Boko Haram (8 page)

Lugard laid out his strategy ahead of the assault, telling the Colonial Office that he did not expect significant resistance in Kano and would not need further troops. After taking Kano, the soldiers were then to travel through Katsina on their way to Sokoto. The plan was to send a letter to Katsina ahead of the deployment's arrival which was, according to Lugard, ‘conciliatory in tone'. It would, however, state that the emir had been uncooperative and ‘the time has come when Government must declare its Sovereignty and assert its right to send Officials without molestation to any place within the Protectorate'. A similar letter would be sent to Sokoto, but would also state that the late caliph – who had recently died – had ignored the treaty made with the Royal Niger Company. ‘Both letters contain strong assurances that it is not my intention to interfere in any way whatever with the Mohammedan religion or the position of the Sultan of Sokoto as the Head of the Faith', Lugard wrote. He then again wrote of the Fulani rulers as brutal dictators and returned to his insistence that the British mission was just and noble.

The stage was then set for the British deployment under Colonel T.L.N. Morland, whose expedition left Zaria for Kano on 29 January 1903. It included nearly 800 troops from the West African Frontier Force – African soldiers led by British officers – as well as four Maxims, the machine guns that gave the British such an
advantage in firepower.
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They would not face much resistance. On the way to Kano, the company would have to fight its way through the town of Bebeji, blasting through the gate and leaving the king, two chiefs and some 30 others dead. When they reached Kano, they encountered earthen walls and fortifications surrounding the city so imposing that Lugard would later write that he had ‘never seen, nor even imagined, anything like it in Africa'. Parts of it were 30 to 50 feet high and 40 feet thick. The walls themselves were testimony to the ancient civilisation in Kano, with construction having begun on them in the eleventh century.
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Morland was not able to enter at the so-called Zaria gate, so he moved to the next one, which his men blasted through, then stormed the town, killing about 300 of the emir's soldiers. The emir himself was said to have fled to Sokoto about a month earlier. A letter was sent to the caliph in Sokoto from Morland seeking to explain the reasons for the British expedition, but stating bluntly that they were there to stay.

The caliph responded with his own letter saying he would have to discuss the situation with his councillors. Lugard felt the response to be ‘evasive', and the expedition, some of whose soldiers were by then suffering from lung sickness as a result of the dusty Harmattan wind, moved toward Sokoto, joining up with another party of about 200 troops along the way in Argungu. When they arrived, they were met by around 4,500 Sokoto fighters, including some 1,500 on horseback. Lugard wrote later that ‘the Sokoto army contained many fanatics, who charged our square in ones and twos, and courted certain death, but except for these the resistance shown was feeble, and the whole army was soon in full flight, pursued by our mounted infantry'. He put the Sokoto army's death toll at 70 dead and 200 wounded, while the British side had one killed and one wounded.
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The conquest of the proud Sokoto Caliphate was at hand, and Lugard would arrive in the city on 19 March 1903. The caliph had fled and intended to make it to Mecca, with thousands eventually following him on his journey. A British force caught up with him at Burmi near the River Gongola and, according to Lugard, ‘was opposed (on July 27th) with great determination and fanaticism. The town was taken after a fight which lasted till dusk, and about 700 of the enemy were killed, including the ex-sultan and most of the chiefs.' The man who had murdered Captain Moloney, the Magaji, also died there. The ex-emir of Kano, Aliyu, had travelled north ‘disguised as a salt merchant', but was captured by the local authorities in Gobir. He was sent further south, where he was given a place to live and an allowance.
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Lugard addressed the remaining elders in Sokoto on 20 March 1903, instructing them to decide on a recommendation for who would be the new sultan. He told them ‘there will be no interference with your religion'. The following day, he spoke plainly about the British now being in charge, saying ‘the treaty was killed by you yourselves and not by me'. Lugard said:

It was not the end of the resistance the British would face in northern Nigeria, with a number of uprisings occurring in later years led by Muslim Mahdists, who believed the world would soon end and that it would be preceded by the coming of a redeemer, or the Mahdi. The uprisings, however, sometimes had little to do with religion and saw criminals or runaway slaves take advantage of such beliefs to whip up anti-establishment sentiment. That was the case in Satiru near Sokoto in 1906, the site of a particularly brutal uprising against the British. A man named Dan Makafo, described by Lugard as ‘an outlaw from French territory', seems to have persuaded the son of a leader of a previous such movement to become head of a new uprising. When the acting British Resident for Sokoto received word of what was occurring, he rode to the village with a mounted infantry company. According to Lugard, the mission was aimed at negotiating a peaceful solution, but ‘a series of mistakes were made, which ended in a complete disaster'.

