THIS year has witnessed a dramatic spurt in terrorist related violence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous state. The radical Al Qaeda affiliated Islamist group, Boko Haram, has claimed responsibility for a series of massacres and bombings that have rocked the city of Maiduguri and other towns in northern Nigeria since the beginning of the year. The group once again attacked the capital Abuja in the second week of April. The terror attack at a busy bust station in a working class suburb of the capital killed at least 75 people. The last series of terror attacks in the capital had taken place in 2012. These included the first suicide bombing by a Boko Haram operative on the UN building in the capital. Soon after the April 14 attack in the capital, 129 school girls, aged between 15 and 18 were kidnapped from their hostel in the northeastern state of Borno, where the Boko Haram has strong support. The kidnapping of the girls has now become an international cause célèbre after leading personalities like America’s First Lady, Michelle Obama, endorsed the campaign ---Free Our Girls --- that had started in Nigeria. ARMY FAILS TO DEAL WITH TERRORISTS In March, in attacks on two towns in Borno state, Boko Haram militants killed more than 70 people. In February, the group attacked a Boys school in Maiduguri, killing more than 20 students. Following the raid on the girl’s dormitory, the Nigerian army had claimed the next day that the girls were all rescued and returned to their families. They were quickly forced to retract as the local media reported that only around 20 of the girls had returned safely to their homes. In previous attacks on schools and colleges, the group had only engaged in killings. The main target of the Boko Haram is western style education being inculcated in Nigerian schools. The name Boko Haram, roughly translated from the Hausa language, means “all western knowledge is forbidden.” Boko Haram has so far claimed responsibility for more than 1500 deaths since the beginning of the year alone. Following the kidnapping of the girls, the group attacked and destroyed another town, killing more than 350 people. Nigeria, which boasts of having one of Africa’s most potent military force, has so far spectacularly failed in dealing effectively with the Islamist insurgency that has spread terror in broad swathes of the North. With its latest attack in the capital, the group has signalled that it has the wherewithal of targeting other key cities in the rest of the country. The latest developments have brought the spotlight back on the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan. In a speech in February, the president had assured his countrymen that terrorism was on the verge of being completely eliminated. He said that the Boko Haram group was active now only in the remote areas of the northeast. But the recent burst of terror attacks have shown that President Jonathan’s optimism was grossly misplaced. The Nigerian government continues to assert that its army was fully capable of dealing with the insurgency. The latest incidents have, however, made many Nigerians question the efficacy of their army. The leadership of the armed forces came in for particular ridicule after their initial claim that they had rescued all the kidnapped schoolgirls. In parts of the northeast where the army has been deployed in strength for counter-insurgency activities, there have been serious charges of human rights abuses against the soldiers. Three states in the northeastern part of the country have been placed under emergency rule since last year in the bid to reign in the Boko Haram menace. The area is vast and the terrain, bordering Cameron, is forested and difficult to patrol effectively. On March 14, the Boko Haram militants attacked a detention centre in the well protected military barracks in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, in an effort to free many of their supporters. In the heavy fighting that followed, more than 500 civilians were killed. The residents of the town told the local media that the army had killed many of the detained men who were trying to escape and those who were already there in their custody. The army has denied these accusations. ACCUSATION OF COLLUSION The other serious accusation is that sections of the army are colluding with the Boko Haram. The army could have a vested interest in prolonging the conflict as the federal government has earmarked more than six billion dollars this year for security related activities. The government had initially tried to coax the Boko Haram into negotiations to end the violence. According to reports, a tentative peace deal with the group was reached in June last year. The deal fell apart after the government backtracked and, instead, eliminated the Boko Haram contacts it was negotiating with. The representatives of the group had told the media at the time that a peaceful resolution is possible if the government gives assurances that destroyed villages will be rebuilt and that employment and vocational training will be given to close relatives of those killed in military operations. The Boko Haram first burst on the scene five years ago, after it carried out a spate of attacks against police stations and government offices in Maiduguri in 2009. In response, the state authorities killed hundreds of Boko Haram supporters and thousands more had to flee the city. The founder of the group, a cleric called Mohammed Yusuf, was killed in a military attack on the group’s headquarters. He was first shown captured alive and after a few hours his corpse was displayed on national television. A year later, the Boko Haram regrouped under a new leader, Abubakar Shekau, by attacking a prison in Bauchi state. The successful attack had resulted in the freeing of hundreds of Boko Haram supporters