) Reconnaissance: terrorists carry out reconnaissance using “insider” information from workers (civil servants) who have sympathy to their cause and work in the establishment where they intend to bomb; (3.) rehearsal:
Terrorists are not altogether foolish; terrorist groups sometimes recruit the brightest minds who are unemployed; therefore, very vulnerable to being brainwashed. “Practice, they say, makes perfect,” consequently, the better the rehearsal, the greater chance of success. In all these permutations, however, in trying to proactively disrupt terrorist attack at its planning stage, the Intelligence Community must bear in mind and realise that there is no single model for suicide bombing.
The Boko Haram terrorist organisation in Nigeria is like all other terrorist groups worldwide; they tend to be homegrown –although they later seek cooperation and affiliation from the most sophisticated international terrorist organisations. Nigeria’s IC must realise that Boko Haram is homegrown and that the suicide bombers come from the local communities of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states. These are terrorists and citizens who are willing, and ready to “self-sacrifice” everything they possess: education, family, friendship, etc., for the sake of being glorified by admirers, and for martyrdom.
We know that in most theories of terrorism, especially suicide bombing –a campaign that Boko Haram insurgents have successfully carried out in most parts of the North-East, that three factors must be in place prior to a suicide terror campaign. First, religious and/or tribal or for that matter, nationalistic drive, which normally is driven by motives such as resisting the occupation of a foreign power.
In the case of Nigeria, Boko Haram is driven by religious and political ideologies rather than economic depression, dislocation and underdevelopment in the North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Secondly, Boko Haram is not terrorising Nigeria for the sake of driving away any foreign power –except if it considers President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration a representative of foreign power, or not being Nigerian enough, since he comes from the minority ethnic group of Nigeria: Bayelsa State, in the Niger Delta region of the country.
Nonetheless, I wonder why the people of the North-East zone will allow indiscriminate slaughter and total repression of the people in the occupied areas or have Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states accepted to live under the occupation of Boko Haram? –especially if there is no difference in religions of Boko Haram members and the people of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states where they seem to have all of a sudden become the occupying power there?
It is understandable when terrorists strike in Iraq; at least, one can say that it is because there is a difference in religious practices between Sunni Kurds and Sunni Turks in Eastern Turkey and Shiites. This is not the case on the North-Eastern Nigeria where terrorists and the people they have colonised share the same religion, language and culture. How else can any rational person justify the kidnapping of secondary schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State?
Boko Haram has become an albatross around the neck of Nigeria as a nation and if not properly tackled, especially if the Very Exposed Persons involved in the sponsorship of Boko Haram who are believed to be bent on making the Presidency of Jonathan unproductive are not exposed, or arrested and prosecuted, this might slide into a civil war, especially if the suicide bombing succeeds in any of the southern states. This is why it is important that individuals in Yobe, Adamawa, and Borno states cooperate among themselves to enthrone security that will protect the lives and property of all Nigerians, especially in these three states.
Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State has exposed his bigotry through the letter he wrote to the Northern Governors’ Forum, demanding the prosecution of the military fighting insurgency in the North-East, equating their operation to ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Hausa-Fulani. He forgot that as a military man he was, that the most fruitful way to operationalise the concept of security breakdown is to regard Boko Haram insurgency as “the security of becoming a battlefield,” or for that matter, as a threat of becoming a battlefield. What Nyako failed to realise is to make a sharp distinction between peace and security.
He simply condemned peace, and assumed it to be negative to Boko Haram violence, which is being condemned by all Nigerians of goodwill: Muslims and Christians alike. Although he was at one point, of course, during the Babangida regime, the Chief of Naval Staff, and Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, he may have risen to these two positions through “godfatherism” – otherwise, he would have known that military preparedness is better than the “détente” and arms control he proposed to the Nigerian military in the face of the brutal and ruthless Boko Haram insurgency.