Upon reaching Satiru, the Resident moved ahead of the rest of the company and shouted that he had come in peace, but the commander of the troops became concerned and rode forward to catch up. The movement prompted those gathered at Satiru to charge against the company while the resident and his entourage remained unprotected. ‘The horses took fright, and a general melee ensued', Lugard wrote. The acting resident was killed along with the assistant resident and the commander of the troops and 25 soldiers. The medical officer on the mission later provided a detailed description of what they had encountered after they had arrived on a ridge and the village with a ‘good number of huts' came into view. After the confusion and the charge by those in the village, hand-to-hand fighting broke out.

‘I managed to catch a horse and was going to mount when some men ran at me', read an account provided by the medical officer, Martin F. Ellis:

The incident left the British stunned, and Lugard would leave little doubt about how he intended to deal with such violence. He sent a company of troops to wipe out the uprising.

‘The enemy made several brave charges, and resisted the troops hand to hand in the village', wrote Lugard, but they were no match for the British forces. ‘The village of Satiru was razed to the ground, and the Serikin Muslimin (sultan of Sokoto) pronounced a curse upon anyone who should again rebuild it or till its fields.'

The local authorities, including the sultan of Sokoto, had remained loyal to the British throughout. ‘It is permissible to call these people “rebels”, for they were fighting not merely against the British suzerainty, but against the native Administration, and the Sultan of Sokoto was at one time in great fear lest his own city might be carried away by the infection', Lugard wrote in his annual report.
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More than a century later, when Boko Haram would target Nigeria's traditional rulers as part of its insurgency – including an assassination attempt on the revered emir of Kano – Lugard's description would echo in a familiar way.

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The Satiru uprising would be among the last challenges Lugard would face before leaving Nigeria, a dozen years after embarking on the Borgu expedition for Goldie's Royal Nigeria Company, but he was to return. After a stint in Hong Kong, Lugard was reassigned to Nigeria in 1912 to oversee the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates – creating the outline of the country that exists today. The amalgamation officially occurred on New Year's Day 1914, with Lugard as governor-general.

Lugard, like the colonial era itself, can now be judged in the light of history. When writing on the administration of northern Nigeria, he displayed his sweeping intelligence and understanding of the Sokoto Caliphate and the history that led to it. ‘We are here the inheritors of a civilization, which ranked high in the world when the British Isles were in a state of barbarism, – a civilization
which later, through the Moors, placed Spain in the foremost rank of culture and progress', he wrote in 1905.

Yet, despite such understanding, he was a man of his era, and the profoundly unjust views that led to colonialism could perhaps be summed up by a brief passage in another letter Lugard wrote in 1908 to a successor in Nigeria. After being informed that one of the colonial officers there ‘apparently affects native dress and has married a native', he responded indignantly:

It had been nearly a week of violence in July 2009 and Mohammed Yusuf stood shirtless, a bandage on his left arm, a soldier to his right wearing camouflage and a chin-strapped army helmet. Others in the room held up their mobile phones as someone off-camera put questions to him, recording the inglorious end to his violent, short-lived uprising. The most wanted man in Nigeria had been captured, found in his father-in-law's barn. His mosque now sat in ruins.

Yusuf responded calmly and matter-of-factly, though he looked far more haggard than he had only days before, when he sat before a crowd at his mosque, dressed in a white robe and fez-like cap, and denounced the same security forces now surrounding him, stirring the anger of his followers, who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!' in response. He perhaps could have predicted that he would not make it through the day alive, but he gave no hint of it while answering his interrogator's questions.

‘We went to your house yesterday. We saw lots of domestic animals; we saw medical facilities; we saw materials [another voice mentions materials for making bombs] that you assemble. What are you going to do with these things?', Yusuf was asked in Hausa.

‘As I said, I use these things to protect myself', Yusuf responds.

‘To protect yourself – is there no constituted authority to protect you? Is there no constituted authority to protect you?'

‘It is the constituted authority that is fighting me.'

‘What have you done to warrant authorities going after you?'

‘I don't know what I have done. It is because I propagate Islam.'

When the questioner tells Yusuf that he, too, is a Muslim, Yusuf says, ‘I don't know the reason why you reject my own Islam.'

‘You have said Western education is forbidden?'

