 are already pretty well known to most of you, I think bring something to these discussions that perhaps has been missing in some debates about Boko Haram and that in particular is some really in-depth field work that each of the three have conducted in Northern Nigeria over the last year or two. The kind of research that involves firstly getting quite close to Boko Haram and actually interviewing a lot of members of the insurgencies so try to understand Boko Haram from the inside but also engaging very closely with affected populations and with the Nigerian state. So you're going to hear I think in their presentations a reflection of this very wide this very deep field work that each of them have done and as a result of that I think they're going to tackle different dimensions of Boko Haram from what we often hear and also give us more of an insight into the responses to Boko Haram than perhaps has been in many of the discussions to date. What I'm going to do is introduce all three of them upfront and then one by one they're going to come up and give us their different tapes on the Boko Haram situation. We're first going to hear from Ata Bakindo who's a PhD student in politics at SOAS. He has the misfortune just like Inie and Bala to be supervised by me so despite that level of supervision they are actually fantastic and have produced really fantastic work. Bakindo is also apart from his work at SOAS a research fellow at the global initiative civil society and conflict which is at the University of South Florida. He's also a technical consultant to the EU's big program on de-radicalization in northern Nigeria which I'm sure he'll talk about a bit more in just a moment. This evening he's going to be focusing particularly on on these themes of reconciliation and de-radicalization. Secondly we'll hear from Inie Dele Adavaging also PhD candidate at SOAS. He's a former youth worker from Lagos. His research focuses on the construction of Islamic identities in northern Nigeria and how they function as vehicles of mobilization for Boko Haram. This evening he's going to focus mainly on issues of religion and the role of Islamic scholars in redressing many of the harms committed by the insurgency. And finally we're going to hear from Bala Liman also from SOAS. His research focuses mainly on the nexus between conflict and identity in northern Nigeria and issues of poverty and inequality. This evening he's going to talk especially about social inequality in the northeastern states of Nigeria and what socioeconomic and development responses to Boko Haram would look like. Each of them are going to speak for about 15 minutes. I'm going to be pretty strict on the time but you guys are highly disciplined so there will be no issues there I'm sure. That will then lead us with plenty of time for question and answer. The final thing I should say by way of introduction is that we are videoing the whole event so bear that in mind when you ask your incendiary and provocative questions in the Q&A. We are filming this because we know that there's an audience who couldn't be here this evening that's also interested in the discussion. With no further ado I'm going to hand over to Bar Kindo who's actually got a video that he's going to show to kind of set the evening events up and then you'll give us his presentation. Thanks very much. I'm going to show you a part of my 15 minutes. I think it's to give a general introduction so that you can see how the northeastern states looks like, how the people there look like, how they talk. So that you get to see and I think that we have these visual images of how these places look like. When we begin to talk you can now understand the context which we are talking about. The thousands of internally displaced persons whose homes, businesses and other means of livelihood have been destroyed by Boko Haram. The reason why YOLA is the most preferred destination for the internally displaced persons is simple. YOLA is supposed to be more safe and secure since it is a seat of power of the Adama state government. Some of the internally displaced persons are from northern part of Adama particularly Mubi, Michika, Madagali, Maiha and Hound local government areas while others are from neighboring Borno state, the epicenter of the insurgency. There is no doubt that these internally displaced persons are people devastated. However, some among them demonstrate that they are indeed global citizens. No Aparu, a mother of seven from Dargo village in Askira Obaluka government of Borno state while fleeing from Boko Haram attack in Lhasa, found a boy of three years between Lhasa and Delay. She heard a child crying under some shrouds when she was approaching a stream for a drink of water after trekking for hours. She carried the baby, marched on in the company of her children till she reached YOLA. She would walk in the company of them who had the same child. She would go to Lhasa, walk there and see her child, and see her child. She would walk around and see her kid. She would go to location. They said that location, not where she said that was where she was. Luru Yakubu, an official of the National Emergency Management Agency in Nema, makes this confirmation. So when I asked her, is she going to keep the child with her or would she take the child to be of her age? She now said no, she's going to keep the child with her. Since it is God that is giving her the child, now she's going to keep child going to her. He just took her as his mom. If she leaves him and maybe trying to do something, he'll be crying and be following her around. In a related development, Maryam Uba from Kula is always nursing and nurturing a child. She also had to surrogate despite religious and ethnic differences. One day, my dad and my sister-in-law, my mom and my sister-in-law, one day, my dad and my sister-in-law, my brother and my sister-in-law, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law. Maryam also found Chinda Ulia in the bush while fleeing Boko Haram in Kula area of Adema State. Although parents of Chinda have discovered that the young boy now lives with his surrogate mother, the one between them is said that no one can now separate them. It was reliably gathered that Maryam and Chinda, who was in pre-nursery school, had an accident while fleeing from Boko Haram. For 28-year-old Lami Joseph, apart from spending as much as 15,000 Naira and equivalent of $93.8 transporting the sick and aged away from Madagali town when Boko Haram struck, she also took with her eight children of her kid and kin to relatively safe Yola before parents of the children came and took them away. While in Gomi, on her way to Yola, an evil man from southeast Nigeria could not believe that one person could carry as much as eight children. Moved by this gesture, he bought the children some clothing as well as food. Muhammad Bazaar, a Muslim with 11 children and three wives, now plays host to 21 internally displaced persons, among them four Muslims and 17 Christians. He believes that any religion worth its name does not segregate, kill or teach violence. The co-ordinator of Justice, Peace and Development Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Yola, Reverend Fr. Mori Square-Anga, also points out that religion should not be a reason The co-ordinator of Justice, Peace and Development Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Yola, Reverend Fr. Mori Square-Anga, also points out that religion should not be a reason for discrimination, particularly when it comes to life-threatening patients. The reason why the Catholic Diocese of Yola under the office of the Justice and Peace Commission were called upon to attend to the challenge of addressing the needs of the displaced people. When they came into our place here, when Bazaar and Michika were overrun, precisely on the 50th of September, people came in here to the gate looking for food and shelter. So we forced to take them in and make provision for them. Demonstrating the willingness to help beyond the walls of religion and ethnicity was what made Mayurama Bouturi, the mother of five, to sell her clothes to help transport people away from the dangerous zone of Michika when Boko Haramata had. She bought the clothes for 3,500 naira and equivalent of 21.8 dollars per soldier for only 1,000 naira, equivalent to 6.5 dollars. The life does just to save lives. As Father Moris hinted, the greatest challenge now is that of building a post-conflict society. Already, Reverend Sister Catherine Hammond, the initiator and director of the literacy program in Rojave, a suburb of Yola, is bringing both Muslims and Christians together not just to make them literate and numerate but to make them learn how to live in peace and harmony. It's a great experience. If people organize themselves, not alone will they be shot down, but the service bodies will come offering their services to know what they can do. So really, and at the moment, the biggest challenge is certainly NGO. The people are interested, but now they need a little coaching just to get off the ground, but there's nobody to coach them. There's nobody there to coach them. Slayman Khalidu says that adult education is a commendable program, but regrets that the fear of a tag by Boko Haram, even in Yola, is making people leave Yola for safer towns across the country. No one give them education and partying in Hosa. I work for the English, and we have some other parts. We have computers, I work for the keyboard, and we have humanitarian distribution. I've been doing it here on behalf of Sister. In 2009, we have had massive, massive insurgency in this country. Killings, destruction by Boko Haram families, families, towns and towns, villages have been completely destroyed by Boko Haram. And the biggest challenge for the Nigerian government is how to overcome this division that has been created by the Boko Haram insurgency, particularly for the internally displaced people. Because these people are left behind by families and their homes. So the problem is, if these people get back home, how do they collaborate with those that they have left behind? How do they need to get together with those that they have left behind who collaborated with Boko Haram in order to destroy their homes? So the biggest challenge for the Nigerian government is to come up with a specific post-conflict reconstruction strategy. A strategy that is able to unite these people, a strategy that is able to bring about reconciliation in the society, a strategy that is able to ensure these people are going to get together in peace. And I think in a very simple and ordinary way, that strategy has begun here and now. Where we can see together Christians and Muslims coming to learn in order to empower themselves to participate effectively in the Nigerian economy. And I think big by big, small by small, that is the way we can eventually overcome the problems of insolency and begin to reconstruct and to rebuild our country, our society and our nation. We hope, and with a vibrant faith in God, that one day Nigeria will reach that stage. And we hope that the Nigerian government is listening and listening well. Some have been demonized for a very, very long time. A lot of people have tried to say so many things about Boko Haram, but that's because of what Koka would say in Nigeria. Even the devil needs to be understood in order to be conquered or to be avoided. So I will just briefly try to reconstruct the ideology of Boko Haram. Not so much from what journalists have reported. What other Islamic scholars have said. But practically from what Boko Haram members themselves, those that I was able to get in contact, particularly the defected members that I met throughout my field at the military checkpoints of working with local punters of the civilian JTA. And also from their YouTube videos that have been in existence since 1995. What do they really say? Because a lot of people have assumed this is what Boko Haram said, but I've tried to translate most of these YouTube videos. Now look at the impact of the atrocities on local communities. And I will then make my own suggestion regarding approaches to reconciliation and reconstruction. Looking at the ideology of Boko Haram. First of all, I just want us to look at Boko Haram. Of course Haram, we all know, opens the Halal, something you know that is permissible, Halal is permissible and Haram is forbidden. It's not only forbidden, but it's simple. Just like Yusuf Al Haram, a famous sheikh in Egypt, will tell us Haram is not only forbidden by Allah himself and that once something is forbidden, no matter how good the intention is and even honorable the intention is. So that is settled. But if you look at Boko, they have been translating Boko as book, or education, or civilization. But Boko is a household that has been in use even before western civilization probably came to Nigeria. So how would you have used something that was not even in existence? So I try to look at deeply the meaning of Boko. If you look at the first house of dictionary by this judge, Bagri, in 1934 about seven meanings of Boko are given and all these seven meanings were related to the word fraught. Something that is fake is counterfeit. So in Northern Nigeria, education is generally, I'm not an expert in household language, but is generally seen as illegal and that is why there's always a distinction in Northern Nigeria about the Illumin Islamia, which is Islamic education, and it teaches about Islam, the Quran, Arabic, Paradise, all the good values that Islamic religion will access. But Illumin Boko is education that does not teach about Islam. So any other form of education that does not teach about Islam is considered Illumin Boko and that is considered fake. It's fraudulent. It's counterfeit. So it's not necessarily just western education. It could include even African tradition of witchcraft or any other thing that does not teach about Islam. So that is why Umar Salih, the leader of Boko Haramu, immediately took over when Yusuf was killed before Shekha came on. He simply not only denies Boko Haramu, but he tried to, and he says that they should be called Jamatun Ahlu Sunnani, and there he's not only trying to promote the superiority