How Northern Nigeria's Violent History Explains Boko Haram
Long before this extremist group arose, other radicals terrorized the region, British former administrator says.

Muslim Kanuri horsemen ride in the independence day durbar in Kaduna, the regional capital of northern Nigeria at the time. Nigeria gained its independence from the U.K. in 1960.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN HARE
By John Hare, National Geographic
PUBLISHED MARCH 14, 2015
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In the northern Nigerian town of Gombe, I became a registered alcoholic at the age of 22.


The year was 1957, and I was starting out as a district officer (the last to be recruited by the British government for service in northern Nigeria) just three years before the country won its independence.

The only way I could enjoy a "drink" in Gombe—a sleepy mud-brick township, laid out by the British in the 1920s, where Islamic laws were in force—was to issue myself an "addict's license." That document allowed me to obtain liquor from the "pagan" city of Jos, 175 miles (280 kilometers) away.


In my administrative capacity, I also had the authority to issue addict's licenses to the 12 other expatriate Europeans who lived in Gombe. I doubt many other towns in the world can claim the distinction of having their entire expatriate community registered as alcoholics.

I lived in a circular, thatched mud house and rode to work on my horse, which I hitched to a rail outside my office.

Gombe was essentially a happy place, presided over by a benign and astute Muslim emir of the Fulani tribe and a team of enlightened councillors. Apart from the odd dispute over a woman or land, there was little violence. Gambling was frowned on, but a blind eye was turned toward the drumming and dancing that in a pre-television age carried on throughout the year, except during the month of Ramadan.


Kanuri men draw water at Lake Chad, in the northeast corner of Nigeria, the heart of the old Borno Empire. Today, the Nigerian army and Boko Haram have been fighting intensive battles for the town of Baga, situated by the shore of the lake.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN HARE

But today Gombe is on the front lines of the obscene and bloody battle waged by Boko Haram to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam on the whole of northern Nigeria.

How has it come to pass that 55 years after Nigeria's independence, peaceful towns are being terrorized, attracting suicide bombers and an invading army of fundamentalist Islamists? 

Boko Haram seeks to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam on the whole of northern Nigeria.
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The War for Nigeria
The answers lie in Nigeria's northeasternmost state, Borno—a 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) territory south and west of Lake Chad whose prominent inhabitants are the Muslim Kanuri tribe and where radical dissent led by brutal, fanatical men goes back well over a century.

In one burst of violence last month, Boko Haram attacked Gombe and Dadin Kowa, another sleepy town in my former administrative orbit, on the banks of the Gongola River. 

Boko Haram invaded Dadin Kowa, which translates as "tranquility for everybody," in 30-some Toyota HiLux vehicles from Borno State to the east, setting fire to houses and government offices.


In Gombe, 60 miles (95 kilometers) to the south, the Nigerian army repelled the attack and called in the air force, which strafed and bombed the militant Islamists. There were numerous casualties on both sides—possibly as many as 50—but the exact number of dead has not been reported.

In northern Nigeria, radical dissent led by brutal, fanatical men goes back well over a century.
The kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Borno State in 2014 caught the world’s attention, yet that horror was only one of more than 800 Boko Haram attacks in the preceding four years. According to Human Rights Watch, some 6,000 civilians have died at the hands of Boko Haram since 2009, more than 2,500 of them last year alone. 

I still have a strong personal link to these troubled areas. One town in Borno I knew, Kukawa, was my jumping-off point in October 2001 for a trek that took me on a 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer), three-and-a-half-month journey by camel across the Sahara to Tripoli, in Libya. It's saddening to realize that this trek would be impossible to undertake today.

The Kanuri Empire
After my time in Gombe, I was posted to Mubi 145 miles east (233 kilometers) on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. One of my main tasks was to follow the old maps and confirm the international border between Nigeria and Cameroon just prior to independence. (See "Geography in the News: Nigeria's Boko Haram Terrorists."

This involved walking 170 miles (275 kilometers) along the top of the Mandara Mountains—great bosses of granite sticking more than 3,000 feet (915 meters) into the air, strewn with rounded boulders the size of houses and stretching between Lake Chad in the far northeast of Nigeria to just beyond Yola in the south.