Boko Haram v Nigeria’s crooks

Posted on 12 May 2014 - 06:24pm

Eric S. Margolis

THE kidnapping of some 200 girls in northern Nigeria has sparked world outrage. It's a perfect media sensation: exotic locale and remarkably nasty kidnappers from a northern rebel movement, Boko Haram.

I've long been a connoisseur of Third World nasties, starting way back in the 60's with Haiti's voodoo chief, Papa Doc. Most have been nobodies who achieved instant international prominence by shooting off their mouths, making lurid threats and committing some dramatic outrage.

The latest is Boko Haram's chief, a certain Abubakar Shekau. This lunatic has become a world bogeyman by kidnapping the school girls, gleefully prancing in front of TV cameras, and vowing to sell them into marital slavery.

Howls of fury erupted from leftist women's groups in the US, and from President Barack Obama's liberal warrior women, Susan Rice and UN ambassador Susan Powers. Hillary Clinton lost no time in jumping on this vote-winning issue.

In a truly heart-warming gesture, China says it will send "specialists" to aid the hunt for the missing girls. This is really about China's race for Africa's resources and its growing competition there with the US and Europe. The US wants its troops there before the Chinese arrive.

Few people anywhere cared much about the thousands of Afghan villagers buried alive last week by a monster mud slide. Even fewer that Boko Haram's previous rampages in northern Nigeria have killed over 1,500 civilians. Or that the thuggish Nigerian army and police's brutal reprisals killed thousands of Muslim villagers.

Few outraged westerners knew that stealing girls is a traditional pastime in sub-Saharan Africa and child brides are second only to cattle rustling.

There was no understanding in Washington that the tribal chaos and bloodshed now seething in South Sudan is merely a continuation of traditional raiding for cattle and women between rival Dinka and Neuer tribes.

Washington failed to take this into account when it engineered the breakup of Sudan to create South Sudan as an oil-rich US vassal state.

American foreign policy reacts to oil and gas as my cats do to catnip. Now, under the pretext of deep concern for the missing schoolgirls, the US and Nigeria's former colonial master, Britain, are rushing intelligence agents and special forces to this vast nation of 170 million, Africa's largest.

Faux humanitarian missions are the rage for western intervention in the Third World. Libya and Syria offer vivid examples. US special forces are now operating out of Djibouti and Uganda in east Africa, ostensibly hunting fanatics of the Lord's Resistance Army, a bunch of drug-crazed primitives hiding in dense forests.

The US air base in Djibouti is being expanded to accommodate 4,000 military personnel and more attack drones.

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil and gas producer. Over 40% of its exports go to the United States, supplying 10% of America's energy needs. Nearby Angola has become another major energy supplier.

Nigeria has important mineral and farming assets. Yet it remains mired in the deepest, shameful poverty. One per cent of the population controls all the wealth and steals billions annually. In fact, the UN estimates almost all of Nigeria's vast oil wealth has been stolen, squandered or stashed in Switzerland.

Oil revenues flow directly to the government, then to powerful state governors. The only thing that trickles down to Nigerians is rain. Northern Nigeria, mostly Muslim, is dirt poor. Oil wealth goes to the better off Christian south.

The north's Hausa and Fulani peoples have bitterly resented the massive theft of the nation's resources by the more nimble southerners favoured by British colonial rule. In fact, Britain was at fault for creating the multi-ethnic mess that is Nigeria, another colonial Frankenstein state, like Iraq or Myanmar.

Boko Haram's rampage must be seen in this context, a popular uprising against Nigeria's limitless government corruption, poverty, and resource theft. Boko uses the idiom of Islam but there is nothing Islamic about it.

As in other parts of the Muslim world, reformers call for imposition of Islamic law as an antidote to endemic corruption of governments and courts that has been too often fostered by western colonialism.

Screaming "Islamic terrorism" won't defuse Nigeria's coming explosion. Considered one of the world's most corrupt nations, Nigeria has to clean up its act – and fast.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments:letters@thesundaily.com

Boko Haram threatens to sell abducted Nigerian girls

Posted on 6 May 2014 - 04:41pm
Last updated on 6 May 2014 - 05:14pm

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KANO: Islamist extremist sect Boko Haram on Monday claimed responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 school girls from northern Nigeria and threatened to "sell" them.

"I am the one who abducted them," Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video message seen by dpa. "I will continue to sell the girls of 9 years, 10 years, because they are ripe and we have a market for them."

Standing in front of an armoured personnel carrier, Shekau said, "We will continue taking the girls because they are slaves."

The leader of Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful," vowed to continue attacking Western education in Africa's most populous nation.

The United States on Monday said it is sending a State Department delegation led by Sarah Sewall to Nigeria in the coming days to meet with senior government officials about "this despicable incident," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

Many of the girls likely have been moved out of Nigeria to neighbouring countries, she said. "The State Department has been in touch with the Nigerian government about what we might do to help support its efforts to find and free these young women," Harf said, adding that the US will continue to provide counter-terrorism assistance to help Nigeria develop a comprehensive approach to combating Boko Haram.

