Boko Haram (14 page)

Calm finally began to return by Thursday, but by then the toll was shocking. More than 800 people had been killed since Sunday across four states. Yet, somehow, Mohammed Yusuf had managed to survive and escape from his mosque. Soldiers were on his trail though, and they arrested him on 30 July apparently having located him in a barn on his father-in-law's property not far away from the mosque. Before handing him over to police – alive – he would be interrogated as he stood shirtless, defending his beliefs.

Later that day, images of what appeared to be Yusuf's dead body were shown to journalists. They showed a man lifeless in the dirt, his torso riddled with bullet holes. In the hours after Yusuf's death, Nigerian police officials offered at least two different versions of what happened: one claimed that he was shot while he had been trying to escape, another that he was killed in a shoot-out between Boko Haram members and security forces. However, witnesses said that police had carried out a summary execution on the grounds of state police headquarters. Human Rights Watch interviewed a 24-year-old woman who described seeing Yusuf handcuffed and sitting on the ground, saying that they should pray for him, when three enraged policemen opened fire.

‘They first shot him in the chest and stomach and another came and shot him in the back of his head', the woman told the rights group on condition of anonymity. ‘I was afraid and started running. When I came back, he was dead.'
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The US State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009 provided this account:

For Yusuf's father-in-law, Baba Fugu Mohammed, the nightmare was not yet over. On Friday morning, 31 July, the day after Yusuf was killed, he contacted his lawyer, Adibe, to say the police had summoned him, asking how he should respond.

‘He just said the police were looking for him, so I told him that if the police were looking for him, that he should answer them [...] That was the last time I heard from him', Adibe told me. He said he did not expect that his client's life would be in danger.

At some point later, the old man, believed to be in his seventies, rode to the police station – on the back of a motorcycle taxi, according to what Adibe was told – and never returned. His dead body was later taken to a morgue, a gunshot to his head. His son, Babakura Fugu, went to Adibe's office and showed him a photo of his dead father.

‘The morgue attendants recognised his father when they brought his corpse, so with their phone they snapped photographs of the body, which they now gave to the family', Adibe said. ‘Everybody was upset, even myself. I was very upset. How could such a thing happen, for a man as old as that? [...] He was almost 80 at the time [...] Just because he was an in-law.'

Without a trial, it was impossible to know if he had ever been guilty of any wrongdoing. The body was never released to the family, likely buried in a mass grave with many others killed over the course of those five days, with no known records saying where. In 2012, his family would be given a measure of justice when the government, after refusing for nearly two years, would finally decide
to obey a court ruling ordering it to pay damages for the unlawful death of Baba Fugu Mohammed. They were given a payment of 100 million naira, or about $625,000. His son Babakura would also participate in an attempt at peace talks with Boko Haram. That, too, would end tragically. He would be assassinated over it.

It had been a tumultuous few months in Nigeria, for reasons that had nothing to do with Boko Haram, and the man being asked to lead the country seemed unsure of many things. In his defence, he was by no means the only one. On a Friday in February 2010, as he met with the US ambassador, the fedora-wearing zoologist recently named acting president of Africa's most populous country, Goodluck Jonathan, according to an account in a diplomatic cable, would make a few startling admissions.

The main subject of the meeting was the condition of Umaru Yar'Adua, who, at least on paper, remained Jonathan's boss and the president of the country. He had fallen ill with pericarditis, a heart condition, and had long struggled with a kidney ailment,
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his weight loss and increasing frailty having become evident despite efforts by his aides to hide his condition from the public. As his illness gradually took hold, he continued to try to carry out his duties, but on a limited schedule. Finally, in November 2009, the president would become so sick that urgent treatment was required, and he was flown abroad to Saudi Arabia.

As the weeks passed, his aides said little about the details of his condition, and Nigeria found itself with essentially no true leader, drifting off in an unpredictable direction, an unsettling state of affairs in a country with a history of military coups. Those surrounding Yar'Adua manoeuvred to keep Jonathan, vice president at the time, from being made head of state. Regional and ethnic
politics, as always, played a major role, with politicians from the north, where Yar'Adua was from, reluctant to see the power of the highest office in the land – and the astonishing levels of patronage that go with it – shift to the south, Jonathan's native area. But the longer Yar'Adua remained out of sight and in another country, the more difficult it became for his camp to defend their position. Speculation was rampant. The respected
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newspaper reported in January 2010 that he was ‘seriously brain damaged' and could no longer carry out his duties.
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In a bid to refute such reports, the president's advisers arranged a phone call with a BBC reporter in which a man claiming to be Yar'Adua spoke briefly.
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It resolved nothing, and with the leadership of the country increasingly adrift, Nigeria's parliament finally made Jonathan acting president on 9 February 2010.