lodged in the jail. Since then Boko Haram fighters have terrorised civilians in many northern towns by indiscriminate killings. Gunmen on motorbikes targeted officials and clergymen. Christian churches have been frequently targeted. Even mosques are not exempt if the clergy do not adhere to fundamentalist religious views of the Boko Haram. In fact, more Muslims have died at the hands of the group. The Boko Haram’s longevity proves that the group has support in many parts of the north. Many people are still nostalgic for Sharia law which had existed there before the region was colonised by the British and the French. Many northerners feel that Sharia law is the antidote for the rampant corruption that exists in the country. RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC STRIFES One of the important goals of the group is to further exacerbate the religious divide between the predominantly Muslim North and the mainly Christian South. In the last couple of years, there have been many serious incidents of horrendous communal bloodletting. Repeated inter-religious riots in cities like Jos and Kaduna had led to hundreds of deaths. There have also been frequent clashes involving ethnic groups. In the first week of April Fulani nomadic herders clashed with their religious compatriots, the Hausas, over land rights in Zamfara state. The clashes resulted in the deaths of more than seventy people. According to Human Rights Watch, inter-ethnic and inter-religious strifes in central Nigeria have claimed the life of more than 3000 people since 2010. The civil war in the country from 1966-70, had resulted in the deaths of more than a million people. Some of the scars left behind by that war are still etched in the Nigerian psyche. The southern and eastern part of the country is more developed than the north. The oil industry and the commercial capital, Lagos, are located in the eastern part of the country. The Boko Haram upsurge may create more problems for President Jonathan as he seeks another term in office. To begin with, he was an accidental president having been elevated to the high office following the premature death of the previous occupant, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. There is an unwritten rule in Nigerian politics that the presidency has to rotate between the North and South. Yar’Adua from the North had passed away before he could complete serving his first term. Leading northern politicians were of the view that it was in the fitness of things that Jonathan should vacate the presidency for a politician from the North. President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner and a Christian, had served the previous two four year terms. But Jonathan stuck to his guns and ran successfully for the presidency three years ago with the support of some key northern politicians. But now he is seeking a second consecutive term in office to the chagrin of powerbrokers in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Among those opposing his bid is the venerable Obasanjo, recognised as an elder statesman on the African continent. Obasanjo has publicly accused the Nigerian president of reneging on his commitment on not running for a second term. Obasanjo said that Jonathan had failed to deliver on his electoral promises, provide good governance or promote national unity. Obasanjo quoted from a letter written by the governor of Nigeria’s central bank, Lamido Sanusi, saying that 50 billion dollars of the country’s oil revenue are “unaccounted for” by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). A COUNTRY AT WAR WITH ITSELF Governors from five important states along with a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, have defected to the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC); 37 members of lower house of parliament have also switched to the recently former APC. The PDP has run Nigeria since it returned to civilian rule in 1999. The Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, has added his voice to the growing criticism of the government. Speaking at a conference held after the Abuja terror attacks, Soyinka said that Nigeria is in dire need of competent leaders. “Nigeria is at war and only competence can solve the problem,” he observed. The governor of Adamawa state, Murtala Nyako, went to the extent of claiming that the federal government was sponsoring the Boko Haram insurgency in order “to disenfranchise” the voters in the North. The US security agencies are watching the emerging situation in Nigeria carefully. The Obama administration has already declared the Boko Haram as a “terrorist” group and put a seven million dollars bounty on its leader Shekau’s head. American security agencies are said to be cooperating with their Nigerian counterparts in framing counter insurgency tactics. The Nigerian government which had been refusing any open outside military help, despite calls to do so from a few prominent Nigerians, has finally accepted assistance from the US, in the wake of the huge outcry which the kidnappings of the girls caused worldwide. The French, the British and the Chinese military have also promised to help in the hunt to locate the missing girls. The Americans have been offering to help Nigeria militarily for a long time. Doing so will help them to get a military foothold in West Africa. The Nigerian government had previously refused to provide basing facilities for the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Nigerian politicians and strategic thinkers are no doubt aware of the backlash that American involvement has caused in the Horn of Africa region. American drone and missile attacks in Somalia on the Al Shabab militants have not helped curb the insurgency there. Instead, there have been serious ramifications for America’s regional allies in the region like Kenya and Uganda.