US President Barack Obama has been briefed several times about the abduction, and his national security team continues to monitor the situation closely, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"We view what has happened there as an outrage and a terrible tragedy," Carney said. US conter-terrorism assistance to Nigeria focuses on information sharing and on improving Nigeria's forensics and investigative capacity, he said.

"We are working with the Nigerian government to strengthen its criminal justice system and increase confidence in the government by supporting its efforts to hold those responsible for violence accountable," he said, noting that the US provided approximately 3 million dollars in law enforcement assistance to Nigeria in 2013.

The teenage girls were abducted from a boarding school on April 14 in the town of Chibok, near Borno state capital Maiduguri. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said at the weekend that at least 80% of the kidnapped girls were Christian and promised to intensify efforts to find them.

The kidnapping sparked mass protests against the government's handling of the incident. Nigerian police on Monday detained a woman who organised the protests.

The arrest was reportedly ordered by first lady Patience Jonathan, who does not have a constitutional power to give such orders. Naomi Mutu Nyadar, who heads the Bring Back Our Girls movement to pressure the government to find the missing girls, was arrested in Chibok, human rights activists told dpa on the condition of anonymity.

Nyadar, who led demonstrations over the weekend, was brought to the capital Abuja for questioning where she is in custody at a local police station, according to witnesses.

It remains unclear under on what charges Nyadar was detained. The police could not be reached for comment. Borno is one of three northern states that Nigeria's government placed under a state of emergency to curb Boko Haram attacks.

Boko Haram has been active in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, carrying out attacks against government institutions and civilians. Since 2009, more than 6,000 people have been killed in the violence. – dpa

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Boko Haram v Nigeria’s crooks

Posted on 12 May 2014 - 06:24pm

Eric S. Margolis

THE kidnapping of some 200 girls in northern Nigeria has sparked world outrage. It's a perfect media sensation: exotic locale and remarkably nasty kidnappers from a northern rebel movement, Boko Haram.

I've long been a connoisseur of Third World nasties, starting way back in the 60's with Haiti's voodoo chief, Papa Doc. Most have been nobodies who achieved instant international prominence by shooting off their mouths, making lurid threats and committing some dramatic outrage.

The latest is Boko Haram's chief, a certain Abubakar Shekau. This lunatic has become a world bogeyman by kidnapping the school girls, gleefully prancing in front of TV cameras, and vowing to sell them into marital slavery.

Howls of fury erupted from leftist women's groups in the US, and from President Barack Obama's liberal warrior women, Susan Rice and UN ambassador Susan Powers. Hillary Clinton lost no time in jumping on this vote-winning issue.

In a truly heart-warming gesture, China says it will send "specialists" to aid the hunt for the missing girls. This is really about China's race for Africa's resources and its growing competition there with the US and Europe. The US wants its troops there before the Chinese arrive.

Few people anywhere cared much about the thousands of Afghan villagers buried alive last week by a monster mud slide. Even fewer that Boko Haram's previous rampages in northern Nigeria have killed over 1,500 civilians. Or that the thuggish Nigerian army and police's brutal reprisals killed thousands of Muslim villagers.

Few outraged westerners knew that stealing girls is a traditional pastime in sub-Saharan Africa and child brides are second only to cattle rustling.

There was no understanding in Washington that the tribal chaos and bloodshed now seething in South Sudan is merely a continuation of traditional raiding for cattle and women between rival Dinka and Neuer tribes.

Washington failed to take this into account when it engineered the breakup of Sudan to create South Sudan as an oil-rich US vassal state.

American foreign policy reacts to oil and gas as my cats do to catnip. Now, under the pretext of deep concern for the missing schoolgirls, the US and Nigeria's former colonial master, Britain, are rushing intelligence agents and special forces to this vast nation of 170 million, Africa's largest.

Faux humanitarian missions are the rage for western intervention in the Third World. Libya and Syria offer vivid examples. US special forces are now operating out of Djibouti and Uganda in east Africa, ostensibly hunting fanatics of the Lord's Resistance Army, a bunch of drug-crazed primitives hiding in dense forests.

The US air base in Djibouti is being expanded to accommodate 4,000 military personnel and more attack drones.

Nigeria is Africa's leading oil and gas producer. Over 40% of its exports go to the United States, supplying 10% of America's energy needs. Nearby Angola has become another major energy supplier.

Nigeria has important mineral and farming assets. Yet it remains mired in the deepest, shameful poverty. One per cent of the population controls all the wealth and steals billions annually. In fact, the UN estimates almost all of Nigeria's vast oil wealth has been stolen, squandered or stashed in Switzerland.

Oil revenues flow directly to the government, then to powerful state governors. The only thing that trickles down to Nigerians is rain. Northern Nigeria, mostly Muslim, is dirt poor. Oil wealth goes to the better off Christian south.