‘Yes, Western education is forbidden.'
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Yusuf had by then become something of a folk hero to his followers and a marked man for the security forces. He was 39 and had been repeatedly arrested, but always found himself later released, welcomed back to his neighbourhood in Maiduguri by adoring crowds. Some described him as a reluctant fighter, content to continue to build his movement by preaching the evils of Western influence, condemning evolution and denying that the Earth is a sphere. Whether or not he had truly been pushed toward violence earlier than he would have liked, he was certainly convinced by the time of his capture, with Maiduguri having been shaken in the days before by gun battles in the streets and a relentlessly brutal military assault in response. Terrified residents fled like refugees. There would be no question of Yusuf's release this time. Amid a crowd of soldiers in a drab room, the interrogator continued his line of questioning. He sought to force Yusuf to explain his opposition to Western education while at the same time embracing other elements of Western culture.

‘How is it forbidden? What about the (Western-style) trousers you are wearing?'

‘There are several reasons why Western education is forbidden. The trouser is cotton, and cotton is the property of Allah', Yusuf said.

It was the kind of logic that Yusuf had been preaching for years and what brought him increasingly into conflict with his early mentors. For all its obvious flaws, his philosophy and sometimes odd interpretations of the Qur'an appealed to young men in Maiduguri, a city once known as a crossroads and major market as the capital of Borno state, whose reputation for Islamic learning had been widespread. It was now seen as a place whose restless, unemployed youth, corrupt politics and unforgiving poverty had helped induce a violent uprising by a seemingly bizarre religious sect led by Yusuf. His interrogator pushed ahead on the same line of questioning.

‘You know Allah urges us to acquire knowledge. There is even the chapter of the Qur'an that makes that clear', he told Yusuf.

‘But not the type of knowledge that goes against Islam. Any type of knowledge that contradicts Islam, Allah does not allow you to acquire it. Take magic. Allah has created its knowledge, but He does not allow you to practise it. The path of godlessness is based on knowledge, but Allah has disapproved of that type of knowledge. Astronomy
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is knowledge; again, Allah has prohibited such knowledge.'

‘When they went to your house, they saw computers, other equipment and hospital facilities. Are these things not products of knowledge?'

‘These are technological products. Western education is different. Western education is Westernisation.'

‘How is it you are eating good food – see how you are looking very healthy. You drive fine cars, you eat good food, you wear fine clothes, but you direct your followers to wear these things [referring to ragged clothing], and then you give them only water and dates, then you tell them to go and sell their property?'

‘No, no. It is not like that. Everybody lives according to his means; everybody has his means in his hands. Even you are all of different means. Everybody lives according to his means. Anybody living in affluence, driving a fine car, must have the means to do so.
The other person that does not have those things, he simply does not have the means.'

Yusuf could have simply refused to answer, declined to participate in a debate with a man from the Nigerian security forces, whose members had just gunned down his followers and destroyed his mosque. He instead responded in detail, seeking to convince his doubters. It is worth asking whether Yusuf assumed the recording of his interrogation would one day become public.

‘Why did you leave the premises of your mosque?'

‘The reason is because you have come and dispersed the people staying in the place.'

‘You have sent people to fight. As their commander you should have stayed with them.'

‘My followers have left.'

‘Where did they go to when they left?'

‘They have left.'

After more back and forth on where his followers escaped to and questions about the location of his headquarters, Yusuf was asked who was ‘assisting' him.

‘It is said that you have soldiers, you also have police, you have everything, and you are organised?'

‘No, that is not true.'

Asked who his assistant was, he named Abubakar Shekau and added that he did not know where he was.

‘You have all run away together with your followers. Where are the remaining people? How many people ran away?'

‘It is not everybody who runs.'

‘Who are the people who are assisting you internally and externally in the jihad you have declared?'

‘There is nobody from outside.'

‘No, no.'

‘By Allah, I will not lie to you. By Allah, I will not lie to you.'

He was asked whether he had a farm and admitted that he did, then the interrogators questioned him on the violence.

‘Now you have caused the death of innocent people because of your views in the community.'

‘The people who died are those that you have killed yourselves.'

‘What about the killings done by your followers?'

‘My followers did not kill people.'

‘All those that have been killed?'

‘It is my followers who have been killed.'

‘Yes?'

‘All those who killed them are the real offenders.'

