From Sectarianism to Terrorism in Northern Nigeria: A Closer Look at Boko Haram

Abstract

This chapter examines the emergence of Boko Haram within the broader historical, social and political context of Islamic reform movements in Northern Nigeria. It argues that the rise of Boko Haram as a radical Salafi-jihadist movement pertains not only to the legacies of Usman dan Fodio’s nineteenth-century jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate that serves as a spiritual inspiration and model for the insurgency, but also to the fragmentation of sacred authority in Northern Nigeria. The author argues that Boko Haram emerged as a formidable security threat to the corrupt Nigerian state as a result of local grievances, the failure of the northern Muslim elites to implement Shari’a, internal sectarian divisions within the Muslim Ummah, as well as predatory elite politics of clientelism that pervades Nigeria’s political landscape.