Few seem convinced by President Goodluck Jonathan’s assurances that the security situation is under control following the bombing on 16 June of Louis Edet House, the national police headquarters in Abuja. It killed at least two people and wounded seven. Agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived to help investigate claims of international terrorist links.

Initially, the bombing was said to be a lone attack but the police now claim that the Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Abubakar Ringim, had met one of the perpetrators earlier that day, perhaps to recruit an informant. The man then joined the motor convoy to the headquarters and nearly succeeded in following Ringim’s car in through the main security perimeter. But attendants directed the driver to an adjacent car park, where the vehicle exploded. If the driver had been able to follow Ringim’s car into the central parking bay, the explosion would have killed many more people.

A day later, the Islamist Boko Haram group (which roughly translates as ‘Western culture is forbidden’, though its formal name is Jama’atu Ahlus Sunnah lid Da’awati wal Jihad) claimed responsibility. ‘We are responsible for the bomb attack on the police headquarters in Abuja which was to prove a point to all who doubt our capability,’ said the group, which is based in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri. The Abuja bomb followed a trip that Ringim had made to Maiduguri to oversee the delivery of several new police vehicles which had been intended to boost police efforts against Boko Haram’s operations in the region. It was then that he made an ill-advised prediction that Boko Haram would be quickly defeated, once the police could focus on it after the elections.

After Abuja, Boko Haram militants claimed responsibility on 20 June for simultaneous bomb and gun attacks on a police station and a bank in Kankara, near the northern city of Katsina, which killed seven people, including five policemen. That attack mirrored one on men drinking in a bar in Maiduguri on 12 June: Boko Haram says it will enforce an alcohol ban everywhere, as part of its adherence to Sharia (Islamic law) and demand for an Islamic state.

Some immediate questions emerge from the latest round of attacks: Who is behind Boko Haram? How much foreign support has it got and how can it best be confronted? After downplaying its importance and regional ties for some years, Nigerian security officials now point to cross-border links.

Two years ago, when a group of Boko Haram militants organised an uprising in Borno State, police arrested their leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and claimed ‘to have shot him while he was trying to escape’ – a version of events strongly disputed by local human rights groups (AC Vol 50 No 16, Islamists raise the stakes as they take on Yar'Adua and Inside Boko Haram). Far from destroying Boko Haram, the killing of its leader prompted a wave of new attacks, which have intensified this year. Its aims are avowedly Islamist and it roundly condemns all mainstream political parties; it has been capitalising on growing resentment at the failed education system and the lack of jobs in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria. To these complaints have been added the loss of the north’s political power at the centre, in the federal government in Abuja.
 

President Jonathan’s election victory on 16 April over three northern candidates, including opposition frontrunner General Muhammadu Buhari, prompted widespread clashes in Kaduna, Kano and Bauchi states. Students and unemployed youths were at the forefront of the protests, which targeted traditional symbols of authority in the north: the palace of the Sultan of Sokoto and the homes of several other Emirs and prominent northerners seen as having backed Jonathan’s campaign and sold out their own people. Islamist groups such as Boko Haram and Hijrah concentrated on disrupting the elections by attacking registration centres and polling stations. They can now exploit the discontent in the aftermath of voting.
 

It seems their tactics are working: security sources speak of training camps of Hausa-speaking Nigerians in Burkina Faso and Niger as well as a wave of new recruits to Boko Haram across northern Nigeria. It’s harder to trace the international links, but some officials are taking seriously claims from Boko Haram that their militants, including bomb-makers, have been training in Somalia alongside Al Shabaab and Al Qaida operatives. There are also small, highly mobile affiliates of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb across the Sahel, which could provide the training and the materiel to launch the type of bombings and guerrilla attacks that Boko Haram favours.
 

Much has been made of the claim that the Abuja bombing was a suicide attack but the evidence of that is inconclusive. It looks more likely that the car bomb was either detonated externally or on a timing device and the driver failed to escape in time. Whatever the degree of outside backing for it, Boko Haram’s attack on police headquarters has prompted government to rank it as a bigger threat than the militants of the Niger Delta (see Box). Unlike the Delta crisis, there is little sign that the government has a political strategy to tackle Boko Haram, whose operations are linked to growing alienation in the north.
 

The new Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, has tried to talk to Boko Haram, which states that its preconditions for negotiation are the release of all its members from police custody, the implementation of Sharia in all states where Muslims are in the majority, the prosecution of all police officers involved in the killing of Mohammed Yusuf, and the release of a report on human rights abuses in Borno State in 2009 (written by a committee headed by the former National Security Advisor, Major Gen. [Retired] Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar).
 

Jonathan’s inner circle of veterans of the Niger Delta may see the benefits of pursuing a political track alongside the security organisations’ efforts to stop Boko Haram. Tactics such as offering contracts and other commercial inducements, which have sometimes proved effective in the Delta, would be much harder to employ in the north, where economic opportunities are at a premium. Nor can Jonathan be complacent about security in the oil-producing areas; some groups have called on Delta militants ‘to protect’ southern interests against attack in the north.
 

Other Delta militant factions want to resume the fight against the Abuja government. Writing from the Jomo Gbomo e-mail account on 6 June, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) announced a resumption of hostilities, naming the Italian oil giant ENI as a target. ‘ENI and its subsidiaries are simply thieves and cheap opportunists,’ wrote Jomo. The resumption of an oil war would mark the latest public split among militant leaders.
 

It is said that the Okah family has detested Jonathan ever since he worked for the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, visiting MEND leader Henry Okah in South Africa to urge him into the official amnesty programme in July 2009 only months before his arrest in Angola on arms-trafficking charges. The Okahs also seem to be on a collision course with the majority of gang bosses who declared support for Jonathan after his election.
 

In support of Jonathan, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (‘Tompolo’) finds his power growing daily. A few years ago, the Joint Military Task Force in the Delta deployed most of its strength to reduce his base in Gbaramatu to ashes (AC Vol 50 No 11, The fight gets more serious) but left the High Chief alive. Now he is accused of going over the heads of Jonathan’s ministers. One source said Tompolo had backed the award of the Kurutie Land project to El Markem Ventures, his preferred bidder; the former Minister for the Niger Delta, Ufot Ekaette, had initially awarded the contract to a rival company.
 

Chief Mike Johnny complains that Tompolo and his set get the most lucrative contracts in the Gbaramatu kingdom, the heartland of the Ijaw, the Delta’s largest minority group. Ijaw elders opted to award the Bomadi Foreshore Protection contract to another favoured Tompolo company. Johnny has petitioned Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, Chief Bare Etolo and Elder Godsday Orubebe, who took over the Niger Delta ministry from Ekaette. Disputes over infrastructure contracts could disrupt the relative calm in the Delta and security officials know it.

Source: www.africa-confidential.com