of the Islamic religion and culture, but to show that they are a group that will simply and strictly follow what is stated in the Quran and the life of the prophet, you know, himself. So that's why he insisted on the name Jamatun Ahlu Sunnani, leader of Boko Haramu and Shekha. And I think that that comes from, you know, Umar and expert in Islamic theology. I really have to confess that. But a little reading will show that it comes from all this Salafi kind of ideology that is very, very much in existence. And you know, Salafism refers to the pious predications, the ancestors. And they believe that temperate proximity to the prophet is a two-way form of Islam. So they have called on Muslims to return to this original form as much as possible as it does practice, you know, by the prophet himself. And how to return to that original form of Islam has given rise to various forms of Salafi groups. So you have like the Salafi purists who claim that you have to depend on the Quran and the Sunnah but it's more about what we call the tarbiyyah, education on the purification of the soul or the tasfiyyah. Or you have the Salafi activists they depend on the Quran and the Sunnah but they also believe in participating in political process. And they have the Salafi jihadists the Quran and the Sunnah but the jihad becomes what they call the manhach or the methodology for establishing the Daulat Islamiyyah the Islamic State. And therefore it is generally agreed that Boko Haram belongs to that kind of ultra Salafi jihadi group that not only believes in strict, you know, adherence to the Quran and the land of the prophet but they also believe in the use of jihad as a method for establishing the Islamic State. This is our creed and the methodology of our preaching. And he deeply depended on the Quran and the Sunnah which means the hadiths the sayings of the prophet and the sila, the actions of the prophet. And then if you read that we have a copy of that book just really the first line will be our religion is Islam our creed is a creed of Muhammad and his companions our mean hadith is a methodology is jihad. We believe that the sharia is the only creed the constitution is a lie that's the Nigerian constitution and probably any other secular constitution in iskufar democracy is a lie in iskufar working with a secular government is a lie in iskufar working with security agencies is a lie in iskufar and even shake out himself in one of the videos he said whatever is clear in the Quran just implement it you don't need the commentaries of theologias those call us whatever is clear implement it if something is not clear in the Quran look at the life of the prophet copy from the life of the prophet and therefore anything that does not conform to the Quran and the sunnah reject it completely it must be rejected and if it means using violence they do it. That's what shake out say. If you look at that I just selected like three aspects from which they are able to try to implement that kind of ideology I selected western education and I selected western democracy and globalization so I'll bring it up on the tree for them western education is not only fake and deceitful it is also dangerous first of all they believe that western education and sanctuary research deliberately destroy the teaching the literal teachings of the Quran for example it used to be one of the videos and I put it directly it talks about the big bang theory and it talks about the universe was created about 1 billion, 600 million 3 minutes and 1 second years ago and that contradicts Quran 5038 we created the heavens and the earth and between them in 6 days so in western education teaches you the big bang theory and the Quran says a different thing as a muslim you have to reject what western education teaches and accept that of the Quran and they also talk about western education promotes corruption and sexual permissiveness and Yusuf talks about Nigerian politicians rule us using certificate from western institutions but look at the level of corruption and immorality among the politicians what western education should give us she talks about we cannot allow this problem western education to destroy Islam I will fight it with my blood so the third aspect of the western education they believe is a conspiracy to maintain this new colonial hegemony over in muslim countries and that's why Yusuf translated these global foreign and colonial schools their history and dangers using by Abdullah Zayed who is a very prominent Wahhabi scholar in Saudi Arabia and Yusuf also wrote this book and in order he tries to show that western education is a western conspiracy to dominate muslims and therefore it should be rejected and so she says followers of western education have usurped our heart to the philosophy that is contrite to the demands of Allah we are imposed upon us laws that are not of Allah and therefore we must reject that they also talk about the rejection of democracy and there are so many quotations from the Quran but I just speak of one they talk about Quran 544 man lam yathun bime answer Allah for who worked hard whoever does not judge and judge here is not like a judge in the courtroom that is not whoever does not rule in politics anyone who does not rule according to the Quran then that person is an infidel or they are an infidel so let me say that human beings most individually and collectively surrender all rights of exorcising authority and making laws completely over to Allah and one of the members of Boko Haram at the military checkpoint who claimed to have been defected he told me not even President Jonathan has the right to make laws in Nigeria the real law giver and democracy is the rejection of Allah's authority you should denounce the concept of dahurat necessity therefore because they believe that for the Muslims we can accept to live under an un-Islamic government if the possibility of turning the whole place into sharia law is not possible you can simply accept it because it's necessary for the common good that kind of thinking you should say it should not be accepted we have to do everything we can to ensure that sharia rules in that place so these are the three elements of western democracy must be destroyed the first is the secular identity of the state constitution national anthem the pledge, the flag and that's why Shekau says we will ensure that they do not say I pledge to Nigeria my country but I pledge to Allah my God and they also say multi-party democracy must be rejected Hekau said it's no longer going to be government of the people by the people and for the people but government of Allah by Allah and for Allah and the third aspect is this issue of secreting state and religion they say they wouldn't accept that and therefore they use the pranic concept of the taboo on godly rulers and wherever they are found they should be gotten rid of some politicians whether they are Christians or Muslims they are on godly rulers and therefore they should be replaced with sharia they also develop what we have called the anti-globalization ideology on the basis of Tauhi Tauhi is the uniqueness, the unicity the oneness of Allah and they say this oneness is at two levels that Allah is the only supreme being and as the only supreme being he has that is the only one who can create is the only one who can be worshipped he is the only one who can be called king and powerful but what has globalization done they understood globalization to be at two levels as an ideology and as a structure as an ideology globalization is a western conspiracy to unite the whole world under one single civilization that is a western civilization which is an Islamic civilization which is going to be destroyed and sheikah calls this the new world order which is not going to be accepted and he says that globalization has created global institutions like the UN and NATO and these institutions have one you saw the authority of Allah they have excluded Allah from the affairs of men they have enacted human laws that propagate political systems that exploit muslim nations and negate the Quran and therefore globalization as structures road networks, information, technology and banks sheikah says we will use these structures of globalization to fight globalization in the past the united nations in hausa has made a reason thinking is country a united parliament for immorality which is not going to be accepted and in fact sheikah says Jonathan, Obama you allow gay marriage lest their relationships calling them human rights if it is your right to do what is wrong it is also our right to stop what is wrong and ensure that the commands of Allah reign supreme so these are the kind of ideologies they propagate so if they propagate these ideologies what usubah has done is to localize them at the beginning to call for Islamic state rejection of western democracy provocation, corruption within the Nigerian society military brutality and calling for the reform of Islamic character but sheikah will declare total jihad collaboration with other global jihadi organizations and takfirism assuming the authority to declare other muslims as infidels simply because they do not accept their own brand of Islam and you know the atrocities are well known to you I am showing this picture because this is like I travel like from Gombi right up to Baini near Kamalun this is almost like most of the area they are controlled by Boko Haram under the caliphate you can see right up to Chad and Niger and parts of Kamalun and especially we put a place called Amichere in Kamalun thousands of Boko Haram fighters you know are also from that place and what are the effects of the social and community relationships what Boko Haram done is to carry out selective killings and what I refer to as takfirism declaring other muslims who don't agree with them you know as infidels so when they go to a place that are Christian non muslim institutions that are targeted like schools and hospitals and churches but they also target muslim non Boko Haram members who are considered as collaborators they target even their schools and their monks I met a woman in movie who told me my husband was beheaded because he rented out part of the apartment to a Christian family so they are muslims but Boko Haram killed them because they refused not only to part of Boko Haram and to bring in what Boko Haram is doing but because they rented out part of the apartment to a Christian as far as they are concerned these guys are collaborators I have also looked at letters that Boko Haram has written to kangui soldiers warning them not to fight for the Nigerian government but to leave the Nigerian government and then come over and join them and sometimes when a village is being attacked by Boko Haram and some people leave other people remain some of these people who remain and collaborate with Boko Haram to destroy places I do not believe in necessarily that they have the ideological intention probably but I am not a judge but what happens is that when they remain they are able to tell Boko Haram which house belongs to a Christian which farm belongs to a Christian so my worry is that if Christians begin to return and people begin to return and see the label of destruction how are they going to live together and that's why most of the IDP camps I visited it will be shocking to you to discover that even between the camps people do not trust each other they live either according to their towns either according to their religious affiliation even some of the camps will find camps for Muslims and it comes for Christians so how are we going to handle that in the context of Nigeria what is going to be the approach that the new government particularly will take I am aware of all these academic debates about minimally approaches regarding negotiations or the maximum regarding prostitution or whether the moderate approach I don't want to go to academic because the reality of ground in Nigeria is actually very, very different for me, the new government or any other government at all should consider what I call for the immediate approach what are the immediate things that are needed to be done the first one I want to suggest is that of demobilizing all these local monitors, ethnic militia, vigilante groups and civilian JTF because as people are prepared to return back to the territories that have been retaken they are going to see a label of destruction they have not seen before how are they going to cope and then you have ethnic groups already armed are they going to go for revenge killings and repriced killings and the other one will be engaging traditional holders opening up channels of engagements and communication and if there are people who are suspected to have collaborated with Boko Haram is it possible for them to own up and to meet their victims and to ask for forgiveness if it means sitting under the tree not talking to each other just at the local level supported by the government and led by the traditional rulers and some of the religious scholars and religious teachers that are available for me I think this is very very important otherwise if we just allow the thing to go on like that it could generate another set of conflict that we never thought of and the other aspect will be that the government must recognize that apart from Boko Haram there are other existing Islamic sects that they should watch and they should be monitored and it could constantly evaporate like the Kalapato they are general tapas they are Kranu the Darul Islam the Medina to Kefi and the Hakikah group all these groups are existing and sometimes they espouse very intolerant views just like the way Boko Haram started at the beginning they shouldn't pay attention in these groups to also become a problem and they should be immediately reconstruction of schools, bridges roads, provision of security in retaking territories the activation of unexploded bombs but I'm even more concerned regarding the issue of education for young people and children that have been offered by the Boko Haram conflict and there must be regional cooperation serious one between Nigeria particularly at this border region on issues of environment and security and the final aspect is what