By: John Sunday Ojo

This article explores the dominant narrative of ill-governed or ungoverned territories in the northern region of Nigeria where informality and socioeconomic deficit fashioned the mannerism of everyday life. Reconnoitering ungoverned territories, positing that radical jihadist and non-jihadist movements and criminal-armed groups are ideologically driven by localism and informal networks, particularly in the areas unkempt by the state. The paper interrogates to what extent ungoverned spaces embolden the recruitment of criminal and terrorist groups in northern Nigeria. It explains the complex security paradoxes confronting the Nigerian state, it analyses the Boko Haram insurgency, Fulani militancy and banditry within the context of ungoverned spaces that continuously breed terrorist organizations, and criminal networks, that pose an enormous risk to human security. It adopts a qualitative approach and spatial network analysis using Geographical Information System (GIS). The paper argues that the primordial negligence of ungoverned areas with limited state surveillance or unharmonized state presence, controlled by informal networks and hybrid arrangements creates an enabling environment for warlordism, religious fanaticism and tribal self-defense forces. It further demonstrates that governance failure in these regions stimulates illegal movement of arms and ammunition, the raw material for bombs, illegal drugs and foreign machines, and becomes abodes for Boko Haram jihadist and non-Boko Haram armed groups. The paper concludes that ungoverned spaces could be morphed into a production site for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by the terrorists in the near future, thus, until the Nigerian state pays attention to the territories under-governed or poorly governed, it will become difficult to win the war against terrorism, Fulani militancy and banditry through military response. Therefore, good governance that transcends ethnic chauvinism remains a veritable weapon in conquering multilayered security quagmires facing the giant of Africa.

African Security, Volume 13, 2020 - Issue 1

Edited By Olivier J. Walther, William F.S. Miles

Since the end of the Cold War, the monopoly of legitimate organized force of many African states has been eroded by a mix of rebel groups, violent extremist organizations, and self-defence militias created in response to the rise in organized violence on the continent. African Border Disorders explores the complex relationships that bind states, transnational rebels and extremist organizations, and borders on the African continent. Combining cutting edge network science with geographical analysis, the first part of the book highlights how the fluid alliances and conflicts between rebels, violent extremist organizations and states shape in large measure regional patterns of violence in Africa. The second part of the book examines the spread of Islamist violence around Lake Chad through the lens of the violent Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, which has evolved from a nationally-oriented militia group, to an internationally networked organization. The third part of the book explores how violent extremist organizations conceptualize state boundaries and territory and, reciprocally, how do the civil society and the state respond to the rise of transnational organizations. The book will be essential reading for all students and specialists of African politics and security studies, particularly those specializing on fragile states, sovereignty, new wars, and borders as well as governments and international organizations involved in conflict prevention and early intervention in the region.

London: Routledge, 2018. 230p

By James J.F. Forest

In this monograph counterterrorism expert James Forest assesses the threat Boko Haram poses to Nigeria and U.S. national security interests. As Dr. Forest notes, Boko Haram is largely a local phenomenon, though one with strategic implications, and must be understood and addressed within its local context and the long standing grievances that motivate terrorist activity. Dr. Forest deftly explores Nigeria’s ethnic fissures and the role of unequal distribution of power in fueling terrorism. Indeed, these conditions, combined with the ready availability of weapons, contribute to Nigeria’s other security challenges including militancy in the Niger Delta and organized crime around the economic center of the country, Lagos

MacDill AFB, FL: Joint Special Operations University, 2012. 196p.

By Modupe I Akinleye.

The issue of terrorism has become one of the topmost concerns of US-Nigerian Foreign policy in connection with the GWOT. As a result of the ‘shift’ of the GWOT into Nigeria, Boko Haram was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in 2013. Extant research on Boko Haram’s terrorism in Nigeria and other parts of Africa is however premised on/driven by some essentialist thoughts and thus remains normative. Yet the proscription of Boko Haram reveals both continuities and change in relation to earlier constructs of the Nigerian state and non-state actors since the Cold War. These continuities in identity constructs therefore highlight the need for a post structural thought in understanding terrorism in Nigeria particularly and Africa generally. In particular, this thesis suggests that the labelling of Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation in Nigeria reveals the continuities of Othering of actors through the signification of ‘crises’ in policy discourse. The thesis uses Bhabha’s concept of Otherness as well as Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory to understand the construction of the ‘terrorist threat’, and the ‘United States Self’, ‘the counter terrorist state’, and the ‘terrorist other’. As no known study has undertaken to show how the labelling of Boko Haram works through discursive power and politics as well as the function of silence in meta-narratives, this research is therefore significant as the focus on policy and its implementers in Nigeria helps to unveil the silence in the discursive construction of the ‘strong’ state as the state which counters ‘evil’ terrorists. However, unlike TTS which highlights the state as a possible user of terrorism, the thesis adds to the CTS by examining how the production of the discourses within which the labelling of acts and actors of ‘terrorism’ have evolved and how practices like counter-terrorism enabled by these discourses become justified and normalized.

Bristol, UK: University of Bristol, 2019. 364p.

By Pérouse de Montclos.

This book is the first attempt to understand Boko Haram in a comprehensive and consistent way. It examines the early history of the sect and its transformation into a radical armed group. It analyses the causes of the uprising against the Nigerian state and evaluates the consequences of the on-going conflict from a religious, social and political point of view. The book gives priority to authors conducting fieldwork in Nigeria and tackles the following issues: the extent to which Boko Haram can be considered the product of deprivation and marginalisation; the relationship of the sect with almajirai, Islamic schools, Sufi brotherhoods, Izala, and Christian churches; the role of security forces and political parties in the radicalisation of the sect; the competing discourses in international and domestic media coverage of the crisis; and the consequences of the militarisation of the conflict for the Nigerian government and the civilian population, Christian and Muslim.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2014. 285p.