Douglas Yates Participates in France 24 Debate on Boko Haram Attacks and Nigerian Government Responses

Professor Douglas Yates was invited to participate in a televised debate on France 24 on February 22^nd, following the mass kidnapping by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria on February 19^th. Over 100 girls are believed to still be missing after this latest attack, which brings back memories of the kidnapping of 270 girls in Chibok by that same organization in 2014.

Along with a counter-terrorist expert, a representative of the Nigerian government, and the president of the #BringBackOurGirls movement, AGS’s African politics expert Douglas Yates discussed questions about possible solutions to the on-going threat that the Boko Haram organization has represented in the Lake Chad region. Responding to the questions of France 24 anchor Mark Owen, Douglas Yates explained:

“This [mass kidnapping mode of operation] is part of a strategic negotiation that [Boko Haram] is using with the federal government. We know that in 2014 a deal was struck with Boko Haram to release Chibok girls for electoral purposes. Now Nigeria is coming up to election time and it looks like once again, Boko Haram is capturing busloads of girls to strategically negotiate more advantages, perhaps millions of dollars, which will feed into the cycle. It’s a successful modus operandi – like in the Niger Delta, the hijacking of oil workers is a successful strategy: it generates money, it gets attention, and it forces the government to negotiate.”

“The fact that we’re seeing exactly the same scenario repeat itself means the government needs to change strategy. […] This raises the big question in Nigeria: what are the causes of the Boko Haram insurgency. In Nigeria we have two very large examples of insurgencies. In one case the Nigerian government was successful: it was the Biafra secession. There, the approach was a very heavy-handed military solution. It resulted in a lot of deaths, but it was a preponderant military success. That is one way of trying to solve the crisis. If Nigeria is going that way, it’s going to have to commit itself whole-heartedly towards fighting a war like they fought in Biafra. (…) But it will mean a lot of killing and Nigeria will look bad. And it’s not going to be necessary to do that to win an election. So the other solution is what we saw in the Niger delta. How was it that under Goodluck Jonathan the Nigerian government was able to reduce the amount of violence of the insurgents in the Niger delta – which has now come back. That was by dealing with their grievances. Boko Haram is changing in response to the strategies used against it. The Boko Haram that took the Chibok girls was not the Boko Haram of its founder. The goals have changed and the strategies have changed. So the heavy-handed military use must change for a better counter-insurgency strategy. [However,] the only way you change that behavior is not by continually perpetrating human rights abuses, alienating the local population.”

See full video of "The Debate", France 24, 22 February 2018

Photos: courtesy of France 24 (screenshots)