The move at least gave the government the illusion of clarity, though it would be short-lived. Two weeks later, on 24 February and about three months after being taken to Saudi Arabia, Yar'Adua would be flown back home, again muddling the picture of who was in charge, though he was kept out of the public eye. It was amid those circumstances that then US Ambassador Robin Sanders met acting president Goodluck Jonathan at his official residence in Abuja.

An account of the meeting in a US diplomatic cable portrayed Jonathan as a man trying to do his best, but struggling to figure out how.
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He was said to have told her that ‘“everyone's confused” about who is in charge of Nigeria'. He was described as being upset that the first government statement after Yar'Adua's return home referred to Jonathan as the vice president rather than acting president. He added, according to the cable, that a second statement was issued the next day after the presidency ‘received a lot of pressure to correct this error so that the lines of leadership and executive direction were clear'. He was said to have spoken of his belief that ‘this terrible situation in the country today has been created by four people', naming Yar'Adua's wife, his chief security officer, his aide-de-camp and his chief economic adviser, implying
that they were running the show behind the scenes and refusing to relinquish any power. According to the account in the cable made public by Wikileaks, Jonathan said ‘he does not know their motives, but expected it was likely for nefarious purposes'. When Jonathan met with Yar'Adua's chief security officer, Yusuf Mohammed Tilde, and his aide-de-camp, Colonel Mustapha Onoedieva, he was said to have told them that ‘the best thing is to stop the charade' since he believed Yar'Adua was semi-comatose and did not understand what was happening. He visited Yar'Adua's wife, Turai, to express his sympathies, but, reflecting the deep mistrust at the highest level of government, ‘under no circumstances did he want Turai to come to his official residence'.

Jonathan was described as saying that he and others would seek to persuade those close to Yar'Adua that the best course for the country would be for him to resign. In the meantime, military chiefs were seeking to ensure politicians were not plotting with soldiers in the barracks, considering the risk of a coup. The confusion could even be seen in cabinet meetings, with Jonathan explaining, according to the cable, that the last one before Sanders's visit ‘was disastrous and included yelling and screaming', declaring it ‘totally dysfunctional'.

‘He said he is “not a politician” and had very limited experience as an administrator, but concluded, “I will not tolerate a brawl”', the cable said. He was said to have indicated he planned to dissolve the cabinet and appoint a new one once he felt the public was comfortable with him as acting president.

It had already been a remarkably accidental political career for Jonathan, the son of a canoe maker born in the village of Otuoke in the swampy Niger Delta. He was a slow-moving man who could seem uncomfortable speaking in public, uttering generalities and occasionally fumbling his words. Seeking to portray himself as an everyman in a country where so many live in poverty, he spoke of having no shoes or electricity when he was a boy. He would attend university and study zoology, eventually earning a PhD in
the subject, before beginning a career in politics that would seem as fortuitous as his first name. While deputy governor in his home state of Bayelsa, his boss, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, would become entangled in a corruption probe that led to him fleeing to Britain, allegedly dressed as a woman.
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Alamieyeseigha denied doing any such thing and refuted the accusations against him, but in any case, he was impeached and forced out of office back home, ushering in Jonathan.

Fortune would soon favour Jonathan again. When Yar'Adua prepared his run for president in the 2007 elections, he would search for a running mate from the Niger Delta, where oil militants had been wreaking havoc on the country's cash cow industry. Jonathan, to his credit, was not blind to this. During his meeting with the US ambassador, he was described as saying that he understood that he was picked to be vice president because he ‘represented the Niger Delta'.

‘I was not chosen to be vice president because I had good political experience', the diplomatic cable quoted him as saying. ‘I did not. There were a lot more qualified people around to be vice president, but that does not mean I am not my own man.'
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The world was about to find out. With Yar'Adua dying in May 2010, Goodluck Jonathan, ready or not, would become Nigeria's leader at a crucial time in the country's history. Elections were approaching, the youthful population was becoming more engaged and Islamist extremists in the country's north would re-emerge under his watch with their most violent and sophisticated attacks yet.

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It had been almost a year since the dark days of July 2009, and the insurgents from what everyone now called Boko Haram, at least those who had survived, had gone underground. Mohammed Yusuf's mosque still lay in ruins, an uncleared pile of rubble guarded by policemen who kept people from lingering in the area and refused to allow photos to be taken without prior permission from the authorities. The neighbourhood surrounding it, set back from Maiduguri's main roads, was quiet and calm, almost bucolic. Goats
crossed the unused railway tracks that led to an abandoned nearby station. Women and children pedalled bicycles along dusty paths or rode on the backs of motorcycle taxis, the low hum of their engines among the only sounds.

A walk among the rubble of the former mosque provided glimpses of the catastrophe that had occurred there, and in some ways what lay ahead. Concrete had been smashed into jagged chunks and two IV bags hung from a tree, presumably where Boko Haram members sought to treat their wounds. Cars and motorcycles were burnt, and clothes, pots and pans were strewn across the site. It all just sat there as an eerie, macabre reminder of what had happened a year before. No one had bothered to clear it.

