Boko Haram (13 page)

*   *   *

The march towards a violent uprising by Yusuf and his followers moved ahead, and a number of his recorded lectures and sermons reflecting his militant rhetoric can still be found on the Internet and elsewhere. In one of his sermons, he portrays himself and his followers as in a struggle together against the evil of the world and
the Nigerian state. He tells them to be ready for when the authorities come to abuse them based on their Islamic beliefs and says ‘do not leave your weapons behind'.
⁸⁴

The date of the recording is not clear, though Yusuf references both the Abu Ghraib detainee controversy in Iraq, which became public in 2004, as well as the Prophet Muhammad cartoons published in September 2005 that led to protests across the Arab world. During the speech, Yusuf is dressed in a white robe and traditional cap with followers seated on the floor around him. A scroll with phone numbers runs across the bottom of the screen as well as a notice advertising video and audio.

‘Instilling fear in you, arresting you, beating you, killing you or killing someone else, torching the whole lot of you ablaze, tear-gassing you, whatever they will do to you, should not make you abandon your religion', Yusuf says in the Hausa language.

He continues later: ‘One day you will see your leader placed on the table being tortured. They will be hitting him with a club and he will be falling and rising up as a result. We know this is going to happen to us. We also know this will not be considered as humiliation, but as a test from Allah. This is the nature of Islamic path. If this is not done, people will not wake up.' At that point, the audience chants ‘Allahu Akbar'.

Towards the end of his speech, after referring to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, he broadens his argument and encourages violence against those who ‘insult' Islam. He also, however, tells his followers that they should not burn churches, since the buildings can be used for other purposes ‘after the jihad'. Chants of ‘Allahu Akbar' also break out a couple times during this part of his speech.

An incident on 11 June 2009 in the Gwange area of Maiduguri would set off the uprising. It would occur after Boko Haram followers were killed in a traffic accident, with members of the group travelling to the cemetery for the funeral. In one of several different versions of what happened that day, a government
committee of inquiry found that Yusuf's followers spotted another Boko Haram member being ‘disciplined' by security forces from Operation Flush II task force, originally formed to combat armed robberies and other such crimes. Police often force those they deem guilty of minor infractions to perform frog-jumps on the roadside or other humiliations. Various reports said the run-in occurred when police sought to enforce a new law requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets. According to the government committee's report, which was obtained by the anonymous scholar who studied Yusuf's sermons, Boko Haram members then tried to ‘rescue' the man being detained and steal the police officers' guns, prompting them to open fire. The police officers said they shot only at the legs and did not try to kill them, and the report said 17 Boko Haram members were wounded.
⁸⁵

In what would amount to a call for armed jihad, a deeply angered Yusuf would provide a sharply different version. He would appear before his followers and deliver a passionate and fiery speech labelled an ‘open letter' to the government. He would lash out at Nigeria's security forces and stir the audience with his forceful denunciations. The crowd repeatedly responded with either jeers at the mention of the Borno state governor's name and others they deemed enemies or loud shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar', and Yusuf would stoke their anger. He began calmly, but his voice built at various moments as he pointed and gestured forcefully with his hands. He said that on the previous Thursday, several Boko Haram members were taking four corpses for burial at Gwange cemetery.
⁸⁶

‘They ran into some Nigerian army members along with mobile policemen belonging to Operation Flush under the leadership of Ali Modu Sheriff, the governor of Borno state', Yusuf said. He continued:

The first strike would occur on 26 July in the city of Bauchi, located south of Yusuf's home state of Yobe. An estimated 70 Boko Haram members, armed with guns and grenades, descended on two locations: a police station and a mosque belonging to Izala.
According to one account, police on duty at the station fled, but a larger deployment returned later and managed to keep the attackers from breaking into the armoury. A police raid in response on a shanty town where the Boko Haram members in Bauchi were believed to have lived then set off a gun battle. The death toll was put at 55, with as many as 200 people arrested.
⁸⁷

It was only the beginning. After the Bauchi clashes, Yusuf told a reporter by phone that ‘we are ready to die together with our brothers'. He called a person killed in Maiduguri in an accidental bomb blast a martyr who was building a weapon in self-defence.