I call the long-term solution I think my friends will talk about probably the economic reconstruction and the formation of the military and security institution but I just want to talk briefly on the federal government project that I'm involved on which is called countering violent extremism there are three components to this project there's the counter radicalization providing economic benefits employment to young people so that they are not being radicalized by radical groups like Boko Haram and that's what we call the strategic communication and this is about trying to counter the narratives of Boko Haram either on the internet, on the media and other social kind of channels but the aspect the very aspect I'm involved in is what is called the radicalization the radicalization deals with Boko Haram members who are already in custody and thousands are being brought in almost every day by the military Nigerian prisons some of them are really overflowing the government doesn't know what to do with these people one day these people may have to be sent back into the society some have already been convicted others are within trial others have just been brought in and you know that at the moment there is really no research to demonstrate to us who actually is a member of Boko Haram how many of these people are actually members of Boko Haram so when these guys are being brought to the prison the first thing they do is classification and we discover that some are simply opportunist others are sympathizers others are simply followers others are the hardcore ideologues so the work that the government tries to do is to separate these people into groups and they construct the prisons in such a way that they don't mingle and the prison doesn't become a further environment to further radicalization of these guys so they are separated and there are support psychologists, there are mental health experts, there are religious scholars and there are educators so the government now is trying to see and to see how if somebody happens just to be an opportunist how do we radicalize him and send him back into the society and really empower him to participate in the Nigerian economy so the final thing I would say here is that the government must avoid certain mistakes that were done in the past the first one is that Boko Haram is not a rat-tagged kind of sect, a poverty poverty streaming group of people they are really, really well organized and the government must really take them very, very seriously and I think that Nigeria and even the international community must not see Boko Haram as simply a Nigerian problem I think it's beyond that at the moment it's really almost a regional if not an international problem so there must be stronger regional cooperation between Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon with the support of the international community now in the past if you look at Nigeria's independence from the Nigerian civil war to mitre-sine, to military dictatorship most of our problems and conflicts are really internally generated in my opinion it's not as if Cameroon is coming to invade Nigeria or Russia is coming to invade Nigeria most of our problems are internally generated and we are not being able to deal with that and each time there's an outbreak of crisis the government will set up a committee of inquiry the members of the committee will get their allowances pocketing and when there's next crisis another committee of inquiry is set up and they will produce exactly the same solutions that the other committee will produce and they will simply pocket there is no committee of reconciliation it is always a committee of inquiry and most of the the reports are never implemented a very good example is the Obasan des Tudor Reconciliation Commission when the report was published it was never implemented and nothing happened and life continued as normal and I think Buhari has this time around with Boko Haram to really do something different so thank you very much for listening thank you very much great thanks Buhari in the meantime I do apologise too for the very strange lighting here every button I pushed seemed a threat to create another problem so I'm going to leave it as it is and hopefully we won't all be plunged into darkness over to you Guinea thanks I sort of grouped my speech through bricks the first I titled history and roll-up and I joined government's interaction with movements such as Boko Haram the government of Mamadou Buhari used brute force in crushing the riots caused in the 70s by a millenarian a pterodox Islamic sect known as the Yantat Sinan in the aftermath of the violence in which thousands of lives were lost the government set up the Aniaguru Commission along with another body of inquiry by the Kano State Government under Abu Bakarimi to find out the cause of the revolt but the government never set up a committee to work on reconciliation or construction more so as most of the victims of the once-in-killing unleashing Kano by the Yantat Sinan sect have been civilians the findings and reports of the Aniaguru Commission which looked at the socio-economic causes of the revolt by this sect and how it was used within a religious context were disregarded by the government even within the history of panels committees and commissions which have been set up in Nigeria's post-independence history there's been a lack of efficacy due to the disrespections of these commissions which were seen as being merely ceremonial or lacking in legitimacy this set to limit the effects ironically enough Buhari was summoned before they were put to panel but refused to attend with this tradition and lack of history of compliance with these commissions unlike in other places such as Rwanda and South Africa where they have experienced a great amount of success it's going to be a huge task to give any prospective truth and reconciliation committee the requisite legitimacy needs to be effective within the Nigerian populace Prior to the entry of Bukoran military movements that existed in Nigeria some as cults some used as cults some as political thugs some as vigilante groups all filling the security vacuum and then others championing ethnic causes such as Congress popularly called OPC and then in the north Congress called it the APC which was more for the House of Fulani the commonality between these groups was that they served certain socio-economic functions they provided certain services and filled certain vacuums so in the case of the OPC they were partnered to protect the interests of the european people in the aftermath of June 12th, 1993 particularly against what they felt was the domination of the House of Fulani especially at local levels in part of the south region then the Iowa People's Congress APC was militarized reflexively to show that they could match the OPC the OPC then invaded into a vigilante group to address the spate of androbories and crimes and became judged jury and executions in many instances literally these are all themes which can be found within Bukoran's provenance and growth at various levels in the east also are the Bakasi boys who rose to infamy at a time in the late 90's when highway robbery, particularly of the highly patronized coaches flying the roads in the eastern region have become a frequently pouring pattern along with other vagaries like abductions and other petty crimes there as well we are recognized as a necessity and given legitimacy by local communities and tacitly also by the local security agencies the crux of that preamble is that there has always been a huge vacuum of accountability and of security within Nigeria historically to an extent Bukoran's transmogrification has been due to these two factors when Bukoran began to be quoted by politicians especially within the Borno ANPP with Ali Mudu Sherifah's headancho Muhammad Yusuf began to see a way through which his ideas about creating a sharia state in northern Nigeria could be achieved without the stress created through the use of maximum force it was not so much like he was a versed the use of force I should point out contrary to what many derivative reports have come out with he was prepared for the use of eventual force but did not see as an initial resort this is why he had the men in the sex were given the use of weapons animations and weapons which were stopped out of the sex community in railway quarters and some of the other cells private in 2009 railway quarters was the place where they most of them lived as a community he began to reach out to drug adult youth miscreants and prisoners through his Dawaa missionaries ostensibly to save them since the government wouldn't do so and this eliminated some of his earlier followers that had begun to dilute the sex and were already causing a diversion from the elite teachers of their leader which had led them to join in first place I mentioned this to create notions and assertions about the emotional structure of the sex to show that there have been fractures some of which are evident now that existed even prior to 2009 seeking an entry point into the realm of politics and the bitter influence of the border state as part of the eventual goal of carving out a purist Islamic state used to join forces with Ali Madhu Sherif who already controlled another youth group known as Ekamag and mobilized youth within his sect which at this time was already brimming with many members from any members who were recruited by the Dawaa missionaries the Dawaa missionaries were the elite followers of one of the youths who were the ones he taught directly face to face a pure version of Bokram's ideology they offered their support of the ANPP and terrorized those who were not supported by the ANPP mostly engaging political thugs of the other opposing parties in violent conflict in the brief period in which this union between Bokram or Yusufiyah as they were mostly called then in my degree and Sherif and Gang Ekamag lasted they were able to achieve some change in the religious setup of the state although it didn't last very long some might say this was due to Yusuf's political naity while others might say it was due to the fact that Sherif was a disingenuous politician who promised to give Yusuf Gang Gang but then reneged on his promises I would presume to say that it was a bit of both until the last few days before his death Yusuf kept telling his friends what he spoke with that only Sherif could avert the fitanak that just means a chaos which was about to be visited on Borno he insisted that the only way he would reverse this decision to create fitanak in Borno state was if Sherif had agreed to a meeting with him personally insisting that Sherif had promised him something and remained on it many theories about as to what exactly this thing was which had him so incensed but I wasn't able to find out what it was from speaking with his own confidants what I'm driving at is that there are actors within this grand narrative of the Bokoran Bishimoth who are alive and have to be held accountable or answer questions in any prospective post Bokoran reconstruction and reconciliation committee or commission to be set up one unassailable fact evidence all try as he might deny the allegations of complicity against him is that Ali Madhu Sherif the former governor of Borno state did hand over the decision of religious affairs to Bokoran for the brief period of the apolitical marriage Elijah Bujifoy the devout Muslim and former local government chairman of Khadgar ward who was one of the world's new supporters of modern Yusuf and also was the sex national secretary was chosen by Yusuf to head the Borno state ministry of religious affairs created especially to placate and accommodate followers of Yusuf and this led to an influx of Bokoran members into the religious structure of the Borno state government the failure of this brief partnership between the sect and Sherif's MPP led government though he strenuously denies having any link to the sect today which led to the resignation of Bokoran members en masse from their positions within the government led by Bujifoy providing them with further vindication that there is no salvation for the government except through force and this was reiterated after supposedly secret negotiations between the sect and the government broke down in 2004 last year with Dr Amad Gati who had been leading into negotiations until that point backing out now the next rubric I have titled what measures well it's more of a question I'm asking what measures can the government take to ensure that the Bokoran tragedy does not repeat itself in future I've written down is that bridging the gap between the government at the state and local levels and communities overhaul of government at the federal, state and local level to address some of the issues and grievances which groups like Bokoran tap into to gain legitimacy and formalisation at the local level then the next point I have written down is that and this also is a preamble question I'm asking what do you do with the remnants of Bokoran the success behind many of their initial attacks was due to their familiarity with the areas they targeted many of their members attacked their own communities which shows the deep sense of disconnection from society one bit in a widow I spoke to my degree told me of her son a stepson's gradual separation from their family until he eventually signed up as a foot soldier for Bokoran one of his victims killed by the Nigerian military was his own brother Baraka and his father died from a heart attack from being overwhelmed with the whole calamitous processional events as such this begs the number of questions how do you reconcile the members of the sect who will be released from prison at some point with their families, communities and how do you give them a sense of belonging within society also how do you reconcile them with the families of those they killed can there be reconciliation and reconstruction I remember another a really young man I spoke to who said to me that he's on a particular role within the sect after he was indoctrinated initiated officially into the sect he was to act specifically as a spotter he had no other job beyond that so he's