Boko Haram Read online

  After we landed in Maiduguri for the military tour in June 2013, it was difficult to draw any firm conclusions about whether the situation in the city had significantly changed, with soldiers keeping us on a tight leash. We were corralled on a military base and an erratic form of show-and-tell began, with military officers making presentations that were haphazard and contradictory. Inside a meeting room, they first showed us slides that explained characteristics of the region as well as aspects of Boko Haram. We were then rushed around to different areas of the base so soldiers could present weapons to us supposedly seized from insurgents. They included rudimentary weapons such as daggers and bows and arrows, but also AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns to be mounted on 4×4s that one military official called anti-aircraft guns. Asked repeatedly where the insurgents were obtaining these weapons, military officials informed us that they did not know, but said most of the arms seemed to have been of the type that would typically come from the former Soviet bloc. There had also been concern that the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 and resulting chaos had led to looted weapons being sold across the region, helping further arm extremist groups. Boko Haram elements may have benefited. A Nigerian military arms depot at a barracks in the town of Monguno had been raided as well.

  We were hurried along, limiting the number of questions that could be asked but assured there would be time for further discussion later, then told to board buses for the drive deeper into the north-east towards the villages of Marte and Kirenowa, the area where insurgents were said to have set up a camp later cleared out by soldiers. The road would pass through increasingly remote territory as we travelled in the direction of Lake Chad, and we were soon moving through flat, semi-desert landscape, only acacia trees, shrub and occasional patches of grass breaking up the dull, grey sand for long stretches at a time. A tiny village sometimes made of thatched huts, others with homes of concrete or brick, would periodically come into view. It felt in some ways as if we were travelling back in time. The silent, wide-open savannah can seem like a separate country altogether compared to a place like Lagos, the heaving economic capital in Nigeria’s south-west, or even nearby Maiduguri. As we moved closer to Lake Chad, the patches of grass became more frequent, the trees more prevalent. The rainy season had not yet fully begun, though it would soon come and would alter the landscape.

  During the journey, the military asked that we wear flak jackets as a precaution, but, to our surprise, the route seemed to pose little risk. We reached a military base after driving for a few hours, the road having become so eroded in one stretch that we veered off to the side and rumbled across the sand, dust billowing around our convoy. When we entered the base, Lieutenant-Colonel Gabriel Olufemi Olorunyomi stood before maps and a large, hand-drawn diagram, then launched into a choppy explanation of how the army had retaken control of the area from Boko Haram. According to the narrative he laid out, Boko Haram members arrived in the area and preached to the local people that ‘everything that has to do with government is haram’ and forced girls to marry them. Later they sought to forcefully take control of areas of Marte, burning a local government secretariat, the governor’s lodge and a church, while also destroying a hospital and looting drugs from it. He said they even raised their own flag in place of Nigeria’s – an echo of one of the points made by the president in his state of emergency declaration. The lieutenant-colonel was unsteady when pressed for details, however. He could not say what the flag looked like, and his description of the military assault that reclaimed the area left many details open to interpretation. He did not want to say how many extremists had been arrested or killed. He said that some had scattered when soldiers cleared out a camp they had used. Asked where they had run to, he said, ‘I don’t know. They’re in the bush.’ The day would continue in this manner.

  We were hurried back onto the buses to be driven to a second base, but along the way stopped in an area known as New Marte so we could be shown the blackened cement walls of a bare-bones church. There was only time for a few pictures before the soldiers began ordering us to board the buses again, saying it would be dark before we knew it and we must move quickly. We grudgingly followed the orders, aware that we were being made part of a ham-fisted attempt at public relations, but also understanding that even a glimpse of villages such as this one was worth the trip. We made another stop at a spot which military officials said would usually be planted with crops, but Boko Haram had caused farmers to flee.

  At the next base, we were given another presentation, this one declaring how the villagers of Kirenowa had been rescued from Boko Haram and the nearby Islamist camp had been cleared. However, it seemed again that the military was cobbling together details that were contradictory. We held out hope that the next stop on our tour, a visit to Kirenowa itself, would shed some light.

  We rode in military trucks and our convoy manoeuvred closer towards Lake Chad before crossing a canal, then into the village itself. We piled out of trucks and followed fast-walking military officials across the dusty ground broken up by patches of dry scrub. The soldiers provided varying explanations of what had happened and why as they led us back to what they said had been the Boko Haram camp. Whatever had been there, it seemed that it had not been much.

