Accusations that a former state governor and
army chief have been sponsoring the Islamist
insurgents have fired up the election campaign
Almost in concert with the political parties'
calendar for choosing their presidential
candidates, the Jama'atu Ahlus Sunnah
Lidda'awati wal Jihad, widely known as Boko
Haram, is stepping up its military campaign in
the north-east and threatening to disrupt next
February's elections. Politicians have vacillated
between trying to ignore Boko Haram's Islamist
insurgency and using it against their rivals. With
Boko Haram fighters seizing several towns and
villages in north-east Nigeria and credibly
threatening to attack Maiduguri, the capital of
Borno State, it is clear that the insurgency will
be a critical electoral issue.
But it is less obvious which party will win the
argument. The governing People's Democratic
Party (PDP) claims the opposition All
Progressives Congress (APC) is sympathetic
towards, if not actively supportive of, Boko
Haram. In turn, the APC accuses the PDP
government and President Goodluck Jonathan of
serial incompetence and disregard for northern
Nigerians.
Most of that seems to wash over Abubakar
Shekau, the public face of the Boko Haram
leadership, whose video addresses make much
of his detestation for democracy, which he views
as 'worse than sodomy'. Shekau spews his
contempt for politicians fairly evenly between the
rival parties, but seems to reserve the harshest
abuse for northern politicians of any stripe.
Indeed, an attempt to set a car bomb near
Muhammadu Buhari, the APC's probable
presidential candidate, in Kaduna in July, was
blamed on Boko Haram.
Without doubt, General (retired) Buhari, a devout
Muslim who didn't grossly enrich himself when
he was military head of state, remains one of the
most popular politicians in northern Nigeria. And
his condemnation of Boko Haram as a 'bunch of
criminals' has a particular resonance with the
talakawa (common people) in the north. His
opponents, however, have capitalised on his
image as an extremist in the more prosperous
southern states. In a paper for the British
Conservative Party's Bow Group, Jacob Zenn, an
American academic writing a book on Boko
Haram, describes the APC as 'an Islamist-leanin
g party'.
Political gain
He adds that its 'likely presidential and vice-
presidential candidates, Muhammadu Buhari and
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would constitute what many
Nigerians consider to be a pro-Sharia Law
'Muslim-Muslim'. Such interpretations were
strongly rejected by the Lai Mohammed, the
APC's National Publicity Secretary, at a meeting
at Britain's Parliament on 8 September where he
argued the Jonathan government was exploiting
the insurgency for political gain.
Balancing the Islamist barbs against the APC is
the widespread dismay with the government's
failure to contain, let alone, defeat Boko Haram,
as well as concern for the fate of the more than
250 schoolgirls abducted from Chibok in April.
Cackhanded attempts by the government in
Abuja to undermine the # bringbackourgirls
campaign led by former Education Minister Oby
Ezekwesili have backfired. A particularly crass
idea – to launch a #bringbackGoodluckin2015
campaign to fire up support for a second term
for Jonathan – was hastily abandoned on 11
September in the face of public protests.
The latest furore follows accusations from
Stephen Davis, an Australian security consultant,
that Ali Modu Sheriff, a former governor of Borno
State, and Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika,
a former Chief of Army Staff, were sponsors of
Boko Haram.
Davis, who has worked for several years with
Royal Dutch Shell and with former President
Olusegun Obasanjo and Britain's Coventry
Cathedral on a peace initiative in the Niger Delta,
knows Nigeria well. He says he was in contact
with senior commanders in Boko Haram in
efforts to negotiate the release of the abducted
schoolgirls. Such accusations against Sheriff are
helpful for the opposition because he recently
defected to the PDP from the APC, which had
subsumed his old party, the All Nigeria People's
Party.
Ignoring the clamour, Jonathan's office released
a photograph showing Sheriff sitting alongside
Jonathan and Chadian President Idris Déby Itno
at the Presidential Palace in Ndjamena on 8
September. As criticism mounted, the security
services announced that they would be
interviewing Sheriff.
But the State Security Services Spokeswoman
Marilyn Ogar vigorously rejected the accusations
against Ihejirika, a Christian from the south-east,
whom she described as being at the forefront of
the struggle against Boko Haram. Critics of the
military argue that Ihejirika should be
interrogated as part of a wider probe into the
military's management of the security budget,
averaging over US$6 billion a year for the past
four years, which has swelled in line with the
deepening security crisis in north-east Nigeria.
The Maiduguri-based Seventh Division, which
was formed specially to fight the insurgency, is
the least well equipped and trained in the
country. Last month Amnesty International
published a raft of allegations of human rights
abuses by government soldiers in the north-east
as well as detailing atrocities meted out on
women and children by Boko Haram.
Abuja has repeatedly dismissed such critiques of
its soldiers, but local security experts are
puzzled at the High Command's reluctance to
use the First Division in Kaduna, the best
equipped in the country, against the insurgents.
A commonly held view in the north is that the
government is unconcerned about the weakening
of the army as its focus is mainly on securing
the oil and gas reserves in the south where
security is now partly in the hands of former
militia leaders from the Niger Delta.
Sheriff's associations with Boko Haram go back
to his time as Governor of Borno State and he
had promised to impose Sharia law, with huddud
punishments (amputations and stonings)
throughout the state but failed to deliver. His
Commissioner for Religious Affairs, Buji Foi, was
widely seen as close to Boko Haram and was
arrested during the police crackdown on the
group in 2009 during which its founder,
Mohammed Yusuf was killed. Foi also died in
police custody.
A senior APC official told Africa Confidential that
he had a credible eye-witness account of
Sheriff's continuing links to Boko Haram and its
abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls. He said that
the security services had shown no interest in
interviewing any of the schoolgirls who has
escaped from the insurgents' camp in the
Sambisa Forest, so he had little faith in a
thorough investigation of the claims against
Sheriff.
Whichever party gains the advantage in
arguments over Boko Haram, the insurgency has
entered a more destabilising phase with its
fighters controlling territory and local resources.
Should it be able to consolidate control in the
north-east and continue with attacks elsewhere
in the country, the question of who will fight and
win the elections could become increasingly
irrelevant.
Copyright © Africa Confidential 2014
http://www.africa-confidential.com

I'm sure the PDP is going to win. A lot of Nigerians are going to keep away from the elections but despite the terrorism Jonathan is sure to win at least with minute electoral score differences.