By: A G Abubakar

The insurgency in the northeast of the country is estimated to have consumed the lives of more than thirty thousand individuals and displaced millions from their homes since it’s outbreak in 2009. In addition, about a 100 Chibok girls abducted in 2014 are still being held in captivity, with many put in the family way (Amnesty International, 2024).The 109 Dapchi school girls abducted in 2018 were luckier. They got released after a deal with the government, except Ms. Leah Sharibu and one other. Chibok and Dapchi are settlements in Borno and Yobe States, respectively.

The group’s strength, thought to be degraded, seems to have suddenly gotten resuscitated. The execution of more than fifty innocent people, combined, in parts of Kukawa, Baga, Gwoza, Chibok, Damboa local government areas of Borno state is a chilling reminder of the worst of the heyday of the Boko Haram (Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad) insurgency in the Lake Chad region of Nigeria, and indeed, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger republics. It creates a feeling of dejavu.

The new development is a grim reality that the insurgency is still alive and potent after more than one and a half decades, this time under its more organised progeny, the Islamic State in the West Africa Province (ISWAP). The two mutually antagonist entities (ISWAP/Boko Haram) seemed to have renewed their carnage by mounting ceaseless attacks on settlements in Kirawa, Pulka, and even Gwoza township. Also, not spared, were Southern Borno villages of Bamzir, Njilang, Sabon Gari, Shikarkir, Kauji, Whuntaku, Mbalala, Pemi, Wajirko, and many more, in Chibok, and Damboa LGAs, where residents and places of worship were raised down. Even the military was not spared as over half a dozen paid the supreme price during their recent encounters with the insurgents.

Before then, and in the early part of last year, the insurgents murdered about 170 innocent people in Mafa and Sasa rural areas of Yobe State. This was aside the incessant abductions the group (s) carried out along the Damaturu-Buratai-Biu link; a highway of nightmare!

The upsurge in violent activities in Borno State, the birthplace and epicentre of Boko Haram, is coming after years of lull. A lull that made the then Chief of Army Staff, to declare that the insurgency has been “technically defeated.” The optimism, however, now seems to be premature and misplaced. Maybe the short interregnum of peace may not be entirely on account of the military campaigns but rather due to the internal wrangling that ensured between the main Boko Haram and its offshoot, ISWAP.

The latter was led by Abu Musab al’Barnawi, the son of the late founder of the Boko Haram movement, Muhammad Yusuf.
The former was headed by Abubakar Shekau, Yusuf’s ally, and second in command. Shekau was believed to have been killed, or rather, he killed himself during a factional conflict between his group (Boko Haram) and that of Abu Musab’s ISWAP in 2021. Since then, both groups have had a high turnover of leadership. ISWAP is currently thought to be led by either Abu Ubaidah Bako (Bako Gorgore) or Abu Ibrahim, while Boko Haram has allegedly been under one Bakura Doro

Casually, the schism between the two may seem local, but the problem really has something to do with the differences among global jihadist players. Boko Haram and ISWAP just got sucked into the orbit of the Alqa’eda and Islamic State idealogies of Osama Bin Laden and Abubakar Al’baghdadi, both of whom were killed by the US counter insurgency forces. For direction , Boko Haram initially looked up to the ISIL (Islamic Statein Iraq and Lavent), the forerunner of ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) and later Islamic State (IS). The group allegedly switched camps to al’ qaeda, while ISWAP maintains its allegiance to Islamic State (IS). Thus, it has since remained a credible franchise of the IS in West Africa, popularly known as Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP).

With the two sharing the same cradle, it became apparent that one has to give way. For years, therefore, the two factions have been locked in a war of attrition. A supremacy battle that eventually consumed Shekau (the Boko Haram faction) in 2021. A development which paved the way for ISWAP to gain upper hand in establishing its dominance in the Lake Chad Basin region covering Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon with its Command and Control Center on the border between Nigeria and Chad. It pushed the remnants of Boko Haram to the fringes of Yobe and Borno States, who still carry out sporadic attacks on soft targets.

ISWAP tried to prove its “military” capability and fire power last year by attacking a Chadian garrison on its Nigerian border where over 40 soldiers were killed. They have since stepped up these attacks in parts of Northern and Southern Borno. This time, in a more coordinated and professional fashion, taking on both the military and hapless civilians alike in a killing spree. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index, last year, the ISWAP “perpetrated three of the 20 deadliest terrorist attacks worldwide,” last year.