The north's Hausa and Fulani peoples have bitterly resented the massive theft of the nation's resources by the more nimble southerners favoured by British colonial rule. In fact, Britain was at fault for creating the multi-ethnic mess that is Nigeria, another colonial Frankenstein state, like Iraq or Myanmar.

Boko Haram's rampage must be seen in this context, a popular uprising against Nigeria's limitless government corruption, poverty, and resource theft. Boko uses the idiom of Islam but there is nothing Islamic about it.

As in other parts of the Muslim world, reformers call for imposition of Islamic law as an antidote to endemic corruption of governments and courts that has been too often fostered by western colonialism.

Screaming "Islamic terrorism" won't defuse Nigeria's coming explosion. Considered one of the world's most corrupt nations, Nigeria has to clean up its act – and fast.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments:letters@thesundaily.com

Boko Haram hits the screen and censors hit back

Posted on 15 October 2013 - 05:25am
Last updated on 15 October 2013 - 11:05am

 

ACCRA (Oct 15, 2013): A vicious would-be suicide bomber is heading for Nigeria's vast metropolis of Lagos and only a down-on-her-luck prostitute can stop a horrific attack.

This ominous fiction forms part of "Boko Haram", a new film by Ghanaian-Nigeria director Pascal Amanfo, which has been banned by censors in Ghana and shunned by cinema owners in Nigeria.

A movie inspired by the very real and brutal Islamist group active in Nigeria was potentially so inflammatory that it was released in the country with the title "Nation Under Siege" to avoid a backlash.

"Boko Haram", loosely translated, means "Western education is forbidden" and the group has said it is fighting to impose a strict Islamic state in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.

Amanfo admits his film raises uncomfortable questions about the Boko Haram conflict, which has left thousands dead in northern Nigeria since 2009 - including the 40 students massacred in their sleep at the Yobe State College of Agriculture on Sept 29.

"I want to provoke people to see these things," he said.

But he was not expecting to see it banned.

Brisk sales in Ghanaian capital

For weeks after its March release, the film made brisk sales in Accra, where DVDs are sold on the street from shipping container store fronts or off makeshift wooden shelves for a couple of dollars.

But when the Ghanaian film control board found out about "Boko Haram", it ordered all the promotional posters torn down, saying the film was released without authorisation, while police swooped down on vendors at a busy bus station in the capital and confiscated the copies they were selling.

Its producer was also arrested and only freed after paying a 2,000 cedi ($920, 680 euro) fine.

"We would not allow a film with the title 'Boko Haram' to be released in Ghana," said Ken Addy of the Ghana Cinematographic Exhibition Board of Control. "We realised this was a film we had to be careful about so as not to antagonise a neighbouring country."

Some scenes depict defenceless villagers being gunned down and children murdered by jihadist gunmen, evoking the style of attack Boko Haram has used during its uprising.

Some aspects of the plot are inspired by popular but unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, including claims that senior Nigerian politicians are behind the bloodshed.

In one contentious incident in the film, an extremist discusses a safe house in Lagos financed by a lawmaker sympathetic to Boko Haram.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan said last year he believed Boko Haram backers were in his government, but later distanced himself from that remark. No politician or official has ever been concretely tied to the insurgency.

The Ghana film board chief Addy declined to comment on its content beyond saying that "Boko Haram" would not get approval for sale in Ghana without a name change and the removal of certain gruesome scenes.

Telling the stories of our society

Mustapha Adams, head of Ghana's Film Distributors Association, speculated that some were concerned the film sought to arouse sympathy for Boko Haram, or even that finance had potentially been raised among supporters of the extremist group.

"There were a lot of questions," he told AFP.

For Adams, the paramount issue is ensuring that Ghana and Nigeria, which are both trying to develop their cultural sectors, do not crack down on free artistic expression.

He described the response to "Boko Haram" by Ghanaian officials as an overreaction, saying: "What is there to hide?"

In Nigeria, the film was released on DVD but Amanfo said many cinema owners recoiled when approached about screening the movie, which cost roughly US$18,000 to make.

One theatre manager in the capital Abuja said he could not imagine showing it in the city where Boko Haram blew up a United Nations building in 2011, killing at least 25 people.

Nollywood, as Nigeria's film industry is known, is the third largest in the world, churning out hundreds of typically low-budget films each year, sometimes involving witchcraft or divine intervention with a little sexual promiscuity thrown in.

Ghana's much smaller industry ("Ghollywood") generally mimics the Nollywood formula, which has generated films with massive popularity across Africa, even if their reach outside the continent has been limited.

But some of the region's directors have been trying to change both style and themes, seeking to explore contemporary issues like Islamic extremism or political corruption while moving away from traditional tales driven by magic and mysticism.

"Boko Haram" - in which a radical Islamist bomber has a life-altering conversation with a commercial sex worker - may not be a study in gritty realism.

But Amanfo said the reaction has been frustrating because he believed his film was targeted simply for trying to achieve a filmmaker's core mission: to probe current and relevant issues.

"If we can't tell the stories of our society then we have failed as artists." – AFP

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