on job was to sort of because he was around 13 at the time when he joined his own job was to just follow around a chain of people who had been backed out for for killing or for some level of violence and he would follow that find out their movement find out who their family members were and then report back to the the leader of the particular cell group where they met where they met up Boca Room's Genesis finds its roots in the long history of othering or what I call othering which pervades the Nigerian construction and has continued through the years of post independence and has been fostered by radical preachers without interference by the government or a coalition of credible Islamic scholars to provide strong counter narratives to them also there's a wide gap in northern Nigeria between the rich and the poor the middle class is thin and that gap is commensurate with a gap between those in government, their cronies and those who live on the periphery I'll be more specific and look at the real estate in which the richest people in the state are either relatives of Marbet Indimi, one of the richest men in Africa according to the forces and who the famous Marbet Indimi Mosque where the core of Boca Room's family members worship before their later expulsion and that particular mosque is called Marbet Indimi Mosque or they happen to be a politician or connects to the Saralta, the Saralta is a traditional ruling class in northern Nigeria going by the checkered history of colonial northern Nigeria where the British favoured those from the ruling families to be the beneficiaries of secular education it's a since proven relatively easy for this to be used in creating a dichotomy of sorts as we've seen in the case of Boca Room where the undesirables are Christians, the government government walkers schools teaching secular subjects pupils who subscribe to these schools and Muslims who disagree with Boca Room's provincial music any attempt at post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation which hopes to move beyond lip service as to recognise this dichotomy and work towards breaking down those barriers now my fourth point of suggestion there's a rejigging of the intelligence agencies and reversal of the politicisation of these bodies and the military one of the many accusations leveled in the Nigerian military is that the prosecution of the battle against Boca Room has left much to be desired with accusations of mismanagement of funds diversion of the security budget by the top brass and delegation of positions based on political affiliations and the practice of what is known in Nigeria's federal character which ostensibly is meant to accommodate and represent the ethnic diversity of Nigeria within the different arms of government and the civil service however the prosecution of the battle against Boca Room over the past few years has revealed a highly politicised Nigerian military but wholesomely building to the office of the president which has trickled down to the lower strata of the military and affected their strategy within the Nigerian public with the Nigerian public being denied factual reports on the government's management of the crisis in northern Nigeria this has only helped in stoking the flames of suspicion and heighten the fear of the border which haunts the Nigerians just before now many Muslims I spoke to in Canada particularly and in Borneo insisted that Boca Room was a figment of a collusion between the Americans and Gulag Jonathan's government which wanted to find a way of dismerging their faith it was impossible to fathom to them that self-escaled Muslims would do such a thing so it had to be others the suspected governor of one of the states in the northern region who was given to the frequent use of social media initially began to allude to the attackers being non-northerners at the height of car bombings and suicide bombings against northern churches on Sundays in northern Nigeria the accusation stick which was then used to beat the PDP the former leader of the political party in Nigeria and vice versa before he finally began to accuse the military chiefs of an extraction of having a connection with the bombings was this this of course brings us back to the idea of the other in northern Nigeria last year in January a famous Salafi cleric who disagreed with Mahmoud Yusuf over a doctrine of issues and became one of his strongest critiques Sheikh Mahmoud Awad Al-Bani popular known as Al-Bani Zaria was killed along with his family by Boca Ramandas before the details of Al-Bani's Al-Bani's death became clear and reached the public there was a lot of speculation about who his killers were and discreet a lot of tension fingers were immediately pointed at the others it had to be either the Shia or the Christians I was told in Canada since Sheikh Al-Bani had spoken with division about both groups in the past I was told the reprisal attacks were already being planned against Shia Muslims and Christians the reprisal came out shortly after and claimed responsibility for the death of Sheikh Al-Bani for a bit of added context one of Sheikh Al-Bani's writings was considered essential region for Boca Ramandas prior to 2009 but in tune with the outrageous view of takfirism that any Muslim who disagrees with them cannot be a Muslim he then fell into the category of the others so the same fear of the other which has thrived in northern Nigeria against the Igbo's in the 60s and thrives today within the religious fear when magnified can be seen as the driving force of the movement such as Boca Ram Reconstruction has to be made at the social level to rectify this and this might itself need to be a continuous process to address the mirrored clivages which exist between tribes and faith in northern Nigeria the next rubric I've titled which as well is a question is there a role for Islamic scholars to play within a post-Boca Ram phase? while inevitably there will be Ulama those Islamic scholars who refuse to be seen as collaborators to the government the government of Nigeria will require the help of those who are willing to help in providing counter narratives to the ones being put forward by Boca Ram we focus on the demonizing and subhumanizing of those who do not fall into the religion category of what it means to be a true Muslim so far all I have noticed is I've been around technicalities which only serves the favor of Boca Ram more so as they do not believe in discourse of the Socratic time only Islamic scholars are well placed to address and articulate some harsh facts if done by non-northerners or non-Muslims these facts will most likely be dismissed for all the goods and clerics such as Shik Dahiro Bochi have done in terms of urging their followers to strive for peace we have to acknowledge the complicity of many of our revered Islamic scholars in the rise of Boca Ram either by omission or commission Shik Jafar Adam Mahmoud was Yusuf's mentor and was a popular cleric in Northern Nigeria many of his tapes are still sold out of Northern Nigeria available on Islamic websites, on YouTube and hawked in traffic in Canada he was one of the many famous Islamic clerics with access to print media and radio who promoted Islamic radicalism in Northern Nigeria particularly in Bono where he preached frequently at Mamadou in the Mimosk with the Apollimosk in the Mimosk as his patron his disagreement with Yusuf was not on the issue of Yusuf declaring certain groups of people infidels or classifying allegiance to the government at a time as Taghut which means idolatry but on the permissibility of secular education as a member of the Salafi sect the Izala before we try to Jamatu Ikamatu Bidawaa wait Jamatu Ikamatu Bidawaa Ikamatu Suna that didn't help yeah please Suna that was you Jamatu Yes I'll try this again I'll try this again Jamatu Ikamatu Bidawaa Jamatu Ikamatu Suna I'll try this again Close I swear to you already I swear to you already he was of the mind that for Muslims to control the state they need to acquire secular education in other words he wasn't stating that he believed secular education to be intrinsically good or beneficial but that pragmatically to ensure the achievement of their higher aim of being governed by true Muslims as opposed to unbelievers they needed to use secular education as a vehicle other things that come to mind include Dr. Dati Ahmad the medical doctor and leader of the Supreme Council of Sharia in Nigeria which Yusuf also belongs to based in Canada and Sheikh Mohammed bin Udman one of the young popular kind of clerics of the famous Shanken Mosque Salafi group was one of the proud preachers at Yusuf Mosque in Tarawini which is highly acclimatised both are highly respected popular clerics with a lot of sway and Dati was actually chosen by Boko Haram to head negotiations with the government at the point until he and the sect both backed out after talks broke down with the government with blame placed at the door of the gentleman's committee with good reasons why Udman's name was mentioned by Boko Haram as one of the few people allowed to negotiate with the government on their behalf I mentioned this to show the amount of respect both Dati and Udman command on both sides of the divide Dati and Udman some years ago began raising an alarm about the danger of polio immunisation warning Muslims not to let their children be immunised they both claimed that it was an attempt by the west and by Christians to sterilise the fast growing Muslim population Udman and his servants also warned Muslims to beware of the dangers of polio immunisation by war immunisations warning that their intentions were not as altruistic as made to seem he said that it was part of a larger global coordinated attack against Islam I mentioned these two names because these are highly revered Islamic scholars with it and beyond canon who have enlarged this audience wherever they go following these servants Udman and Mubarak members in 2012 went to a clinic where polio immunisation workers operated for and killed the people inside the building escaping in a tracicle so what I'm driving at is that some harm has been done by certain scholars who still hold illogical and conservative views which will help in spreading the fear of the other in Northern Nigeria as such other equally respected scholars I feel have an important role to play at this time this is important because the issues being raised by Boko Ram are in actuality not novel they were not created in a vacuum and in spite of the diligent efforts particularly by the Salafi Alusuna movement to wash its hands off of this Frankenstein monster it is the collective creation of the years of ethno-religious strife which have come to characterise Northern Nigeria since independence from the British within the sociology of Northern Nigeria we have Christian proselytisation using secular education as a ruse as always persisted also the fear of secular education acting as a conduit towards the eventual moral corrosion of children has always existed in a study conducted among the Kanuri who make up the Boko Boko Ram demographic in Bonu as early as the 70s a researcher found that this fear existed widely among them the resentment by the poor, the lifestyles of the rich has always been there by favourite by the British and if the social rigidity of Northern Ireland wasn't enough the British then ensured that after their departure this rigidity in terms of social mobility would remain so by effectively treating secular education as a luxury ticket which only those from certain Northern families were entitled to and finally what about the contentious issue of whether or not the government should be doing more to monitor sermons and Islamic preachers the country's intelligence agencies focus on monitoring Christian and Islamic preachers and their sermons especially during the years of the military particularly after Sanya Bachar came into power and imprisoned MQA Biola in the 90s fuelled in part by paranoia and in part by the mobilisation of progressive-minded fellows around the symbolism which used to form a deco a group which had the primary aim of bringing an end to Bachar's dictatorship and restoring democracy and the intelligence agencies to make sure that all dissenting voices were sniffed out and were either intimidated arrested or killed many places of worship with fire-brand clerics and example being to the Bachar and the famous denferred fiery sermons against the military were monitored regularly on the Islamic side of the spectrum not Nigeria particularly the Iran-inspired Shia movement which has the largest and most visible following Shia Muslim in Nigeria and Azaziki was imprisoned for the bulk of the Bachar's Rufus teachings which were unpretentiously against the Nigerian state I've mentioned these two examples to show a recognition and appreciation of the complexities which arise with regards to contemplating the ethical morality or otherwise of monitoring sermons and places of worship however in northern Nigeria which has the highest rates of sectarian violence in West Africa which on numerous occasions collective violence has begun after incendiary statements were made in places of worship the question has to be asked if the numerous deaths caught in their wake could have been avoided with some practice checks being made by the government the truth of the matter is that Boko Ram as we know it today can be defeated in the same way as the might I say was defeated in the same way as the magistrate vote was defeated what I humbly propose is that if measures and structures are put in place to ensure that preachers, organizations and worship centres seeking to propagate these toxic ideas are stifled then few church incarnations of Boko Ram can be prevented from blossoming thank you just a few slides that I wanted to use to support some of the things I was interested in so I was trying to set up the slides unfortunately I haven't that's how I'll try and talk to you about that both at our beginning have talked to some of the issues that I would have loved to have talked about unfortunately they they got the better end of the discussion I'll just talk about some pretty boring stuff and I'll just figure which might