“If I hear footsteps at my door, I always think it’s my daughter coming back.” The hope that their children will one day return is one of the only feelings that can calm the pain of some parents in Chibok, like Mary Shettima, who appears in a recent TV5 Monde documentary. Of the 276 girls kidnapped 10 years ago from the high school in Chibok commune (Borno state, Nigeria), nearly 150 were released or escaped. According to information provided in 2018 by Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist who participated in negotiations with Boko Haram, the other girls are dead or still detained.
But the figures are sometimes “doctored” by the authorities in Nigeria, warns Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, research director at the Research Institute for Development, to Le Figaro. And some of the Chibok girls who remained with the group “cannot return home for fear of being stigmatized,” adds the author of the book Africa, the new frontier of jihad?. It is now known that the fighters were not originally planning such a kidnapping, but were focused on seizing supplies that had probably been left in a nearby military post and recently evacuated by the army.
But for the Nigerian state, in search of credit with its population, the priority was to develop the narrative of a power capable of ensuring the security of its population. The Nigerian army thus frequently highlights victories over terrorists, while “for about a year, the fighting between the different factions (of the group, editor’s note) has killed more people than the clashes with the army”, underlines the searcher. In fact, the precarious situation experienced by the Boko Haram movement is “not so much due to the successes of local armies as to numerous internal dissensions”. A real atmosphere of “fear” and “suspicion” is plaguing Boko Haram today, according to the specialist in armed conflicts in English-speaking Africa south of the Sahara.
For the teacher-researcher, Boko Haram is a “portmanteau word” which designates “several armed bands fighting for various, often villainous, motives, very far from the Islamic ideals of the jihadists of yesteryear”. Moreover, the term “terrorist” “does not exist” in local languages, which is why in fact, people speak of the group more as a band of “bad boys” or bush people who live “ hidden” in the countryside.
Likewise, the name “Boko Haram” is in no way claimed by the fighters themselves. In fact, this name comes from the local media, which joined the Hausa term (a Chadic language of Nigeria) “boko” (which means “fraud”, “swindle” or even “deception”) with the Arabic word “haram” ( meaning “forbidden” or “sacred”).
The group, described as “terrorist” by the United Nations Security Council in 2014, had partly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015. It was then that what was originally a “sect gone wrong » began to divide into several factions: the fringe having pledged allegiance became Iswap (Islamic State – West Africa Province) while the other party retained Abubakar Shekau, long-time leader of Boko Haram, at its head. From then on, internal clashes arose.
Rumors concerning his death have often circulated, raising doubts about his character. But ultimately, the death seems to have really occurred in 2021 since “several local sources have announced the death of Abubakar Shekau”, indicates Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos. Therefore, the question is, “beyond whether he died, how he died.” The two main options are that he “fell in combat” or that he was blown up, adds the co-director of the Afrique(s) collection at FMSH editions. Since his death, the group has experienced “a real hemorrhage”. Indeed, following the death of their leader, “more than 10,000 individuals – including women and children – from the group surrendered to the Nigerian authorities, according to figures that they communicated”.
Since late 2022, the remaining fighters from Shekau’s group have reportedly reunited under a new leader, Bakura Doro, and moved east and north of Borno, towards Lake Chad, thus establishing itself in the eponymous country, in Niger or even in the Mandara Mountains, on the Cameroonian border, according to a recent study by the NGO International Crisis Group. This faction would inflict significant damage on Iswap, according to the report.
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Although governments in the Lake Chad region may view the conflict between the two factions positively, it poses multiple risks for local populations, since both groups remain powerful, as they still have “thousands of fighters” , according to the NGO study. Indeed, even if losses are low in the ranks of the four Lake Chad states, civilians in rural areas are far from being sheltered from the violence intrinsic to these groups.