  Set within a clearing between trees and tangled scrub, we were shown burnt-out cars, empty food containers and abandoned clothes. Soldiers told us the insurgents had burnt the vehicles before they fled because they did not want the military to recover them, but the explanation did not seem to add up: why would they bother? They seemed to be just cars. Under the shade of a stand of trees, we were shown empty boxes of medicines and medical supplies such as surgical gloves, apparently looted from the hospital in Marte. There were also condoms – a reminder of a military statement several days earlier proclaiming that ‘more of the dirty sides of the insurgents’ lifestyle are being revealed as troops continue to stumble on strange and bizarre objects such as several used and unused condoms’. Needless to say, we were sceptical, and not only about the condoms.

  We were led back to the village, where a gathering awaited us in the heart of Kirenowa. A local chief, wearing sunglasses and a light-green traditional robe, praised the soldiers for their work as hundreds of residents looked on and applauded. The chief told us that residents had been forced to flee when Boko Haram members arrived and took up residence nearby. Where they had gone or when they returned was not clear. Some residents told local journalists that girls in the village had been forced to marry Boko Haram members and that the insurgents had stolen from them.1

  Such details were to be treated with caution, as with almost all aspects of the day’s tour, since residents could have been coached on what to say before our arrival, but they were certainly worth noting and seemed plausible. As the brief gathering ended, we were again hurried aboard the trucks, taken to the nearby military base, then driven back to Maiduguri aboard buses, many of us left pondering what to make of it all. We would not be given much help from the military. The next morning, after repeatedly asking military officials to allow us the chance to ask questions for clarification, they finally relented, so we gathered in a circle around Brigadier-General Chris Olukolade,2 the defence spokesman, as he stood in a car park, powered on our recorders and video cameras, and sought answers. They were not exactly forthcoming. Asked why the offensive was different from what occurred in 2009, when the military insisted Boko Haram had been wiped out before the group re-emerged, Olukolade said it ‘involved not just the military but the security agencies of the country. The network this time is perfect, I mean near-perfect, in the sense that the operation was planned to ensure their bases were dislocated – not just dislocated but completely wiped out.’ Pressed on how many Boko Haram members had been arrested, he said, ‘I can just tell you that hundreds of them.’ How many Boko Haram members had been charged or sentenced? ‘Well, several of them.’

  Sporadic bursts of information and disinformation from the military would con
tinue in a similar manner in the weeks following the tour. It began to feel like a repeat of previous military operations: a flurry of activity, scattering the insurgents and temporarily reducing the number of attacks, only for the Islamists to return to fight another day. An unexpected development would, however, soon cast the crisis in a different light, one that offered a degree of hope, but which also presented severe dangers.

  In mid-June 2013, word began to filter out that vigilante groups had formed in Maiduguri to fight the insurgents. One of the early signs came in the form of road checkpoints. Maiduguri residents had long become accustomed to security roadblocks as their city descended into violence, but the new checkpoints that began to materialise were different. They were now being manned by the vigilantes, a motley collection of mainly young men carrying homemade bows and arrows, swords, sticks, pipes and charms they said were powerful enough to stop bullets. They would peer into cars as drivers moved slowly past, stopping those they deemed suspicious, or wait for orders from the military that they were needed for a raid aimed at arresting Boko Haram members. Some of the vigilantes admitted that they sometimes killed people during these raids – though specifying only when they had to – and handed over those they arrested to the region’s Joint Task Force, a security deployment run by the military. The task force was known across Nigeria by its initials JTF, and the vigilantes adopted this name, calling themselves the ‘Civilian JTF’. The military encouraged the groups’ formation, assisted them and spurred them along, apparently fed up with seeing their own men killed in a conflict that seemed to have no end. Military officials also reasoned that because the vigilantes were members of the community, they would know who were Boko Haram members and who were not. Rumours spread that some of the vigilantes were in fact also former insurgents. They at first denied being paid anything, insisting they were only a volunteer force interested in peace after years of upheaval, but it was widely believed that either the security forces or state government, or perhaps both, were somehow financing them. Later, the state government would seek to normalise the unwieldy force, providing training, light-blue uniforms and regular payments for a number of them.3

  Several weeks into the formation of the vigilantes, there were signs of improvement. Attacks in Maiduguri itself were becoming increasingly rare, a stark turnaround considering the city had been wracked by incessant violence for much of the previous four years, causing thousands to flee, shutting down businesses and killing hundreds. Residents also seemed to be welcoming the vigilantes, relieved that they could venture outside again, reopen their market stalls and even send their children to schools with less worry. The phones were still cut, but there did not appear to be a major uproar over it in Maiduguri itself as many residents saw it as a legitimate sacrifice for peace.

  The insurgents’ response to the military offensive and formation of vigilante groups appeared to be to largely abandon the city of Maiduguri. They were said to have fled to border areas near Cameroon, Chad or Niger, particularly in the region’s Gwoza hills. The border with Cameroon was considered especially porous, and local residents spoke of Boko Haram members crossing back and forth, sometimes carrying out robberies and attacks on the Nigerian side, occasionally slitting the throats of their victims in a show of force. Unconfirmed rumours spread over whether Shekau had been killed, while the military later claimed he ‘may have died’ after being shot in a clash with troops and taken over the border into Cameroon for treatment, but provided no proof. Shekau had been rumoured or declared to be dead several times before, only to later appear in video and audio messages. A man who seemed to be Shekau would repeatedly appear in more videos after the military statement on his supposed death. Yet another resurrection had occurred, it seemed.