interest you but I mean basically my argument is a lot of them said about Boko Ram and the reasons behind this and like I said they have highlighted some of these issues however, what I found out in the process in the last couple of years when I've talked about Boko Ram I've sat down in discussions regarding Boko Ram is that a lot of argument has come out that it's a poor level of development in northern Nigeria in the northeast actually that has fueled the emergence of insurgency groups like Boko Ram so I thought it would be useful if you could examine whether this is the case in the northeastern Nigeria really that badly developed compared to the rest of the country or other parts of northern Nigeria and because it becomes important if we're talking about construction after Boko Ram has been defeated then how do you go about it who's responsible I would like to keep questions I'd like to just have a look at so my brief is in two parts the first looking at comparing the level of development between education, unemployment, health and with health I'm looking at maternal and infant health and then the level of poverty to see there really is a different difference that we can use to say to support the argument that the northeastern is so underdeveloped that that is why we have a huge problem there the second part is who is responsible for the level of development or the level of unemployment development the federal, the state of Boko Ram Nigeria, the federal has a lot of structure and each of the units of government have responsibility regarding certain social issues that's how our approach is so I'll start by looking at unemployment rate in Nigeria unemployment rate in Nigeria has been increasing since 2002 at that point the rate was 12.6% however in 2000 which is the quarter point which I've used it had risen to 23.9% with youth unemployment at 50% when you compare that to Ghana in Kenya Ghana had a youth unemployment rate of 11% and Kenya had 40% you can see that there's a huge disparity in figures in Northern Nigeria the situation is actually much worse due to the low level of investment in the private sector so there's a huge a lot of dependency on government the low level of investment in the private sector has seen a decrease in private sector investment and this has seen the main employers in the world especially in places like Keduna and Kanemoto and two of the largest state captors in modern Nigeria collapsed most of the private companies have collapsed and this is because there was an introduction of liberalization policies that made most of these companies very uncompetitive this has led to a rising number of graduates with limited unemployment opportunities and so it has created a possible pool of recruits for fundamental creatures and groups in 2011 on employment rates in Adama, Yobi and Burmese states which are the three states which are the three states where the Boko Haram said that he has been most affected on employment rates in those three states were 18.4% 35.6% and 29.1% which is much higher than the national average of 23.9% but what is important to note is that other states such as Boko Chi which is also in the North, had a rate of 41.4 and 13.4% which is much higher than the three states where the insurgency is occurring Nigeria which is in the North Central had an unemployment rate of 39.4% while Zamfara which is in the North West had an employment rate of 42.6% which is much higher and they can have the level of insurgency as those states in the North East even though Boko Chi and Boko Chi have some insurgency groups but none of them have the environment as Boko Haram had so you may wonder what exactly is the cause of this we just keep on saying that because those areas are seriously underdeveloped that is why we shouldn't arrive in insurgency look at health indicators maternal mortality was highest in the North East and the North West with figures of 1,549 and 1,026 deaths 100,000 lives were respected and when you compare that to the South West and the South East the figure is 265 and the South East the figure is 286 so that's a huge disparity in the way that maternal health is in those two areas 1,500 to 296 that's a huge disparity and infant mortality figures are not much better in the North East and North West figures of 260 and 269 deaths per 1,000 deaths respectively while the South West and the South East figures are 1,769 so the gap in terms of infant mortality is not as bad as when you look at maternal mortality although the government recently came out and said the figures for maternal mortality have dropped to about 350 although I still find that hard to believe but that's in terms of education the North East zone is also very poor when you look at primary school enrollment and literacy rates with the differences within the regions quite glaring the Northern states have much lower enrollment when compared to the Southern states however these figures must be seen within the context of the North being a late comma in terms of provision of Western education and this can explain why literacy rates and enrollment rates are still quite low in those states the biggest issue in Nigeria now I think is poverty and education poverty is one of the biggest challenges the country has been branded a rich country with poor people and the recent re-basement of the GDP that made the country the largest economy in Africa the World Bank and the National Bureau of Statistics estimate that 68% of Nigerians, 170 million people now live below the poverty level 1 dollar a day that's about 112 million people and those are huge figures and the rise in poverty rates between 1918 and 2011 is quite alarming because in 1980 it was broken 7% and now it's about 6-9% so that means the country has been digressing seriously in the last 30-30 odd years so the social indicators provide a very big picture of the state of development in the country especially in the North but it is safe to say that in the sense of development between the North-Eastern states are not too different from other parts of the North so while the development might exacerbate grievances almost all of the states in the North share similar social indices and this begs the question why have states such as Nigerians and Surans which have poorer social indices than the North-Eastern states where the local ground is rampant why have they not seen the kind of insurgent groups that we see and should we be worried that the continued underdevelopment might increase the risk of the barriers of such groups to other states and if that's the case then we must understand what needs to be done to address the slide so that we can mitigate against the risk of some of these groups using this as a platform for Karina attacks and what I found also interesting is that Okarina has managed to incorporate the issue of underdevelopment into its narrative and the whole argument is that there are educated people who are using the funds that are due for everyone to enrich themselves while the poor remain poor and if we don't change that narrative and the only way we can do that is by improving the level of development in those areas and once we can change that narrative then we won't have that kind of foundation to build on which is what they found quite easy to do right now but it's also important that even in the level of development increases that improves because from what Iny and Atas said I tell me some very pertinent issues that I would have loved to talk about myself but there's no guarantee that we will not see the emergence of such groups because there are other issues of course involved in why these groups emerge so this brings me to the second part of my briefing regarding responsibility because the current narrative seems to place this problem solely at the feet of the federal government however I agree that while the federal government should not blame the areas of employment and poverty to some extent poverty reduction given that it is responsible for the economy, the state governments share much responsibility especially in areas of health education problems that are jointly funded and broadly run by the federal state and the government because Nigeria has something called the concurrent list on this constitution health and education are run by the three chairs of government so it cannot be the states cannot argue that the federal government has done nothing for them because they get the funding for these things but because they don't do what they're supposed to do and there's no accountability in the Nigerian state they can raise their voices now and claim that the problem why they are here is not because of them but because of the federal government we've had 16 years of governance in those areas and little has changed in terms of any of these social indicators because they just this statement I just might be not responsible for some of these things I mean time did not permit me to access the budget and expenditure data from some of these states to analyse allocations to the social sector you know but but the energy indicator to the various states between 2011 and 2011 showed that the North Eastern states were not any worse than some of the other states in the North or some of the other states in the South East which where some of the states actually had four or five allocations in relation to population than some of the North Eastern states but they don't have these kind of problems that the North Eastern states have so for a state which is in the North West and the other it's actually much worse of most of the indicators than the North Eastern states but even though how much of a splinter group of Pope around had his base in that area they haven't seen the kind of violence that we see in the North East so it begs the question what have the state governments been doing with the funds that have been allocated to them for these for these social issues to tackle some of these social issues I mean Carlos Teguit has a population of 9.4 million people has a much lower revenue in terms of population but has better education health and infrastructure development and I mean people just have to go to to know and to see the way human capital development infrastructure development education health has been tackled and it's all about governments and having the political world to tackle it and I think the governments of those three states, I don't know how you agree and go no, never had the political world to try and tackle some of these issues and one of the people one of the governments who ruled for 8 years is the person that he was talking about Moji Sharif, I mean he's been invited to be with somebody who funded Boko Haram and I mean right now he has an ongoing battle with the anti-corruption agency they're charging with enriching himself to the children of 300 women now I mean explore these people that kind of ties with the anti-corruption agency so you can't even the state governments haven't done enough in that instance and we cannot just put you a person which is solely on the federal government each arm of government needs to be able to stand up and be accounted for when it comes to some of these issues primary education is the responsibility of the local government councils but because the state governments have taken over control of the revenue of local government councils it's almost impossible for them to carry out that function and again the state governments themselves are probably worse than the local government because they get the funding, they get extra funding but most of it I'm sure most of it but in some part it will be ecological fund which is a special fund, intervention fund for areas that have ecological problems and most of these funds are never ever used for what the purpose is set out for so if we don't address some of these issues what will happen is that some of these so-called insertion groups will find a platform to argue that it is still the western educated people that are now currently rich in themselves at the detriment of the people that live in those areas and that is why we are going to fight them and fortunately the incoming government has indicated a new drive to improve the situation in these areas and this will have to provide a foundation for changing the matches so that the population will not feel disenfranchised even if this is currently a wrong perception before I came for this presentation I read that the governor of the ministry would demand for 30% all the duration to be given to the state and it's a wrong support it's a wrong demand I think what the state needs is a kind of martial plan where a certain amount of money is allocated to try and we have to take over the area that we destroyed by overrun and then a longer term we learned how to sort of reduce all the issues but the issues are not just I'm not restricted to the north-east of Nigeria the problem is the national problem and until the whole issue is tackled at the national level which ideological groups like Boko Aram in the north you could have the minus on the rise of certain groups like that thank you very much great before I throw it out to you to ask any questions that you wish of our speakers I thought it might be worth just tying together some of the key themes and some of the key threads that we heard in these presentations I see kind of three key issues that seem to be emerging here the first one is that Boko Aram shouldn't be treated as a monolithic entity there was an interesting theme I think that particularly ran through by Kinbos and Guinea's presentations about internal factions and internal divisions within the insurgency crucial ideological distinctions between leaders important changes within the group during the transition between Yusuf and Checkout for example that adds a layer of complexity that this organization, this group has changed over time and perhaps we have to think through the ramifications of those changes secondly very different analyses here about the complex causes of Boko Aram in the first place how much is this about building regional and other divisions within Nigerian society how much is it about much more proximate causes around political antagonisms religious divisions