Boko Haram (16 page)

But as the first of the three elections opened, Jega ran into trouble straight away. A few hours after the start of the parliamentary election, he was forced to appear on national television and announce what in many countries would have been unthinkable: he was calling it off and suspending the vote by one week because voting materials had failed to arrive at a long list of locations throughout the country. The rumoured and official reasons offered for why the materials had been delayed ranged from sabotage to a simple contractor's error. Whatever the true explanation, Nigeria's bid at holding respectable elections had stumbled badly out of the gate, and Jega would be forced to quickly recover as the nation waited impatiently. There was an initial backlash against him, with many people questioning how he could allow such a disastrous misstep. But as the furore died down and many of those criticising Jega acknowledged the near-impossible task before him, support once again swayed behind him. Election observers and anti-corruption groups expressed their faith in him and judged that he had made the right decision, that an election in such questionable circumstances could never have been called free and fair.

The following week, however, would bring worse news. The Boko Haram violence that had been ignored for so long would strike at the heart of what was hopeful about the election. In the city of Suleija, about 45 miles from Abuja in the country's centre, far away from the restive north-east, a bomb would explode as poll workers gathered at an electoral office on the night before the vote,
including young university graduates from the National Youth Service Corps. Thirteen people were killed and dozens of others were wounded.
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Blame fell on Boko Haram, with security forces later saying a cell of the group based in the area was responsible.

The parliamentary vote would nevertheless go forward as planned, though not in Suleija, where another postponement would occur. There would also be two other, less deadly bomb attacks in Maiduguri on election day, but overall there was a sense of progress, with residents appearing determined to cast their vote.

The following week's presidential election was the main event, and in many ways, the conduct of the vote was being seen as equally important as the actual outcome. Jonathan's government had been promising a free and fair ballot for months, and Western diplomats and good-government groups had also been urging the country's leaders to stick to that commitment. Holding a reasonably fair election would in itself be a major accomplishment for Nigeria and could serve as an example for other African nations given the country's status as the continent's most populous.

Election day opened smoothly in most of the country, but the unrelenting Boko Haram violence would again hit the north, with two explosions in Maiduguri, including one the night before, and one in the city of Kaduna. Casualties were said to be minimal. Sadly, the country had almost come to expect such incidents, and the explosions had no effect on the conduct of the vote in the rest of Nigeria. There were other isolated instances of violence and irregularities, but positive signs emerged as the day progressed. Locally based observer groups deployed motivated young Nigerians, who used mobile phones and social media to record and relay what they saw. Nigerians seemed committed to making a statement, peacefully queuing up and casting their ballots. As polling places closed and counting began, one could not help but feel encouraged by the scenes that unfolded: Nigerians stood by, sometimes in the rain, and recorded the counting process with their phones. That does not mean there were no problems;
there were many. There had been instances of underage voting, intimidation and violence, not to mention allegations of figures being doctored in some areas. What would happen after the ballots were taken away to collating centres would also be another matter, and one that observers would later raise serious concerns over.
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But despite that, there was the sense that such incidents were far fewer than in previous years. As a result, election day produced a feeling of positivity for many, who felt that finally, after years of chaotic, violent and fraudulent polls, Nigeria had taken a step toward true democracy.

Unfortunately, the positive vibes would not last. As early results began to come in the morning after the vote, a potentially dangerous trend emerged. Initial figures revealed a sharp divide in the electorate between the north and south. As more results were reported, giving Jonathan a clear lead, the violence began. Rioting would break out in neighbourhoods across the north, eventually spreading to 12 of the country's 36 states. It spiralled completely out of control, with communities turning on one another and mobs targeting northern politicians they believed cooperated with Jonathan and his allies. In the city of Kano, mobs stopped cars and searched for southerners and Christians while fighting running battles with the police. They charged into the luxurious home of a former speaker of the House of Representatives, ransacking the inside. The worst violence occurred in southern Kaduna state, part of the middle belt between the country's north and south, where Christian communities turned on Muslim residents, burning homes, hacking people to death with machetes and gunning people down. One official, trying to find words to describe what had happened there, told me, ‘I wouldn't like to use the term massacre [...] some places it was terrible'. Despite his reticence to use the word, what occurred in the southern Kaduna communities of Zonkwa and Kafanchan was certainly a massacre. Over the course of three days, an estimated 800 people were killed in the violence across the north, the vast majority in southern Kaduna state. Another 65,000 were displaced.
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The following month, I visited the city of Kaduna, the state capital further north and where thousands of displaced had taken refuge in a camp. One woman from Zonkwa, 67-year-old Talle Musa, spoke of hiding in a neighbour's house and her husband being murdered. ‘He said whatever happened we should not go out, that we should just be patient', she said. ‘We didn't know it was like his farewell to us.' She became faint and backed away, declining to speak further. Others at the camp talked of people being burnt, hacked or shot. One man said he managed to escape by hiding in a well.

Various theories were offered for why the violence occurred and what set it off. Some said rumours of rigging were to blame, while others claimed that the initial incident was the result of a simple dispute over money, with ruling party operatives failing to pay neighbourhood thugs who rounded up votes on their behalf. Whatever the initial cause, it quickly built on itself and became a general expression of frustration on various levels – anger over corruption, the north's loss of the presidency, long-festering communal disputes, to name a few. Nigeria had been once again shown to be a deeply divided country, and the riots led to rising calls for someone – anyone – to stop the violence before it was too late. Jonathan went on national television and made a frightening comparison. ‘If anything at all, these acts of mayhem are sad reminders of the events which plunged our country into 30 months of an unfortunate civil war', the president said, evoking the Biafran conflict more than four decades earlier.

