A look into insurgent groups in Nigeria

Obviously, Nigeria’s already fragile national cohesion is bedevilled by persistent challenges that have escalated into real existential threats to the country, on at least two occasions. On the first occasion, the country experienced a bloody thirty-month-long civil war in the 60s, while on the second occasion it experienced a serious turbulence when, in 1990, some naïve and narrow-minded military officers attempted to violently overthrow the then federal military government, in the process of which they also announced the excision of some states with a particular ethno-religious population predominance, from Nigeria.

Though Nigeria managed to survive the turmoil on those two occasions and has indeed survived other similar, albeit relatively less serious, threats to its survival, the persistence of some organized seditious activities that persistently undermine its stability and, in fact, pose existential threat to it casts serious worries not only about the country’s prospect of achieving meaningful development, but also about its future as a sovereign political entity, for that matter. After all, the conflicting agendas of the sponsors and plotters of the rebellious activities perpetrated by various militant groups in the country highlight the extensiveness and intensity of the chaos that would certainly prevail should they manage to overthrow the institution of government in the country or any part thereof, God forbid.

While the exact number of insurgent groups in the country may not be easily ascertained, they could basically be categorized into two main categories; 1, those who pursue secessionist ambitions on the bases of ethno-sectional agendas, and 2, those motivated by misguided religious ideologies, hence seek to change the country accordingly. The first category includes virtually all militant groups in the southeast and the south-south e.g. the so-called Biafran agitators and the so-called Niger-Delta Avengers respectively. The second category includes their counterparts in the north e.g. Boko Haram and the Shiites, which, though don’t necessarily pursue secessionist ambitions, they seek to impose their misguided religious agendas on the country. 

Starting with the various militant groups in the Niger-Delta, despite the growing intensity of their terror campaign against the federal government, they aren’t in a position to determine the political destiny of the sub-region with regard to the issue of remaining or breaking away from Nigeria, after all. Also, the powerful elites in the sub-region many, if not most, of whom apparently sponsor such insurgents aren’t necessarily pursuing a secessionist agenda, either. Besides, they apparently realize that breaking away from Nigeria at this moment would probably turn out to be a strategic blunder and indeed counterproductive to their selfish personal interests, which they obviously and insensitively prioritize over the sub-region’s strategic socio-economic and political interests.

After all, by the way, though undoubtedly oil-rich, there are some underlying, ethnic, social and geopolitical dynamics that make it difficult, if not quite impossible, for the sub-region to survive, let alone thrive as a separate and sovereign political entity, at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

In any case, the elites in the sub-region, therefore, manipulate the legitimate and illegitimate grievances of the ordinary Niger-Deltans to the extent of masterminding and sponsoring militancy against the federal government to blackmail it into making more concessions in the sharing formula of the crude oil sales proceeds in favour of the sub-region, and to extort more advantages for the sub-region in terms of the provision of development projects, even though a whole federal ministry and a federal government commission i.e. Ministry of Niger-Delta Affairs and Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC) were created solely for that purpose. Needleless to say, the elites also simply plunder much of the resources earmarked for such development projects in the sub-region, in addition to the huge amounts of money many, if not most, of them probably make from crude oil theft and other related crimes which obviously wouldn’t have persisted and thrived without their involvement or connivance.

Likewise, while the dynamics of the agitation for secession in the southeast differ from what obtains in the Niger-Delta owing to the fact that the former isn’t oil-rich, the motive remains largely the same i.e. blackmail, albeit it’s in this case largely political in nature. Though the vested interests sponsoring these agitations aren’t apparently committed to pushing for the breakaway of the geopolitical zone from Nigeria, after all, primarily for fear of jeopardizing their selfish personal interests, they nonetheless seek to keep the sub-region restive especially when they lose out politically at the federal level, as it’s currently the case.

In the north, though the now increasingly diminishing Bokom Haram terrorists, whose mission is by the way simply too ridiculous and indeed too unrealistic to achieve, have unleashed indiscriminate and unprecedented wave of brutal terror attacks across the region; they neither actually pose existential threat to Nigeria, nor induce undue worries about its survival, anyway. Besides, they had been able to grow strong, in the first place, due to the strategic failure to tackle them appropriately and early enough by the successive federal governments and the state governments concerned. This explains the extent and the rate at which they have been crumbling since the beginning of the current administration that has proven to be particularly committed to crushing them.

Still in the north, the Shiites who believe in the religious/political doctrine of Wilaayatul-faqeeh, which is inherently treasonable in nature, as it simply doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of any government that is not under the leadership of Waliyyul-Faqeeh i.e. the Supreme Leader of Iran who is now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, do also pose a potentially existential threat to Nigeria. This is notwithstanding the denial and/or often ambiguous assertions of their turbaned elites in Nigeria and elsewhere whenever they address the issue of government’s legitimacy and the sovereignty of their respective countries. After all, they also believe in their misguided doctrine of At-Taqiyya under which they are allowed to reveal what is contrary to their belief even to an unsuspecting audience and under normal circumstances also, contrary to the applicable preconditions that govern the Islamic version of At-Taqiyya.  

This explains why virtually all Muslim countries and other countries with considerable Muslim populations around the world grapple with the subversive activities of their respective Shiite communities. In Lebanon, for instance, the Iran-sponsored Shiite militia i.e. Hezbollah has grown literally stronger than the government, hence it effectively runs it, while in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-controlled Shiite militias masquerading as political parties have hijacked the government and are running the country. Also, in Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthi Shiite militia had violently taken over the government, which plunged the country in its currently raging civil war. 

          

Though in Nigeria the Shiites have not yet grown strong enough to pose imminent existential threat to the country, they nonetheless habour and, in fact, actually pursue the ambition of eventually subjecting it to the control of the so-called Waliyyul-Faqeeh in far away Iran.