Over the course of the next day, police stations in Potiskum in Yusuf's home state of Yobe and in an area of Kano state called Wudil were attacked, while the worst would occur in Maiduguri, where a series of assaults targeted state police headquarters, police
training facilities, a prison and two other police stations.
⁸⁹
Street battles broke out between Boko Haram fighters and police there, with residents taking cover, leaving roads deserted. The attacks, while using mostly basic weapons, nevertheless revealed a level of coordination and capacity that the authorities seem to have underestimated, with violence in four states: Kano, Bauchi, Yobe and Borno.

My AFP colleague Aminu Abubakar, who was in Maiduguri at the time, compared the situation to war. Anayo Adibe, the Maiduguri lawyer for Baba Fugu Mohammed, said it was like being in ‘hell'. On the first night, Adibe took cover inside his house with his wife, his seven-year-old daughter and his three-year-old son. The gunfire quieted early the next morning, and when he saw soldiers had taken up positions on the streets, he thought calm had been restored and decided to go into his office.

‘While in the office, fighting broke out again', Adibe told me. ‘Bomb fire, right at the roundabout. Two policemen were killed by close range, so there was a lot of pandemonium immediately. So I had to close the office.'

He and others from the building waited until the fighting stopped just outside, then he ran for his car and rushed home. He decided he would take refuge at the army barracks, where many Christians living in Maiduguri were relocating out of fear that the extremists would target them. Most were simply setting up makeshift camps outside on the grounds of the barracks, but Adibe had friends in the army and they allowed him and his family to stay with them inside as gunfire echoed through the city.

The fighting roiling the streets of Maiduguri was sporadic, and the breaks in the violence left residents unsure of what was occurring. Adibe and his family remained at the barracks for a couple of days. Conditions began to worsen there since many people did not have adequate food or water, so families began deciding to risk it and return home. Adibe and his family were among them. If you were going to die, ‘it was better to die at home', he said. Besides,
rumours were circulating that the situation was in fact finally being brought under control. Was it, I asked him? ‘No, at that time it wasn't', he said.

Despite the mayhem, there had not appeared at the time to be attacks specifically targeting Christians, with the extremists focusing on retaliating against symbols of the Nigerian state. However, claims have emerged since indicating Christians may have in some instances been killed after being threatened with death and told to convert to Islam. Human Rights Watch, in an October 2012 report, quoted several witnesses who said Christians were abducted and killed, including one woman who told the organisation the attackers slit her husband's throat after he refused to ‘do the Muslim prayer'. It is not clear how widespread such killings were and I have not personally come across such accounts in my reporting.
⁹⁰

On Tuesday 28 July, the third day of the uprising, the security forces would seek to crush it once and for all – though President Umaru Yar'Adua would stick to his schedule and fly off on a visit to Brazil. Troop reinforcements from the central city of Jos would prepare for a brutal raid on Boko Haram's mosque and headquarters. After gathering at a military barracks, they flooded into the Railway Quarters neighbourhood, arriving, according to one report, in ‘six armoured tanks and five military trucks loaded with troops'.
⁹¹
Piles of dead bodies and wholesale destruction would result.

The troops would raid Yusuf's mosque and reduce it to rubble, with journalists who were there at the time saying it appeared the military used mortar fire. In the wake of that clash, authorities would also be accused of rounding up young men they suspected of being Boko Haram members, forcing them to kneel down or lie on the ground, then shooting them. In a particularly stomach-churning video, alleged security forces shoot dead a number of young men in that way. Such footage would later be used in Boko Haram propaganda, including in the UN suicide bomber ‘martyr' video. One man identified as a Sufi activist, speaking to
US embassy officials at the time, spoke of ‘excessive use of force by security agents who alleged[ly] shot motorists and pedestrians “just because they have a beard”. “As a result”, he said, “residents are shaving their beards and changing the style of their dress to avoid being targeted.”'
⁹²
In another video, a man identified as Buji Foi, the former religious affairs commissioner for Borno state and prominent Boko Haram member, can be seen being forced to walk before being shot dead.