relative economic development issues of youth disaffection different viewpoints on how we should interpret the causes and as an inevitable result of that I think very different interpretations regarding the necessary responses to Boko Aram how much is this a question of accountability either for actors in Boko Aram or at different levels of the government how much is this an ideological or religious issue that requires de-radicalization of the kind that Arthur is talking about in the prisons what's the role of Islamic scholars any of it makes a very provocative claim that perhaps the best response has to come from inside Islam itself but there's no point in outsiders trying to get too involved if the situation is illegitimate the change has to come from Islamic scholars themselves how much is this a question of reconciliation and rebuilding relations at various levels of society and finally I guess Bala throws out a challenge to say maybe we're barking up the wrong tree if we think this is only about economic development there have to be other factors at play because arguably the northeast isn't even the most impoverished part of Nigeria why is it facing this kind of insurgency when most other states in Nigeria aren't so challenging the thesis of economic development being the core component here so lots of different issues different perspectives from the three and I think they've given us a good foundation for a debate and a discussion with you all now so I'm happy to take questions from whoever and maybe when I ask you to ask you a question if you just briefly tell us who you are that would be good I see lots of hands so I might group the questions together too if that's okay with the three of you I'll take them Hi, I'm Yohan I'm a PhD student here so I work on Pakistan and they're an amazing parallel between the situations described in northern Nigeria and Pakistan especially in the northwestern country so my I actually have two questions the first question is that I find it actually very forward thinking and exciting the idea of reconciliation and reconstruction to be so boldly considered such an early stage especially because there were things in the presentation that's actually not just something that you do after the defeat of World War I that may be necessary in order to defeat a movement like this but it also makes the question of I mean in some ways if you want to take it for granted that this movement can or will be defeated and I actually have to ask what's the basis for that the world changes it could possibly be that this is a reality that has come to say given how fragile governance has been even the military as an institution has been in terms of its ability to sustain its its presence who's to say that it will be defeated or that this movement or some movement like it so that's one question the other question is that there's been references to the Salafi movement but the Salafi movement presents outside the Arab world is relatively recent and for example in Pakistan you saw that happen side by side with the delegitimization of older more traditional forms of Islamic spirituality they almost sort of go out of fashion, they see this backwards I'm Islamic too tainted by native religion whatever that might be and I was wondering if there was something similar that happened in northern Nigeria earlier like more traditional forms of Islam found themselves delegitimized and marginalized and allowed to create this space for these more radical forms of Islam to become hegemonic Thanks, the gentleman got it I'm Maki David from the African Department of Electricity I just wanted to ask whether there is a link to continuation, you mentioned my tassina which can be for anyone in the 70s and the trajectory between that and the other groups that that you mentioned at the beginning of the different sects that are there and also to know that there is a the role in the 70s and the network of the techniques of the 70s is different from what is happening now in connection with what is happening in the Islamic State there are a number of connections everywhere so is there a trajectory there and are we seeing a situation where things have occurred because it was in the 70s and also the second thing is is there an avenue to inform the government from what you are finding on the ground that there is just there is something about the situation of this I'll take one more question in this round and then we'll have another round just on the right here I have a few questions I was very could you tell us who you are for me and the last students here I was very intrigued how you started off saying that what is the Boko Haram situation going to look like so I was also kind of intrigued to say maybe this is something that's here to state but just to throw out an idea what is the possibility of carving out a Boko Haram state and letting them stay like what do you think about that kind of idea especially with the link with ISIS Boko Haram pledging to get to ISIS Al-Shabab etc. you think it's really as you were tying in original issue that you might forget about it that's a nice provocative question let's start with Inni and move back down the panel I'm sure you'll each have news on each of the questions so yeah Inni thank you if you ask the first the first question if I got you correctly you're asking if Boko Haram's existence as a result of a vacuum left behind by the de-legitimization earlier Islamic groups I think to an extent it can be seen as that because Boko Haram itself is the latest in an incarnation it's sort of undergone different cycles of rebirth essentially and I think the latest or rather the last in the sex and incarnation before it became what it's known as now was when they were expelled from the Mamadi Indimi Mosque in my degree and before then they worshipped with the members of the sect I mentioned the Izalatu they should be just known as the jibris the Jamatu Izalatu Dida and they also belong to the Salafi the strand of Islam with a gas to Boko Haram it's complex because the problem I have with many of the analysis out there is people usually tend to assume that it's a situation where you can just extrapolate other equations that you use for other groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda where it's a 2 plus 2 equals 4 and you just extrapolate that into Eastern Nigeria and then you get the same result but the catalyst in North Eastern Nigeria are different so you've got different context you have to consider with regards to the birth of Boko Haram such as the de-legitimization of the Islamic scholars the Ulama particularly within the Izala in North Eastern Nigeria so that de-legitimization of the scholars because they were seen as being too chummy with the government it sort of made the commoners look at them as not being on their side and so that created sort of a space for preachers like Muhammad Yusuf to set up their own mosques and then start preaching and their rhetoric took a populist sort of an accent to it and that sort of allowed the youth to move more towards what they were saying now with regards to the other question by a doctor we've had about links, possible links between other previous Islamist groups like the Maitei Sena, the Lintud Sena as they were called and Boko Haram I would say yes very much so and it also links with the first question as well where you asked if we had just concluded that Boko Haram is something that's going to be wiped out within a particular period I mean if I'm able to present the gentleman I don't think it's not so much that we've concluded that Boko Haram is going to be wiped out it's more of the presumption that at some point even if Boko Haram is not wiped out there will be a need for reconstruction and reconciliation and look we don't know we're not in a must-remises or anything so we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow but one thing we do know for a fact is that the people who were displaced from all these towns, villages and even cities that were taken over previously by Boko Haram will need to at some point in the not-too-distant future return to their homes because Boko Haram at the moment is reduced numerically and this is what I've gotten from people who have been talking actually with Boko Haram and the top echelon of Boko Haram from Imam Abu Bakar Shakao down to the food soldiers and they told me on the first and basis that the fighters are demoralised the fighters don't want to fight anymore they never thought that the fighting would escalate to the scale that it's taking on because one thing you need to remember is most of these guys are not well I suppose literally they're not monsters most of them come from Bono state most of them lived within many of the towns I saw myself in and a time mentioned most of them lived within the towns that they later turned down and destroyed so most of them would like in the uteric world to return so they themselves don't want a situation where they live in the forest which is where they land down it leads us to conclude that at some point even if these guys are not entirely wiped out which I suppose is impossible they will at some point just fizzle out and the question about the parallels between previous business groups with the mighty sine I think one of the things we need to remember is this happened in the 70s we didn't have social media we didn't I'm not sure it didn't exist until then I'm a caveman so I will know anyway I mean we didn't have YouTube, Facebook things like that but what we do know is there are loads of human rights abuses of them that took place many of the members were killed but then what happened is the ones who were not killed actually and were not imprisoned and given life sentences sort of just blended in again with members of the public and that's why you'll notice that there are very strong parallels between the teachings of Mohammed Marwah, the founder of the Yantan Sinai and the beliefs of Bukhara although it also has to be mentioned some of the beliefs that these sects espouse are really just common ideas that exist amongst commoners in Northern Nigeria so I think even if we do see the end of Bukhara it's possible that we will also if these are things that were mentioned if these structures are not put in place we will probably see another sect come up tomorrow and claim to be the new Bukhara sorry for going on thank you let me just talk briefly I mean should we accept that Bukhara must come to stay even someone suffering from cancer he knows he may die tomorrow he believes that somehow there will be a miracle if you really live under Bukhara it's very difficult forget about the academic arguments we are really a victim it's very difficult, you hope that one day we can get rid of these people so there's no way, I come from that region no way we are going to accept that we hope and that's why we are taking on post-complete reconstruction so we are trying to think ahead and that is what we are doing now the other aspect about the traditional Islamic sects that were existing before there has always been Islamic resistance in Nigeria even before the coming of the colonial masters we had the traditional Sufi groups the Tijaniya and the Qadariya and they were really very very strong at that time there are a lot of Imams who were very influential well because of the establishment of the colonial system of state that destroy most of the Islamic structures you have other resistance groups that's fall off like the Gantachi movement the Mahdi groups the Maitesini and Grand Bukhara and I think that as long as people feel that their religion is not being treated well within this western concept of state they are always going to have that resistance and that's why even in the most people of the world like America you still have this problem so even if Nigeria is able to achieve the best economy in the world it's not true that this kind of resistance will go away people will always use religion and the other aspect is whether these new systems of fighting Bukhara or fighting Islamic groups is different from the past and the present and I think that with Bukhara it's because for me it exists at this regional porous border I was at the lecture there used to be massive irrigation projects fishing projects and fishing unions but the lectures almost dried up and most of those who refused to go to school and were depending on fishing and farming and irrigation can no longer survive because of this and that is why Bukhara knows the language they know the area they have the local content they can really go across the porous borders very very easily I have to know we had the lecture commission for example, Nigeria, Niger and chat could not even collaborate to maintain this commission as a regional commission much more of collaborating to maintain security at this border region so that's a real serious problem colonial grievances chat Niger come around the long France Nigeria is British because I am British German I used to belong to the German colony handed over to the British and now handed over to Nigeria I don't even know whether I am German or British or Nigerian so you have all this kind of colonial identity confessions at this border region and Bukhara is really able to exploit that am I able to give all this information to the government it's really really a very serious thing in Nigeria to get the true information is very very difficult and you really have to be very cautious I am very careful particularly as a student and a scholar coming from that region where your family is known, your people are known you really have to be very careful so I am very cautious I don't know what but for me I am really really very cautious the possibility of carving out a table for Bukhara I am afraid that is not going to happen I am afraid that is going to happen so I don't think we are going to allow that it's not going to be possible we need people to be together rather than carving out this and you have to understand that Bukhara represents barely 1% is it every kangaroo that would like to have an independent state even if Nigeria became independent in 1996 there were agitations the Borno Youth Movement for example they really