Embrace The Realities Of An Ideological Falsehood; The Boko Haram Cover, By Mohammed Danjuma
When the first bomb went off on October 1st 2010, many could not fathom the possibility of a bomb going off anywhere in Nigeria let alone being targeted at innocent civilians on the streets of Abuja. But in effect, that was the dawn of a new era in our dear nation. We were rudely awakened to the reality of our vulnerability and negligence to issues that ought to have been tops on our priority list as a nation. We have simply been riding on the back of the proverbial tiger for too long not to end up in its belly.
When the renegade group called Boko Haram began their deadly and evil campaign, the critical part of our polity where blinded by the politics of self and regional interest to even see the red flag that was waving glaringly at us all, a warning of an impending danger brewing right in our midst. Like I said in an earlier write up, we have repeatedly run the red-light for too long to be perplexed at any ensuing accident.
Late in 2011, Arewa transformation and Empowerment initiative (ATEI) conducted a survey in the North-West, North Central and some parts of the North East states to document the activities and nature of some Almajiri Schools from which we produced a 30 minutes documentary and the revelations were alarming and startling. We found hundreds of makeshift schools with thousands of young children being tutored by unqualified teachers in very dehumanizing conditions. The point I am driving at here is in the fact that we have a growing population of young unskilled and uneducated population that have been neglected by the system in the last 3 to 4 decades in Northern Nigeria in the midst of dwindling economic opportunities especially in the North East. This breeds an army of unemployed, uneducated, semi educated (in some cases) and disenchanted population of young people who in many cases have never experienced any parental care or love whatsoever, a ready tool to be used by any evil minded person or group with an agenda.
The Nation and most especially the northern leaders were either oblivious of this time bomb we were sitting on or cared little from their respective comfort zones, spending their resources and energy instead on a quest for power and control of the center while the North continued to plunge deeper into an abyss of economic backwardness over the decades. It was this realization and an increase in the attacks by Boko Haram that prompted our call for the Northern IMPACT summit in 2012 where we sought to chart a new direction for the North with the consensus that our greatest asset is in our young population and we must begin to invest in building their capacity towards prosperity. Unfortunately, to this call we received little or no support from Northern leaders as we went ahead to begin implementing the Arewa Youth Empowerment Program. The truth is, if we do not give our young people something to live for, someone will always give them something to die for. Like the former minister of youths, Bolaji Abdullahi, said in an article recently, “ as long as we continue to breed an army of young people who feel excluded from the enjoyment of this life, visions of a better hereafter will always be a goal worth dying for’’.
The narrative of Boko Haram and their sinister campaign of terror in Northern Nigeria reeks with the stench of an invisible hand whose tactics is to stir up an uprising or anarchy in the midst of which they can achieve their ominous goal known only to them, any discerning mind can see the writing clearly on the wall.
At first they played the religious card by selecting and bombing churches and mosques in cities like Kaduna and Jos that have a history of religious crisis in the past with a propensity for reprisal attacks that mostly usually end up spiraling into mayhem of untold violence. When this tactics did not yield the desired result for the insurgents, they went ethnic, bombing luxury buses laden with innocent travelers going to the east in Kano. This unprovoked attack would have sparked series of reprisal killings in the South East in the past but luckily we were able to avert that mostly because Nigerians are a lot more informed today about the real intent of these bandits. Lately the attacks have taken a clearly political dimension, targeting soft targets, shopping malls, markets, motor parks, viewing centers etc. clearly designed to instill fear and apprehension among the populace and also pitch the people against the government and security agencies with an ultimate goal of inciting public unrest.
Their joker so far is the attempt on the lives of the former head of state Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and the renowned Islamic cleric Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi recently in Kaduna; both men have a near fanatical followership in the north and by their antecedence, very active and vocal on contemporary issues. Had they succeeded, all hell would have broken loose in the north with accusing fingers pointing in all directions but we thank God that they did not succeed. They have targeted and succeeded in assassinating in some cases some high profile individuals in the recent past all with the same intent. The abduction of the secondary school girls in Chibok was yet another strategy by the insurgents to whip public sentiments and also create a human shield for themselves while they pursue their campaign of terror.
