On July 30, 2009, Nigeria’s security forces solved a problem. After a month of gory hostilities and uprisings across the country’s northeast, they had surrounded the home of the instigator and chief culprit. Seven years after founding his charismatic Islamic cult, “Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād” AKA “Boko Haram,” Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf was at the end of the road. A violent campaign of civilian beheadings and bombings of police stations had culminated in a military siege on his wife’s parents’ house in Maiduguri.
After being arrested there and detained by the military, he was handed over to the Nigeria Police Force, who whisked him over to the Maiduguri police headquarters. The police then did what they do, and emerged with a statement claiming that he sustained a fatal gunshot while trying to escape. Several eyewitness accounts claimed that the police in fact summarily executed him outside the Maiduguri force HQ, and soon explicit photos emerged of Yusuf’s mangled, bullet-ridden body. Problem solved!
Prosecuting Yusuf and his violent lieutenants would have been the better option than murdering him and hoping Boko Haram would die with him
Nothing has been learned
Of course as we now know, that singular event on July 30, 2009 ended up having extensive consequences on the lives and well-being of millions of Nigerians over the ensuing decade. The extrajudicial execution of Mohammed Yusuf, in the minds of Nigeria’s secur-ocrats, would be like cutting the head off the snake – once he was gone, his followers would disperse and normalcy would return. You could almost forgive them for reading the situation that way back then, because who could have predicted that Boko Haram would turn into the monster it is today?
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Instead of fixing the problem however, that singular act of gratuitous violence ended up becoming the proverbial spark that preceded the explosion. Over the next decade, anything from 50,000 to 110,000 civilians perished at the hands of Boko Haram, depending on who is doing the counting. Millions more were displaced as rampaging Fulani militia acting in tandem with Boko Haram terrorists enacted what is increasingly being recognised globally as an ethnoreligious genocide in Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt. It turned out that prosecuting Yusuf and his violent lieutenants would have been the better option than murdering him and hoping Boko Haram would die with him.
Unfortunately, almost exactly 12 years later, Nigeria is back with another July 2009 moment, and nothing appears to have been learned in the intervening period. Once again, the person at the centre of the brewing conflagration is a charismatic group leader who oversees a small militia. Once again, following a period of violence blamed on this militia, the person has been nabbed and is in the hands of the authorities. The same people from 2009 are still in and around the security architecture, and you can literally hear them baying for Nnamdi Kanu’s blood. Like Yusuf, the calculation is “Kill him now and end this!” That would be a tragic mistake.
For goodness sake, don’t kill Nnamdi Kanu!
Looking at the jubilation that followed the news of Kanu’s arrest in some quarters around Nigeria’s political formations, one would be forgiven for thinking that it represents some type of genuine result. Presumably, Nnamdi Kanu’s arrest would lead to a reduction in violent incidents across Nigeria, or it would solve the brewing food crisis being incubated by the decimation of Nigeria’s farming communities. Maybe it would even lead to an uptick in investment sentiment as the Nigerian state demonstrates its capacity to get a security problem under control.
In reality of course, Kanu’s arrest does none of those things. It merely serves as red meat for the entertainment and appeasement of a political base in the north, which has been trained to permanently view itself through the prism of the 1967-1970 genocide that we euphemistically call the ‘Nigerian Civil War.’ Nigeria is not in any way safer for having got hold of Nnamdi Kanu – much the opposite in fact. Like in Yusuf’s Case, Nnamdi Kanu’s real leadership position lies in his considerable ability to deploy his strengths as an orator and rhetoricist to provoke strong reactions and fierce loyalty in his followers. Merely getting rid of him will solve nothing and will in fact, complicate things considerably.
When Yusuf died, Boko Haram merely morphed into a new iteration under his deputy Abubakar Shekau. This new iteration was more violent, belligerent and brutal than anything Yusuf could ever have managed. While he was no stranger to violence, it is important to remember that Yusuf was at heart an Imam who used to sit around with friends like Isa Pantami to politely discuss the type of Jihad they wanted to enact on Nigeria. If there is such a thing as a “moderate terrorist,” Yusuf was it. Killing him extrajudicially and circulating photos of his mangled corpse did NOT have the effect the securocrats expected.
His followers instead got enraged and banded together under his angriest, most extreme lieutenant, and the rest is history. As his example showed, simply cutting off the head works only when the adversary is a snake. An armed robbery gang is a snake. A kidnapping syndicate is a snake. An ideology on the other hand, is a hydra. The more heads you cut off, the more heads sprout to replace the fallen. The basic mistake made in 2009 was not recognising Boko Haram as an ideology, first and foremost.
Knowing Nigeria’s securocrats, they will gladly repeat the same mistake again. Is it not Nigeria?