didn't want to be part of Nigeria but we have come a long way with a very long voice so I mean you cannot carve out that group and give work how can she carve out others how do they set up a government if they set up a government how are they going to carve out diplomatic missions who is going to be the Foreign Affairs Minister who are they going to call these things cannot work at the end of the day the little percentage of the number of people who belong to that state will actually be the victims and I think Nigeria the responsible state cannot allow that to happen actually your question was I don't know why you thought that that would be a logical it's just a thought provoking because Bukhara what you've done the last 2-3 years is that they've sucked the communities and you see they're going to carve out part of that community who are they going to go over I mean Bukhara on the ideology is something that people will do for a long time because normally when you're trying to go around and you want to set up a caliphate you have 12 people that are going to rule over but if you go in there and kill everybody it just doesn't make sense so that's sort of a problem in my mind so when you came up with the whole idea of partner or portion of Nigeria it doesn't solve the problem anyway because I think it just don't be a problem with new caliphates that you're suggesting it's going to be some problem for Nigeria, Caledonia and Chad but I think the reason why we all hope Bukhara Ram is the fact that Nigeria is a very hopeful people we sort of believe that things will go away and when the military thing happened in the 80s it just went away and we think that the reason why this hasn't happened with Bukhara Ram is because the government the outgoing government didn't have the political will to try and attack Bukhara and they didn't fund the military well enough and they actually did not believe that Bukhara Ram was like you said a bad organization which would just go away I mean the president I personally just said when he went to meet the president good luck and told him that he wanted to go to Bukhara and he wanted to be briefed about Bukhara Ram the president told him that it's just a bad time group and it is that level of nonchalance that led to it getting to where it is now I don't think it was something that happened overnight so that's why we're hopeful you know and the issue of the doctor has gone but I mean I think the reason one of the reasons why Bukhara Ram I mean I go back to Sharia and the introduction of Sharia in 1999 in Nigeria and what that did was it gave a lot of northern you have to understand how entrenched Islam is in northern Nigeria it's extremely entrenched most northern Nigerian Muslims see the world through the eyes of Islam and Sharia gave them an opportunity to live their lives according to what they felt were their ideals most of the introduction of Sharia was purely for particular reasons so the kind of justice that they thought they would get they didn't get and that's why groups like Bukhara Ram now have come out these people that have said they would introduce Sharia in the first instance to make your life better they did all of that just to cover your eyes and then people started feeling a lot disenchanted and that's why it's easy for groups like Bukhara Ram and the Sharia group in Jaria to have people with large unemployment levels and things like that they used religion to be the voice that would help them mobilize this piece another round of questions because there are hands kind of going up left and right so I'll gather a few more than three this time and then I'll start with Bala because I'm conscious that Bala keeps having to wait if I bring it by a window so that seems very unfair so we'll start with Bala I have a question for Bala okay that's good I'm just trying to find out you were particularly about three states Adamawa, Bono, and Yorbe and Yorbe you also mentioned that the political the leader of those states they were not very politically ambitious that would have made it less difficult no political they didn't have political will to address some of the issues so would you be able to elaborate why you put those countries in those states and why you said they don't have political will to to challenge the Boko Haram to better the states and why exactly have you spoken in those states okay great my name is Sydney Kloserman I'm a master's student at UCL I was talking about the maximalist versus the minimalist approach I was wondering about the potential for that minimalist, the potential for those negotiations and what a positive negotiation with Boko Haram would look like and if that potential is reduced under a Buhari administration and if that potential is there with the current conditions of the organization and along that line I was also wondering with the economic situation if there were to be these negotiations how would one go about improving the economy and incentivizing people who would otherwise be militants without creating an amnesty reward situation like we've seen in the Delta all of you mentioned a wide area of legitimate claims made by Boko Haram and people who support Boko Haram which are set as the foundation for movement from social issues religious issues economic issues like valid explanations for how this insurgency sprung out but then when you discuss the end of it it's always a defeat plus reconciliation and I'm a little bit confused on what kind of reconciliation is it if it doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the movement and the claims if it just focuses on defeat and defeat doesn't really accommodate the legitimacy of any of those I'll take one more in this round one more round after this Peter, I teach in politics so this is a question which I think I've heard different answers to given how easy Boko Haram could label traditional authorities in the north as neocolonial collaborators with British imperialism how significant are they really for post conflict negotiations right a nice array of issues there first question why did I pick the three states those are the three states that Boko Haram has actually been more active and that's why I picked those three states Adomar, Borno and Yobi those are the three states initially Boko Haram started from Yobi they were pushed out and they moved to Borno but they had a tax in Adomar and in those three states they had a tax in other parts of London but their concentration has been in those three states and I say the reason why I say Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Haram I think he talked about that he used Boko Haram I mean it was a situation in Nigeria then where political elites used militias to further their political agendas and Boko Haram just happened to be one of those that fit into the situation in Borno state then and like he mentioned the Governor had Ecomor which is his own militia in both states the Governor had his own in the Delta the Governor's armed the militias, the men the people fighting they had different grievances in those areas but they were armed too by the politicians because politicians used them conveniently for elections and so in the north in Borno state the Governor at least entered into collaboration with Boko Haram thinking that maybe it was the same kind of situation that you would get in the south west which is quite different because Boko Haram is based on an ideology not on material base so it's very difficult for you to change their mindset and that's why so he didn't have the political room to address that issue and that's why I said that they probably had the same problem but because Boko Haram is not situated in Ademapase they just go into Ademapase and the former Governor Miyako was more concerned than he is of course of millions of millions of Naira so you can see that they didn't want to address on the line issue that's why I said that they had the political room the issue of legitimacy I don't think we said any of those grievances were legitimate we said this is what Boko Haram had said but we didn't say that we felt that what they said was legitimate because we did say what they are fighting for is legitimate then that means that obviously like you said we are not supporting Boko Haram after Boko Haram then obviously it will make sense to how do you go about the consideration in their narratives it is legitimate in their eyes but some of the things they are asking for just don't make sense but they feel that it is legitimate and that's why they are fighting this fight and that's why we don't think it is legitimate Peter you asked about how the traditional rulers can be a part of part of the problem with conflict resolution in Northern Nigeria is the fact that the traditional rulers are not they don't have the kind of legitimacy they used to have before and what happens is that because in many cases the conflicts are actually between two different groups so what happens is that they always see the traditional leader as being supportive of one group over the other that's the way it is and if a traditional group is if a traditional ruler is seen as a orthodox Muslim leader then obviously if he is going to negotiate between Boko Haram and the traditional Muslim setting Boko Haram will think that he is going to lean more towards Boko Haram and even when I did my film work in areas like Jaws the same problem happened when which is was sent in to negotiate between the Baroms and the Muslim community there the Baroms didn't want it because he is part of the house of Fulani tradition which is Islamic so they didn't want that so there is a problem with issues of legitimacy regarding traditional rulers even in non-Muslim areas like between the chiefs you cannot put a traditional ruler there to address some of these issues because they will always be seen as being partisan towards one group of the other so yes that will be a problem in the long run you know the issue of negotiation the maximum you know Buhari has said it very very clearly that if you have two insurgencies who manage the data militants and Boko Haram he can't treat one different from the other generally I have given billions of dollars in oil protection protection of oil hide nights so while he is giving out contracts they are busy bombing Boko Haram so according to Buhari he is not going to do that but the problem is that those who are already in prison Boko Haram members who are already in prison of course it's true the military has killed some in secret but others have also been prosecuted they have been giving life sentences but the fact is that the whole prison constitution in Nigeria at the moment is in decay how are you going to keep these thousands of fighters in prison with this economic problem where are you going to get the money these people have children they have families how are the families going to feel how will their children, will they take up arms sometime to fight on behalf of their parents so I don't know the approach that Buhari is coming in with but the program we are running now is that of Jonathan is trying to ensure they give permission for mental health because they have killed before they have bought these fort psychologists and to see how they can truly rehabilitate them and take them back into the society I had this training before in Singapore where some of the bombers were really rehabilitated and today they participate effectively in the Singaporean economy it's a long term project it's a project where you may not feel the impact now it may take years but I think that it is good the approach Buhari will bring but it's really of advantage but what I'm sure is Buhari is not going to keep paying the neither delta militants oil contraband that is not going to happen and Jaila doesn't even have that money the issue of legitimacy we actually said it we didn't say that the grievances or the narratives of Boko Haram are legitimate you have to understand that the terrorism bill was passed by the federal government supported by the Americans this bill was even amended in 2014 so much so that if you are in Nigeria and you commit terrorists outside it's a crime I was arrested twice in Yola and in Abuja why? because I tried to collect Boko Haram materials in 1995 up to 2009 to have Boko Haram YouTube videos and their livelets but after 2009 it was even a crime and then when the anti-terrorism act was passed it was more it cannot send you to prison I had to sue it before I get myself out of the hook so we are not saying that it is legitimate it is not at all then the other one about the British you have to understand there's a general glee particularly northern Nigeria among the Muslim that this colonial inherited state that we have today the concept of state in Nigeria has failed us and so people constantly see anyone linked to that state particularly Muslims or someone who is a collaborator who is not supported probably if the state in Nigeria for the past 50 years and live up to his expectations providing real development to the people empowering people giving them good jobs where really you can really live in good houses they have good jobs they don't need to take up guns and go and fight and then you also have to understand that in the age of the internet and social media people are now listening and seeing what is happening around the world and so there's this big narrative of the entire western civilization being against Islamic civilization that also reaches northern Nigeria and don't expect that people will think that the British state is different from it and so if you meet a typical Muslim, ordinary Muslim probably who has not gone to school on the streets of northern Nigeria there's even no distinction between Christianity and western civilization and the British empire they are all one and the same thing so and I think that is why the grievances are still there so some are considered collaborators others not from a more perspective to what I just said to take another question there's I think that I also said something similar as well about the ruling class in northern Nigeria the fact of the matter is the ruling class in northern Nigeria has always been considered to be collaborators with