As he addressed the 71st United Nations General Assembly in New
York last week, Muhammadu Buhari was in bullish mood. Nigeria’s experience, he
argued, is evidence that terrorism can be defeated, suggesting that the war
against Boko Haram has already been won.
“Nigeria has
made remarkable progress in our resolve to defeat Boko Haram, whose capacity to
launch orchestrated attacks as a formed group has been severely degraded,” the
Nigerian president concluded.
Encouraging
news, even if Buhari is overstating his government’s successes. Yes, Boko Haram
is on the back foot, but it is far from a spent force, and is still capable of
causing death and destruction in the region. It proved this yet again on
Saturday night, when an attack on a town near Chad’s border with
Niger left four Chadian soldiers dead.
But what
Buhari conveniently neglected to mention is that even as his government makes
progress against Boko Haram, it is fighting secessionist fires on two other
fronts. In Nigeria, independence movements are like the multiheaded Hydra of
Greek legend: every time you chop off one head, another magically appears from
somewhere else.
The most serious threat comes from the grandly-named Niger Delta Avengers, who made their presence felt again this weekend, shattering a brief ceasefire in the process. According to Reuters, the militants once again attacked an oil installation, targeting a pipeline that connects Bonny Island to the mainland.
The Avengers
claim to be fighting for a fairer distribution of the Niger Delta’s vast oil
wealth, which too often goes to feed Nigeria’s fat cats while development in
the area remains poor to non-existent. Hence their targeting of the oil
industry: since the beginning of the year, repeated attacks have forced down
oil production by a hefty 2.1-million barrels a day, adding to Nigeria’s
already-considerable economic woes.
As the
Avengers grow in strength, seemingly unperturbed by a military offensive
designed to stop them, so do their demands. Now they’re talking about “the
restoration of our right to peaceful self-determination”, with the intention of
pressing for complete autonomy. And they are threatening to force the issue
through violence if they don’t get what they want.
Last month’s
ceasefire was supposed to provide a little breathing space for talks about some
kind of peaceful resolution, but the Avengers maintain that the government
refused to speak to them – hence the new attack. It’s a troubling development,
and one that will worry Buhari even more than the continued Boko Haram-related
instability. Boko Haram can terrorise Nigeria’s north-east; the Avengers, by
disrupting the oil supply, can impact the entire country.
But even if
Buhari does succeed in smashing Boko Haram, and placating the restive Niger
Delta – unlikely given that both are enormous, seemingly intractable problems –
he’s now got a third secessionist movement to worry about. The self-proclaimed,
short-lived Republic of Biafra may have been brutally smashed by the Nigerian
army in 1970 – leaving 3-million civilians dead in its wake – but the tensions
that led to its creation have never really disappeared. Many Igbo still feel
marginalised and discriminated against, and a new group has been capitalising
on these long-stranding grievances.
The
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have placed the Biafra issue firmly back on
the national agenda, with repeated calls for a Brexit-style referendum on
whether to remain within Nigeria or not, backed up by protest action. The
arrest last year on dubious treason charges of IPOB’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu,
appears to have backfired: if the intention was to silence him, his detention
has only made him a martyr, and amplified his message. So much so that even the
Niger Delta Avengers have taken up his cause, making Kanu’s release a condition
for their negotiations with the government.
But Buhari
has repeatedly made it clear that the chance of re-secession for Biafra is
non-existent. Most recently, in response to protests from pro-Biafra activist
groups in New York, Buhari reiterated that
he had no plans to hold a referendum on the subject, and advised activists to
form a political party to advocate their position through Nigeria’s democratic
channels.
Individually,
Boko Haram, the Niger Delta Avengers and IPOB all represent major challenges to
the federal government’s authority. Taken together, however, it becomes clear
that this country we call Nigeria remains a tenuous, fragile construct, even 56
years after independence. Can Buhari hold it together?
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. No South South no South East, we are all Biafra. An uneducated man does not think rightly,
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