By Joe Brock
ABUJA, Sept 28 – Negotiating with a Nigerian Islamist sect behind a spate of bombings in Africa’s most populous nation is unlikely to succeed due to the sect’s disjointed structure and radical views.
A committee inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan submitted a report this week after investigating causes of unrest in Nigeria’s remote northeast. Its recommendations include engaging in negotiations with Boko Haram.
The sect, whose name means “Western education is forbidden”, has been blamed for near daily shootings in the northeast and has claimed bombings in the capital Abuja, including Nigeria’s first suicide blast, which killed 23 people at U.N. headquarters last month.
U.S. and other intelligence officials have said evidence suggests Boko Haram members have trained in Niger and have connections with al Qaeda’s North African wing.
Bombings in the north and the capital have rapidly overtaken attacks by militants thousands of miles away in the oil-rich Niger Delta as Nigeria’s biggest security threat.
Thousands of Delta militants, who said they were fighting for a fairer share of the country’s oil wealth, accepted an amnesty in 2009 that halted kidnappings of foreign oil workers and major attacks on oil facilities. They are now receiving stipends and some are being trained.
Boko Haram has an ill-defined command structure. Many people speak on its behalf, articulating demands that are often unclear or unattainable. It wants sharia law to be applied more widely, the local government sacked, and its jailed members freed. One of its factions said it is not interested in an amnesty deal.
The group itself has given no clear indication of whether it would be interested in negotiations with the government.
REVENGE KILLING
But the last attempt at talks ended in disaster when former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southern Christian, visited the family of late Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf this month, only for gunmen to kill Yusuf’s brother-in-law, in what security officials believe was revenge for showing interest in dialogue.
Yusuf was killed in police custody in 2009, which prompted widespread killings and helped to develop the more sophisticated radical sect today, the report said.
The presidential report said Boko Haram would react positively to involvement of northern figures, but Jonathan’s key security advisers come from the south.
“The Jonathan administration currently has no answer to a phenomenon that is loosely structured, rooted in widely held northern grievances and seemingly impervious to the kind of monetary concessions that brought Niger Delta militants in from the creeks to join the 2009 amnesty scheme,” said Ashley Elliot, West Africa Analyst at Control Risks.
“Boko Haram’s grievances and rhetoric are steeped in local political concerns ? However, the federal government is unfamiliar with conditions in the remote northeast and lacks any affinity with the local ruling party,” Elliot added.
Source: Reuters Africa newsletter
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