the British it's always been that way now in northern Nigeria there's a wide gap between the rich and the poor the rich are the minority and the poor make up the bulk of the common folk in northern Nigeria just like Balaz said the ruling class especially the rulers themselves the emers, the kings are always having some kind of having a loyalty to one particular or the other so even in 2012 Bokoram tried to kill the late emmer of Adobo Yeru who's dead now and he was believed to be a member of PPP even though no one ever saw proof to say that he actually was and one thing we also need to note about Bokoram is at its core the sect is actually the civil school and by being against the civil school they're against the Saralta in northern Nigeria because they believe they're failed to take a make a segue into the other question which is about okay I think you also said something about a possible role that the rulers can play in a post-reconstruction post-reconciliation of Nigeria you notice I never mentioned the possibility of the ruling class play in such a role because they already lack that legitimacy with Bokoram first of all and then with most of the common people anyway because as the gentlemen already sort of went into detail about these guys already have a history of being known as collaborators with the British who are seen as the guys who introduced the monster of Christianity and other corrosive ideas and concepts into northern Nigeria so I don't envisage that the ruling class played such a role which is why I focused entirely on the role of preachers because most of the people will tell you the first people to go to for information and I asked many of them that question specifically I said where do you get the bulk of your the information you consider to be credible stuff from and they said it's primarily at the mosque when we go to the mosque if the mam says this or that or this or that then we take it as the truth whole self and then afterwards maybe on secondary basis we'll maybe listen to the BBC house a radio service or something and so I think the preachers will have to play a primary role in that right I'm going to just go to the mosque the last bit the power you don't do this kind of field work without a sense of ingenuity he's found a way around to get this regarding preachers I think Izala I think that's what Izala has tried to do there's this the whole goal of the establishment of Izala group is that people needed to be educated beyond what their preachers told them that's the problem and that's the distinction in Izala group and with Tijaniya and Kedria groups and that's where there's been a clash between them Kano is predominantly Tijaniya or Kedria one of the two but in Joss and Keduna and so on people actually try to learn they just don't take what the preachers say anymore they want to learn and understand exactly why he's interpreting what he's interpreting that way and if they don't agree then they challenge it so there's a lot of conflict between some of these sects there it's actually pretty obvious it's not as clear-cut as you think people just don't take the preachers what they see just like that Izala group is doing a lot of work changing perceptions of how people interpret religion and understand Islam so I'll take one final round of questions and then we'll come back to the speakers gentlemen here my name is Daniel I started a group called Nigerian Live Matter and I've been a part of it can you speak out a little bit please so my name is Akron Davis I started an organization or a group called Nigerian Live Matter I'm a media curator my question to you was I've got a double question I mean thanks for putting it into context because obviously it just shows how complex it is to run a country like Nigeria based on so many varying issues the first thing was I guess the new government that both forces like accountability and security but within that how much do you think or do you even think there's a possibility of incorporating both Islam and both moderate Islam and Christianity into the law into legislation maybe for specific regions or across the country and my second question was for the global Nigerian diaspora to come back into it and actually try to break industry if there is accountability and security I'm Caroline I'm a master's student here at South I just want to grab all this because I was pretty eager to talk about Boko Haram before I came but going from what I know gender's been like a major lens that's put on Boko Haram in the media so I was quite surprised that none of you mentioned gender when you were talking about Boko Haram so I just wondered what role you think gender does play in the ideology of Boko Haram and then if you're thinking about peace and reconciliation what do you have to think about gender in order to challenge that gentlemen just to your right my name is Jibari Young I'm a master's student in Cambridge and I work in Africa my question is it's about human security I mean it's evident that a multidisciplinary approach is needed and the whole auto security basic needs these things need to be done and I guess working with that background in the military you realize that a military solution is not going to work that is the faux pas that's the great tragedy so I guess my question is how can Nigeria with its ethno-religious differences and various leadership challenges ahead actually utilize Boko Haram in his office to come together on some basic issues towards human security and if anyone of them would like to take that from me thanks I'll take a couple more questions my question is to you I mean your narrative seems to suggest that the Boko Haram is Islamic fundamentalism of course that's made legitimate by socio-economic feelings and your expansive work in northern Nigeria and in Islam I'm keen to ask what you think about the argument that's out there which says that in Islam needs reformation the same kind that Christianity has gone through you know in the 16th century and then you know Aleppo said that could be the that could be the solution but if you think that Islamic fundamentalism would be a major course of Boko Haram and all the insurgences there I'm keen to know what your take on that is because you know the different sides of the argument Richard Itzman and the last question background I have a bit of comment I'm an excellent student so I'm now working in the sexual reproductive health in Nigeria I wanted to talk about gender and women I just wanted to mention the maternal mortality ratio again that you highlighted I think you said you've got a chart surely this is higher than the this is in the north east not in the whole country Richard we'll start with any about amenity to try to pick your favourite question in that last round pick the easiest one avoid the tough ones I'm going to avoid the one about Islamic Reformation and I'll pick the one about women that's a real show I was hoping you would talk about it that was directed brilliant women I didn't think I wanted to overlook the importance of women in all of this what I like to call the Bukhara madness women played a key role in the continuation of all of this and the reason why the members of Bukhara began abducting girls and women is because the men needed some motivation living in the mountains women have been victimised and horrible things have been despicable things have been done to them and obviously they're going to have to be at the part of the reconstruction and reconciliation that has to take place but there's so the myriad of things to talk about when you talk about Bukhara and having three hours or even five isn't enough to touch on all of these things so we just try to be as broad as possible in the reconstruction and reconciliation without touching specifically on women or children or men but just to mention the ideology of Bukhara regarding women there are all kinds of arguments from the Quran people who think it's political others who think it's scriptural based in the Quran others who think it's manipulation of the Quranic scripture but Bukhara follows the ideology where the role of the woman is seen because of her features being different from that of the man so her role in the family in the society in the community is totally different she's not supposed to show her face she's not supposed to be seen with somebody it's very very conservative so if that happens to a Muslim woman imagine a Christian woman who is captured by Bukhara and recognised as a spoil of war that's going to be different that's why you hear Shekau talking about selling them in the market except she converts so she becomes a Muslim and that kind of thing just to mention the ideology briefly it's not as if we don't want to talk about it but we can't talk about everything yes so the issue of the reformation it's not as if the ideology the fundamentalism is really the main cause I think that Islamic sex they have a lot of kind of rivalry and quarrels and influence within Islamic sex in northern Nigeria that is very true but as he mentioned the reformation cannot come from outside it has to come from within Islam Islamic scholars the moderate voices and others and I lived in Egypt for 2 years my experience in Egypt is that there's a bit of generational war between the older generation and much more younger people who really want to be more educated now when this older generation gradually goes up I don't know what the younger generation will do if that kind of reformation to come with them I'm not the one to say but I think that there will be some kind of natural progression which happens with the entire humanity not just Islam, not just Christianity not just Buddhism I think the whole of humanity is changing and it will continue to change and there will be certain changes I'm not to say it doesn't I don't know what will happen I think that's what I have to say Your question was on moderate, I'm trying to put legal to legalize the sharia No, not legalize sharia but find moderate Islam is existing to Nigerian I'm not sure if people think most Muslims are not going to think there's anything like moderate Islam it's just the way it is it's either you are a Muslim and you are following these Quran and Sunnah or you are not following it it's not a matter of being a moderate or fundamentalist or whatever some of these laws are already incorporated in the sharia law especially in most northern states so people already live within sharia the thing about sharia in 1999 it was not introduced and the expansion was with the criminal aspect of it that's what brought up all the crisis because it already existed even before independence really incorporated into the laws of the country so it was something already there just that it was made so much fanfare and they brought the criminal aspect of it and cut off somebody's hand and said they were going to kill a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock so it's always existed and gender we the whole idea of Boko Haram and the whole global take on Boko Haramani because 200 girls were abducted in Shibok and before then there had been daily abductions of girls and boys and women and so it was nothing new it just brought it to the fore I mean the human rights world and I'm interested in that I've written a lot of reports saying that there was a real crisis in that unfortunately most of the women that abducted most of them their husbands were already killed so we're not underplaying the impact that Boko Haram has had on women but it's something that we discussed so much I thought for me personally I just thought it was something that I'll bring up now I don't want to talk about Shibok and Boko Haramani women would they might have an impact let me just give you a minute if you look at the video at the beginning we are running massive program both in Yola and Meduguru you can see that man from Ireland she is a woman most of those women in the school and they have been trained on really not only how to take care of the orphans but really how to engage and improve and I think that in a society like Nigeria it's really going to take time it's not going to be something sudden it's going to be a shock but I think gradually these things will happen and I want to mention briefly is the issue of human security human security and what Boko Haram can do this is my personal opinion at the moment we have a lot of what I call non-Boko Haram violent conflicts going on around particularly in the Middle East and this is related to the environment if you go to the northeast particularly northern part of Nigeria because of desertification substantial number of the subsistence farmers depend on the land because they don't have government jobs and because of desertification and lack of rain they can no longer rely on the land so what happens they are migrating to the Middle Belt region which is much more fertile so that they can settle but the problem in Nigeria is our ethnicity indigents and settlers you guys arriving they are citizens but you are settlers we are indigents we are the owners of this land we can't accept you here as I talk to you the serious crisis ongoing in Tarawa which is almost worse than Boko Haram nobody talks about it so I think what Boko Haram can do maybe is to get rid of this indigent settler thing he can't he can't he can't go away even from his claim one thing I took away from the short everybody was described based on his ethnicity an evil man held us everybody was a Muslim man because it's something that's inbred ethnicity and religion identities in Nigeria are so important we might talk about getting rid of it but deep down the back of our minds the first thing every Nigerian asks when he meets another Nigerian is where are you from you can see thank you so on that from Boko Haram I can see people putting hands up if you've got more questions I would encourage you to have a chat to the speakers afterwards this is a final note of thanks to all of you for coming out one of the real privileges I have to say of working at SOAS is getting to work with PhD students like Idi Bakindo and Bala everything I know about Boko Haram I've learned from these guys I have a huge debt of gratitude to them so thank you to you