At the time of the speech, calm was returning, a large military deployment helping to restore order, but the underlying tensions remained. Jonathan would be sworn in for his first elected term as president amid deep bitterness and resentment in much of the country's north. While election observers called the polls a significant improvement over previous years despite major problems and said they believed Jonathan to be the legitimate winner, many in the north still felt the vote had been stolen. Some academics
and politicians from the north said they were seeing signs of a class war develop since rioters in cities such as Kano went after not only perceived political enemies, but also those believed to be wealthy or corrupt. Tanko Yakasai, a veteran northern politician and power broker, told me in the living room of his home in Kano that he feared something akin to a mass revolt if poverty and unemployment were not addressed. ‘People will come to destroy my house', he said. ‘Those unemployed youths will just vent out their anger regardless of the consequences, and they will attack anybody who appears to be a well-to-do person.'

The rioting was not caused by the Boko Haram insurgency, but it further exposed the insecurity confronting an inexperienced president and the country he had come to lead through various turns of fate. He would have another reminder after being sworn in for his first elected term under heavy security in Eagle Square in Abuja more than a month after the rioting. In the hours following Jonathan's inauguration, bomb blasts blamed on Boko Haram went off in four separate cities, killing about 20 people.
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It was a common refrain before 2011: Nigerians would never blow themselves up for any cause. They were too individualistic. The country can often feel like a brutally cut-throat place – every man for himself, with extremely difficult, if not impossible, odds for the millions of desperately poor. President Jonathan had apparently also subscribed to a version of this view. Back in February 2010, as ex-US president George W. Bush visited Nigeria, he and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice met with Jonathan, with part of the discussion touching on the case of the so-called underwear bomber, a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his attempted bombing on Christmas Day two months earlier, when he sought to set off explosives on a flight into Detroit in the United States. The case had shaken Nigerians, but Abdulmutallab had travelled to Yemen and was believed to have been recruited into
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, so many people back home viewed him as an aberration.

‘Jonathan joked that “Nigerians don't want to die” and that suicide bombers like Abdulmutallab possessed “traits alien to the nation”, which were usually inculcated from abroad', according to a US diplomatic cable describing the meeting with Jonathan, who was then still acting president. ‘He observed that most extremists since September 11 2001, have not come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and “had stayed in some of the best cities in the world, but received some bad influences while they were there.”'
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The analysis ignored the deep frustration, desperation and hopelessness among young people in his country, not to mention Nigerians' fervent religious beliefs. Such frustration, coupled with the chance for families to benefit financially and the promise of a better life achieved through martyrdom, would prove to be a recipe for disaster in Nigeria, as it has elsewhere.
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So much would change in 2011, when low-grade, homemade explosives and gun battles would give way to a frightening new reality that the Nigerian authorities were utterly unprepared to confront. The insurgents would use new weapons and strategies, selecting targets that seemed meant to deliberately inflame religious and ethnic tensions. There would be signs of an emerging new offshoot that included members with ties to Al-Qaeda's arm in northern Africa and which would seek to imitate foreign jihadist groups. But perhaps worst of all, Boko Haram would begin to use suicide bombers with devastating results.

A first glimpse of what lay ahead occurred in June 2011. In photographs and video later distributed to journalists by purported Boko Haram members and posted to a website which was later taken down, a smiling man holding an AK-47 waved from the driver's seat of a car. He was identified as Mohammed Manga, a 35-year-old with five children who had been a follower of Mohammed Yusuf when the Boko Haram leader was still alive.
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According to
those who distributed the images, he was also Nigeria's first suicide bomber, and the pictures showing him waving goodbye were taken just before his attack.

On 16 June 2011, Manga manoeuvred his car on to the grounds of police headquarters after a convoy that included the national police chief at the time, Hafiz Ringim. It was late morning, about 11 a.m., the building crowded, the car park filled with vehicles. A police warden was said to have intercepted Manga's car and directed it into an area of the car park to undergo an inspection.
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It was there that the blast would occur, killing Manga, the officer and at least one other person, while destroying rows of cars and leaving a fire blazing in the car park. The police chief's convoy was not hit, and it was not clear why the bomber had not sought to reach the building or whether the explosives had gone off prematurely. There were also suggestions that the bomber had sought to get out of the car before the blast, raising questions over whether it was intended to be a suicide attack. An initial police statement, however, flatly called it a suicide bombing – Nigeria's first – and it has since been generally accepted as being such.

A message had been sent. It seemed Boko Haram was now ready to employ suicide attacks, and one of its ‘martyrs' had barely missed either blowing up Nigeria's police headquarters or killing the country's police chief. A man claiming to be a Boko Haram spokesman said the group was ready to deploy more bombers and that the explosives had been brought in from abroad – a possibility, though homemade bombs, even powerful ones, do not require much expertise and explosives are readily available in Nigeria. In a story written by Nigerian journalist Ahmad Salkida, known for having sources within Boko Haram, the spokesman who identified himself as Abu Zaid said Manga acted as something of a runner for Boko Haram when Yusuf was still alive, travelling to neighbouring Benin and also Dubai while helping with an ‘arms build-up'. It was not clear if Zaid meant he purchased arms in those places.

‘Abu Zaid also confided in this newspaper that Manga left a will of over four million naira [$24,000 dollars] to his two daughters and three sons and urged fellow believers to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Allah', Salkida wrote in his story. ‘This, the group said, is evident in the last-minute pictures of Manga, believed to have been taken at a camp somewhere in Borno state.'
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