It has become obviously clear that this insurgency clearly has no religious or ethno cultural ideology but rather a sinister political agenda achievable only by plunging the country into a civil war that will threaten the unity of Nigeria. Whatever their real motives, obviously it is only achievable in the midst of total anarchy and we must never grant them this goal. They have clearly identified our fault lines as a people to be religion, ethnicity, and political sentiments as the very tools with which they can use to achieve their evil goals.
This is the time we must close ranks as a nation united against this evil that is threatening our existence as a nation. We must throw our support to the men and women who put their lives on the line just so we can be safe. This is not the time for political grandstanding or partisanship, we must realize that there is an enemy within that is benefitting from our disunity.
I have always reiterated the fact that this is not a battle that can be won by boots and guns alone but a combination of soft and hard approach. We must begin to lay the foundation that will begin redressing the socio-economic crisis in the north that has created the enabling environment for this insurgency to thrive especially in the North-East. I think that it is only a long term socio economic solution that can solve this problem permanently and I believe that the recently announced Presidential Initiative for the North-East (PINE) is one of such solutions that if properly managed, will redirect the region towards prosperity. We cannot afford to indulge in a blame game and unnecessary criticism while our streets are awash with the blood of innocent citizens. We must all wake up to a collective responsibility as a people determined to root out this evil from our midst.
Mohammed Danjuma is President Arewa Transformation and Empowerment Initiative (ATEI). [myad]
We Are Modern Day Robin Hoods, Internet Scammers Confess By E. Eichelberger
I just returned from a reporting trip to Nigeria, where I was traveling around the country talking to terrorism experts, nomadic cattle herders, and government officials about how global warming affects conflict in the country.
I lucked out with an amazing fixer, Mr. Michael. As a newswire reporter focused on the terrorist group Boko Haram, he was able to provide crucial context for my story.
Michael grew up as a “street boy,” meaning he was able to make fast friends in the slum villages and farming communities we visited. He put himself through college, and after working as a Nigerian soap opera actor and door-to-door men’s clothing salesman, he clawed his way into journalism. Before that, he used to hang out with nomadic cow-herding kids, children who sell bottled water by the roadside, and budding scam artists.
Yes, Nigerian scam artists, like the ones who send you emails purporting to be from an African prince who will pay you to help him move $3 million into your country, and all you have to do is give him your bank account number. I told Michael I wanted to interview his scammer friends. He said there was no way that his dudes would talk for less than $600. Shocker. Of course, at
Mother Jones, we don’t pay for interviews. But I figured I’d be doing a public service by distracting the scammers from conning old folks for a couple hours. So I offered $100 for a rare glimpse at the human faces behind the syntax-challenged spam. We settled on $130, and off we went.
I sat down with Sheye and Danjuma on the back patio of a fancy duplex in an upscale neighborhood in one of the country’s main cities, and the two dished on their craft, constantly interrupting each other as they downed bottles of Nigerian Star lager and chain-smoked.
Though they lie for a living, Sheye insisted, “We are telling you the fact and the truth. This is a legitimate business.”
Sheye and Danjuma have a name for the advance-fee email scams, in which victims agree to send money to a stranger, banking on the promise of love or fast money.
They called these cons “Yahoo” jobs, pronounced Ya-OO.
A scam email I received recently.
“We go on the internet…We start making friend with you,” Danjuma says, explaining that they trawl Facebook and dating websites incessantly, looking for lonely women with money to spare.
He knows if he meets “a Saudi Arabia person,” he’s in luck. “They don’t know what to do with money.
“Whenever we want to fraud somebody, we will know what you are worth,” Danjuma says. “Where are you working?” Even “how much you have in your account.” They glean all this information just by developing a tight relationship with the dupe. If the mark is worthwhile, the scammer works up “a level of trust,” Danjuma continues.