The Nigerian security forces stationed in Maiduguri remained on high alert. The local police commissioner finally agreed to meet me and three colleagues in his office during a visit to the city in July 2010, but he refused to say anything during our brief, tense encounter. He warned that even uttering the words ‘Boko Haram' was illegal and declined to answer any questions on the subject, making it clear he preferred that we simply leave – both his office and the city. Operatives from the country's main intelligence agency trailed us, at one point telling me and my colleagues we were ‘invited' to visit his boss, the euphemism used by Nigerian security forces to summon someone for questioning. It is an invitation one is not allowed to decline. We did as we were told and, after arriving, were asked to sit in a small waiting room. We were nervous since we had no idea what they had planned for us, and the appearance of red splotches on the wall in the room we were waiting in only added to the discomfort – very likely not blood, but, given our mindset at the time, who knew? There were some initial tense moments after we were called in to meet with the local director, but he turned out to be a reasonable man after he learned that we lived in Nigeria and were not parachuting in on a quick visit to the country. We explained that we aimed to do stories on what was happening in Maiduguri one year after the uprising, and
we were able to reach an understanding. He allowed us to continue working, albeit under the close scrutiny of his men, and did not object to us taking photos and making video recordings at the site of Yusuf's destroyed mosque. We were followed so frequently by intelligence officers that it became almost farcical. They eventually began speaking casually to us, in a friendly manner. I asked one for a suggestion of where to eat, and he mentioned a place in a nearby shopping centre. I believe I had the chicken and rice. It wasn't bad.

Most officials, much like the police commissioner, declined to say anything at all on the record during that visit, but we did manage to arrange an interview with Borno state's information commissioner at the time, Isa Sanda Beneshiekh. He told us Boko Haram had been defeated and a new requirement that all religious groups must register with the government would help prevent future unrest. ‘We are assuring our people [...] and the whole world, that such a situation will never happen again', Beneshiekh said.

Even before the first anniversary of the 2009 uprising and military assault, there were signs that whatever peace had been obtained through the military's brutal crackdown would only be temporary. In the weeks before the anniversary date, video and audio clips began to circulate in northern Nigeria purporting to feature Abubakar Shekau, Yusuf's deputy during the 2009 uprising and its presumed new leader. The police called the footage faked, clinging to their story that Shekau had been killed in the previous year's assault, though they offered no proof and there was no way of knowing the truth at the time.

Mysterious indications later led to suggestions that Boko Haram had restarted its violent campaign, though with a different strategy. The first signs were assassinations of local clerics or members of the security forces, usually involving two men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s carrying out hit-and-run attacks. It was at first difficult to know what to make of these incidents. While it was reasonable to think that Boko Haram had
indeed returned, gangland-style killings could also occur for all sorts of reasons, from shady business dealings to political score settling. There was the real possibility that criminals were taking advantage of the fears stoked by the Islamists as cover to carry out retribution against their rivals since they knew Boko Haram would likely be blamed. This uncertainty would later turn out to be another element of the complex threat posed by a new and stealthier Boko Haram.

An incident in September 2010 served to put aside further doubts that Boko Haram was re-emerging. It occurred in the city of Bauchi, where Yusuf and his followers began their short-lived uprising more than a year before. On a Tuesday evening just before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a group of men, heavily armed with AK-47s and what seemed to have been homemade bombs, descended on a prison, chanting ‘Allahu Akbar'. They shot at the prison gate and forced their way inside, freeing more than 700 inmates, including about 150 alleged Boko Haram members.
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It was then clear to many that Boko Haram was back, no matter what the authorities wanted the country to believe.

The pattern of assassinations of local officials, police and clerics that had emerged would continue over the next several months, leaving dozens of people dead. There would also be bank robberies that the group was suspected of using to finance their operations. However, as disturbing as the situation was becoming, the trouble mostly remained concentrated in north-eastern Nigeria, far away from the seat of power in Abuja and a world apart from the bustling and chaotic economic nerve centre of Lagos in the south-west. There were indications that some of the president's political backers in the south saw the insurgency not as an awful symptom of severe poverty, neglect and the absence of faith in government in northern Nigeria, but as a conspiracy. Power brokers from the Niger Delta region would question whether the violence was being sponsored by northern politicians intent on discrediting the president.
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In making such a case, they were also expressing what
some average Nigerians in the south believed. In some ways, it was understandable. Nigeria's do-or-die politics, with so much corrupt money at stake, had led certain politicians over the years to govern as if they were running an organised crime racket. Nigerians may have seemed prepared to explain much of what was happening in their country with conspiracy theories for a simple reason: they often turned out to be true.