  Earlier hints of a new pattern of attacks would later prove to be true, with a terrifying series of civilian massacres beginning to unfold. It was widely believed such attacks were partly in revenge for the formation of the vigilante groups and for residents’ cooperation with them in reporting insurgents’ movements. Two attacks on schools in June saw gunmen shoot dead 16 students and 2 teachers.4 They were similar to an attack the previous March in Maiduguri at the Sanda Kyarimi Senior Secondary School. Months later, a security guard walked the school grounds at Sanda Kyarimi with me and explained how it occurred.

  According to the security guard, 35-year-old Ahmed Jidda, he and the school disciplinarian were at the school’s front gate on a Monday morning trying to usher in stragglers who were arriving late when two people with AK-47s forced their way in and began shooting sporadically. He said the attackers looked like teenagers, guessing they were between 15 and 18 years old. They were not wearing masks. They made their way across the large open yard ringed by single-storey buildings housing classrooms on the school grounds, at one point throwing a homemade bomb that did not explode. Students and teachers panicked, taking cover or running to find a way out, as the attackers continued to fire their weapons. At one classroom, they shot inside at a teacher, killing him. Jidda showed me the classroom, and on the day I visited there were lessons on the English alphabet written neatly on the blackboard, with classes having since resumed at the school after a temporary closure. Jidda said he had managed to climb over a part of the wall surrounding the school, then run to a nearby military outpost to alert the soldiers. By then it was too late. The gunmen left after their brief flurry of violence. Besides the teacher they killed, four girls who were students were wounded, one of whom later died.

  By July 2013, Nigerians had seen several such school attacks, but one that would occur in the town of Mamudo in Yobe state would lead to widespread disgust. The attackers stormed a secondary boarding school in the town, opening fire and throwing explosives inside a dormitory, burning students to death. A total of 42 people were killed, mostly students. President Jonathan’s spokesman would break from the usual condemnations and promises of action, saying those responsible ‘will certainly go to hell’.5

  It began to seem that nothing was off limits to the attackers any more. As if to prove the point, the following month in the town of Konduga, gunmen stormed a mosque and killed 44 people.6 That, too, was thought to be revenge for the actions of the vigilante groups.

  Up to that point, the deadliest of the so-called revenge attacks would occur in an area known as Benisheik, a town on the road between Maiduguri and the city of Damaturu. On 17 September 2013, a group of insurgents dressed as soldiers, well-armed with AK-47s, homemade bombs and other weapons, stopped cars and buses, singled out residents of Borno state and shot them dead. They burned vehicles and set buildings on fire in the area. The military was slow to arrive – possibly because of the lack of a phone network, possibly for more ominous reasons, such as a reluctance to confront the killers. When soldiers did show up, according to some reports, they were overpowered and ran out of ammunition trying to fight the attackers.

  When it was finally all over, bodies were strewn across the road. Travellers along the same route in the days that followed reported seeing surreal scenes as they passed through, their horrifying descriptions almost too gory to be believed, the capacity to inflict so much violence and death in such a cold, calculated manner hard to comprehend. State workers said they had counted at least 142 bodies.7 Some of those apparently ended up at the Borno State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri, among the bodies dumped on the ground at the back of the sprawling complex outside the morgue. This is where I stood about three weeks after the attack, covering my nose with my shirt to block the intense odour of rotting human flesh.

  The hospital had been known for its overcrowded morgue. Neighbours had reportedly complained about the smell. Even before the start of the military offensive in May 2013, there were reports of sometimes dozens of corpses arriving daily, feeding fears that the military was simply resorting to extrajudicial executions for those suspected of being Boko Haram members, though such accusations have always been strongly denied by the security forces.8 As I followed the covered concrete walkwa
y back to where the morgue was located, a security guard with choppy English who saw me looking at the bodies on the ground said, ‘Boko Harams’, seeming to indicate they were dead insurgents. When I asked whether they were Boko Haram members, she seemed to say yes, but it was not clear if she understood my question. A medical worker then appeared from a nearby ward and began to speak to me calmly in English as we stood on the sidewalk near the bodies. We eventually moved slightly further away, since the smell was so strong. She told me that the bodies were in fact those of civilians killed in Benisheik and brought here, either by soldiers or by residents. After we spoke a few minutes more, I thanked her, then made my way back to the front of the hospital grounds, where a colleague I was working with waited.