Why you should pray for Leah Sharibu on 25 March

Leah Sharibu - screenshot

Six weeks ago, 105 girls were kidnapped from their school in Dapchi, in northern Nigeria. They were taken by Boko Haram, the jihadist group responsible for abducting the Chibok girls in 2014, and for hundreds of suicide bombings since then. On March 21st, 104 girls were returned to Dapchi. The missing girl is Leah Sharibu. Her father, Sharibu Nata, says that since Leah is a Christian, and because she refused to renounce her faith, she is still being held by Boko Haram.

The Christian Association of Nigeria has named March 25th as a day of prayer for Leah, and President Buhari has vowed to ensure she is safely returned to her family in Dapchi. However, this episode should concern Christians and moderate Muslims in Nigeria and elsewhere.
It is widely acknowledged in Nigeria that the government paid a ransom for the return of the Dapchi girls, as they did for the Chibok girls, although officials deny it. It is also alleged that Boko Haram gave the government official said to be complicit in the Dapchi kidnapping a percentage of the ransom. This would suggest that President Buhari's campaign to crack down on both corruption and Islamist sympathisers within his administration is ineffective.

Recent studies of the Islamist movement (see below) describe Boko Haram's use of kidnapping, bank robbery, and extortion as standard fundraising tactics. As they have lost territory, they have looted the homes and shops of the very Muslim communities for whom they claim to be fighting their holy war. However, hypocrisy is not the sole preserve of the terrorists. It is also well known that some officers have sold Boko Haram military supplies which are then used to kill Nigerian soldiers and civilians. Former President Goodluck Jonathan's security advisor, Sambo Dasuki, is currently on trial for the disappearance of $2 billion from the budget earmarked to fight Boko Haram.
Your correspondent has interviewed village leaders in Plateau State who accused the security services of repeatedly avoiding confronting Boko Haram when they attack Christian communities. Despite repeated phone calls requesting help, the army and police left civilians for eight hours or more while Boko Haram worked their way methodically through neighbourhoods, slaughtering Christians at leisure. They eventually arrived with a mechanical digger with which village leaders were to dig a mass grave.

In the case of the Chibok girls' abduction in 2014, local parents said the security services vanished just before the Islamists arrived. When the Dapchi girls were returned home, the security services were nowhere to be seen. They did not try to apprehend the terrorists on their way out of Dapchi, and officials later gave misleading details about when the drop-off occurred.

Also concerning is the heroes' welcome accorded Boko Haram as they entered Dapchi with the 104 girls. Despite the devastation the Islamist insurgency has brought to northern Nigeria since 2009, the group evidently remains popular in some Muslim neighbourhoods. Those who have studied Boko Haram suggest this uncomfortable fact reflects the disgust felt by ordinary Nigerians toward their corrupt ruling elite and the Nigerian state.

In "Boko Haram - the history of the African jihadist movement," Alexander Thurston explains that the group's leaders have tapped into decades of public fury at their self-enriching politicians who are seen to have benefited from Western education and institutions. In 2006, the head of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission estimated that $380 billion had been stolen or wasted since independence in 1960. Despite its enormous oil wealth, Nigeria remains desperately poor: 70% of people in the mainly Muslim north have never attended school. Boko Haram's leaders have skilfully used simple language to place the blame for the nation's woes on the Western (Christian) system that produced its kleptomaniac rulers.

Boko Haram have also fomented a culture of pan-Islamic grievance. In mosques across northern Nigeria, men who do not know what year they were born are nevertheless well informed about Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the West's modern "crusades" (to use George W Bush's term) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thurston stresses that the Nigerian government's inept and heavy-handed military approach to Boko Haram is unlikely to win the trust of Muslim communities. As ever, political problems require political solutions rather than mass incarceration of Muslim boys randomly plucked from their homes, he suggests.

Another inconvenient truth is offered by academic Hilary Matfess, who has studied the role of women in Boko Haram. So dire is the status of women and girls in many parts of Nigeria that life as a Boko Haram "wife" may be seen as an improvement on their normal existence. Women interviewed by Matfess said they were given the chance to become literate and study, rather than spending each day working in the baking sun, trying to make food grow in the arid soil, treated like slaves by their male relatives.

Boko Haram began as a mass preaching movement, challenging the elite ruling class in northern Nigeria whom they denounced as a disgrace to Islam. When their leader, Mohammad Yusuf, was killed by the Nigerian army in questionable circumstances in 2009, the group morphed into a jihadist, terrorist insurgency. They targeted Muslims who disputed Boko Haram's right to speak for the entire faith, as well as Christians and teachers. They have also destroyed hospitals and other symbols of the Nigerian state. Yet, as their territory grew, they did not attempt to create an Islamic society or the pure Muslim institutions they claimed were necessary. Their focus, writes Thurston, was on destruction.

Commentators claim the Nigerian security services have largely failed, merely pushing the insurgents out of the urban areas and into the bush. However, as the conflict has become "internationalised," the armies of neighbouring Chad and Niger, operating in Nigeria, have succeeded in driving Boko Haram out of their previously-held territory. Chad's President Deby subsequently complained that Nigeria allowed towns taken from Boko Haram by the Chadian army to revert to the jihadists, such was their incompetence.

As Boko Haram has retreated, they have found shelter in remote areas of Niger, and the Far North of Cameroon, where they enslave girls and women, forcing them to become suicide bombers. In 2016, there were 120 such Boko Haram bombs in Niger, whereas they group exploded 133 in Nigeria. It is a cause of some frustration to Nigerians that the international media has covered the kidnapping of school girls, while ignoring the ongoing massacres of civilians caused by these forced suicide bombers. Nevertheless, surely Leah Sharibu, and thousands of unnamed abductees and other victims like her, deserve our prayers.

Rebecca Tinsley's novel about Africa: 'When the stars fall to earth' is available on Amazon.

Further reading about Boko Haram:

Mike Smith 'Boko Haram - Inside Nigeria's Unholy War'
Hilary Matfess 'Women and the war on Boko Haram'
Alexander Thurston 'Boko Haram - the history of the African jihadist movement'