“Maybe the person doesn’t have a husband, and the person is looking for a husband in Nigeria. Maybe…you need a black man, you know white woman believe black men have sexual stamina than white guys,” he says, his down-sloping eyes very serious.
At that point, the scammer will start to “give (the victim) a process,” promising to come visit her, but asking for money to take care of a few things first: “My car has problem,” or “My father is in Italy. He did not send money for me.”
“Because you love me, then you say, ‘Okay,'” Sheye interrupts.
“I go and withdraw my money. I keep on enjoying with my girls here in Naija.” He laughs wildly.
Over the past decade or so, the United States has cracked down on Nigerian Internet scams. Western Union, for example, would not allow me to wire my Nigerian fixer an advance portion of his pay because, the operator told me, I was likely the victim of fraud. Still, Nigerian fraudsters manage to dupe Americans into forking thousands of dollars over to complete strangers each year.
In 2011, the FBI received close to 30,000 reports of advance fee ploys, called “419 scams” after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that outlaws fraud.
The agency received over 4,000 complaints of advance fee romance scams in 2012, with victim losses totaling over $55 million. Nigerians aren’t the only ones committing international advance fee fraud, but nearly one-fifth of all such scams originate in the West African country. The scams often involve phony lottery winnings, job offers, and inheritance notices.
Ten years ago, Sheye and Danjuma, who are both in their mid-30s, say they could make up to 2 million naira—about $12,000—per Yahoo job, but the “US are very wise” now, Sheye says. They typically only make about $200 per “client” these days, though they know other scammers who still rake in millions of naira through the email schemes.
“There is this boy in Kaduna (a city in northern Nigeria) who made over 2 million naira” last year on 419 scams, Danjuma says. “And he is not even 18.
“We are not scared of any minister or president. We are not scared of him…Fuck them. They are all Thief people”
The two fraudsters make most of their money duping fellow Nigerians.
They insist that tricking people is not the same as stealing. “We don’t thief,” Danjuma says. We are modern day Robin Hoods.”
They told me about one elaborate scam, called Elawala (or “Let’s go” in Igbo, one of the languages spoken in Nigeria), that they occasionally pull on their countrymen. It involves a taxi cab, a “juju man,” magic charms, and a huge bag of cash (and it’s way too complicated to explain here). Another go-to scam involves a taxi cab, a French man, a locked box filled with gold, and very expensive pliers. (Ditto).
They even asked to hire me out for a day for one of their con jobs because, they said, a beautiful white babe with white skin would bolster their credibility. “Black people especially Naija guys believes that white man skin is reality,” Danjuma explains.
They make a tidy living. Sheye and Danjuma say they are each worth about $60,000, in a country where more than
70 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. They say they’d make a lot more than that, but they blow much of their income entertaining “clients” in order to convince the victims they’re legit. They’ll fly potential marks to Ghana, for example, and put them up in a fancy hotel while they meet with Sheye and Danjuma’s faux business partners there.
Since Ghana is a less corrupt country, they say, victims are more likely to enter into a business deal with a Ghanaian than a Nigerian. The two say they own homes worth about a quarter million dollars each.
The Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is tasked with cracking down on con men like these. So is Interpol. The duo says they are able to skirt law enforcement because they have a lot of people on their payroll. “They’re all criminals,” Danjuma explains. They estimate that 30 percent of their earnings go to what they call “security”—that is, the payment of bribes. “We are not scared of any minister or president,” Danjuma says, his words slightly slurred by the third 20-ounce bottle of Star. “We are not scared of him…Fuck him.”
They justify what they do by claiming that the highest levels of the Nigerian government are ridden with scammers. The fancy neighborhood where we meet backs up against a slum village. We take a stroll through it after the interview. The shack homes are constructed of used plastic cement bags tied to sticks. Feral dogs scamper around. A rivulet of garbage and water runs down the central dirt road.
“The money [the government] should have used to construct this road, they are using for personal use,” Sheye says. “That is why we are bad boys.”
*Not their real names. [myad]