The insurgents have equally increased their activities in other parts of Borno, and Yobe such as Geidam, Dapchi, Gorgore, Talala, Buni-Yadi etc with a high potential for a spillover into contiguous states of Adamawa, Gombe and Bauchi. As it were, the Sambisa Forest, which serves as a safe haven for the insurgents/terrorists, stretching across some of these states right from the Chad basin region. The forest provides a corridor from Borno, through Yobe, to Gombe before linking the Yankari Game Reserve in Bauchi State.

It’s a highway patronised by negative characters, including armed bandits/herdsmen and illegal arms trafficking that originates from Libya, through the ungoverned spaces in the Sahara and down to the vast unmanned boarder towns of Malamfatori, Abadam and Damasak. Yet, others are trafficked along the Bama-Kawuri-Konduga, “forest belt” that cascade from Waza Game Reserve in Cameroon to the same Sambisa. Poor road networks in affected areas serve as added advantage to insurgency activities.

The ISWAP’s new campaign was to cut Southern Borno from the North. Ditto with Yobe. So far, the insurgents have succeeded in cutting off Biu to Maiduguri road via Damboa. They have been threatening the Gwoza-Maiduguri highway with reasonable success. The Damaturu-Biu, road connecting Southern Yobe and Borno, have remained under constant threats. The high profile abductions along the highway, which included a Chief Judge and a retired engineer, attest to this.

The remnants of the Boko Haram have been busy bringing down public infrastructure like power lines (towers), healthcare centres, and schools in rural Borno and Yobe states. Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, has not been with a constant national grid power source for some years. A special arrangement had to be put in place to energise the city at a huge cost, and which may prove unsustainable in the future. All because ISWAP/BH have found a subtle way of “punishing” the people collectively for not subscribing to their jihadist-ideology and so rising against the government.

The need for a change of approach from containment to dislogement can not be overstated. The military should go on the full offensive. ISWAP/BK operations are no longer clandestine. They move in an open and military fashion. The issue of waiting for “cooperation,” “credible information,” and “actionable intelligence” may no longer be convincing. They are there for all to see! They are bold, daring, and visible.

The military campaigns should include opening up the insurgency enclaves in Borno, especially its cells in Gwoza, Chibok, Damboa, and Katarko (Gujba), in Yobe This could be done by opening the Maiduguri-Damboa-Biu highway that traversed the entire Southern region of the state. The illegal supply routes in Northern parts of Borno and Yobe should be cut off too, to deny the insurgents free access to arms and ammunition. A motorable infrastructure put around the affected areas can go a long way in this regard. After all, experts believe that communication, mobility, troops morale, firepower, infrastructure (roads), etc, are critical success factors (CSFs) in war; conventional or guerrilla.

Keeping the highway open shall deny the insurgents the needed incubation centres. The feeling of invincibility they now have will also evaporate. Leaving the zone for them is sending the wrong message of helplessness on the part of the national government. Imagine, if during the heyday of Boko Haram, the group had succeeded in cutting Borno/Yobe from the westward link with Kano,the nation would have been left with a “Caliphate” next door. Keeping the Maiduguri-Kano road at all costs saved the grim possibility.

ISWAP, currently runs a well structured administrative system in the Lake Chad basin made up of an Executive Council called “Shura” that oversight affairs across five or so governerates/states. one operates a legal system with a Chief Justice that runs on Shari’a and also a financial setup that includes taxation over more than a million people living under its spheres of influence. For defence, ISWAP has an armoury stocked by procured and captured weapons/equipment. This is in addition to a drone (though primitive) technology centre and a cadet training “school” for preparing future fighters that translates as Khalifa Cadet School. It is patterned along Islamic State’s Cubs of the Caliphate.

Taking the war to ISWAP/Boko Haram doorsteps appears now the much needed alternative. Nigeria can borrow a leaf from the experiences of Colombia with FARC , Sri Lanka with the Tamil Tigers, Philippines with Abu Sayyaf Group, and Indonesia in addressing the Jemaa Islam JI, movements. The longer ISWAP/Boko Haram lingers, the more malignant the movement becomes. Already it is believed that ISWAP has a latent but fast crystalising presence in parts Kwara, Oyo and Osun and Niger states. Nigeria has the capacity to rein in them. It’s a question of willpower and taming corruption.
A.G.Abubakar agbarewa@gmail.com