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The rise of a man like Mohammed Yusuf in north-eastern Nigeria might seem predictable. The once-proud region and centre of Islamic learning, home to the ancient Kanem-Bornu Empire east of the Sokoto Caliphate that had long ago dominated West Africa, its power resonating into the Arab world, has fallen on hard times more recently. As Nigeria's oil economy led to the neglect of other industries and corruption flourished, the north-east struggled. The region, for so long a crossroads of ideas and trade in the scrubby savannah near Lake Chad and the Sahara desert, trailed much of the rest of the country in education and wealth by the time Yusuf began building his movement. In 2000–1, the north-east had the smallest number of students admitted to Nigerian universities – 4 per cent of the country's total.
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The poor state of education in the north has resulted from an array of causes. It is rooted in history, including suspicions over Western education and its purpose, as well as access to proper schools and families unable to afford to send their children to classes. The British colonial administration did manage to establish a certain number of quality schools, but the Christian missionaries who promoted Western education throughout the south during the colonial era were largely denied access to the north. Reasons included resistance from northern Nigerian leaders themselves as well as from Lugard, who argued that the region's culture
and religion should be left intact to as great a degree as possible. Qur'anic and Islamic education remain an important part of the culture, and in many cases they can be of high quality, though there have been accusations of fly-by-night schools also existing, provoking concern over whether they are simply churning out roadside beggars and potential extremists. In any case, the dilemma facing northern Nigeria is clear: the days of the region's trade and interests being orientated toward the Arab world have long since passed, and failing to adapt to the reality of today's Nigeria holds obvious dangers. Even now, the outlines of a feudal culture remain in place, with emirs living behind palace walls while hangers-on gather outside. The emirs' power is mainly ceremonial, but in a country where patronage and traditional links play an integral role, they wield important influence. Such influence can be quite positive, with traditional rulers working to mediate conflict and serve as voices of reason, such as efforts toward Muslim–Christian dialogue by the sultan of Sokoto, for example. But the approach of each of the emirs varies, and the potential for abuse of power is evident. They, too, would become targets for Boko Haram, viewed as part of the same elite lacking true Islamic values and which has robbed the country of its riches for so long.

While cultural and historical factors have certainly played a part, it is Nigeria's legendary corruption and mismanagement that have been most responsible for the current condition of the north-east and the country as a whole. Nigerians of all ethnicities and origins have lost any faith they may have once had in their government, justice system and security forces. The bright light of the country's vast potential has been snuffed out by thieves disguised as businessmen, military generals and politicians. It is worth asking whether even the best intentioned leaders could have overcome the daunting challenge left behind by colonialism: a country in name only, with ancient societies and hundreds of different ethnic groups thrown together under one nation state. But that original sin has only been compounded by graft on a scale so enormous it baffles
the mind. Consider a few infamous examples among many: 1990s military dictator Sani Abacha, himself a northerner, along with his family looted hundreds of millions of dollars from the Central Bank, even by the truckload, according to one informed account;
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James Ibori, once the influential governor of the oil-rich Delta state in southern Nigeria, was found to have embezzled possibly more than $250 million, while also allegedly trying to bribe his way out of being investigated with a sack stuffed with $15 million;
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the theft of Nigerian oil has been estimated at $6 billion per year, with suspicions of involvement by members of the military and high-profile figures.

The list goes on, and all the while tens of millions of Nigerians live in deep poverty, often with little access to electricity or decent roads. The poverty rate stood at around 28 per cent in 1980, but shot up to 66 per cent by 1996, when Abacha was leader.
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The percentage of the population living in poverty has decreased from the dark days of the Abacha regime, but a World Bank calculation using data from 2009–10 showed 63 per cent of Nigerians were still living on less than $1 per day.
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Meanwhile, the population has been booming at an incredible rate, with Nigeria projected to grow from its current 170 million people – the highest in Africa – to around 400 million by 2050.
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One does not need to be a fortune-teller to predict the potential trouble ahead. A World Bank study found that as many as 50 million young people in Nigeria may be unemployed or underemployed, a situation the bank's lead economist for the country told me was ‘a time bomb' if not addressed.
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The Boko Haram insurgency shows the clock is ticking and time is running short.

Nigerian history since independence in 1960 has been replete with struggle and tragedy, while at the same time producing some of the world's most revered artists, including the late writer Chinua Achebe and Africa's first Nobel laureate for literature, Wole Soyinka, as well as the afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. All three stridently criticised Nigerian mismanagement, and Achebe's often-quoted
first lines of his 1983 essay
The Trouble with Nigeria
remain true today: ‘The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character.'
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The British decision to throw north and south together to create an amalgamated Nigeria in 1914 would set it on a path of becoming the potential giant of Africa, both in terms of its economy and its population. The problem was that it would also lay the groundwork for ethnic, regional and religious divisions that would tie the nation up in power struggles and spark violence, with the question of whether the country should call it quits and break up continually being posed. It is an option that Nigeria's leaders have always ruled out, but the debate roils on nonetheless, renewed regularly by eruptions of the country's many crises.