Goodluck Jonathan’s

perfect storm

Nigeria could never be described as a quiet country, but terrorist group Boko Haram’s bombing campaign combined with a national strike over a fuel price increase is quite unlike anything the country has ever faced before. President Goodluck Jonathan is caught in a perfect storm. With a death toll rising above 160 from Saturday’s bombs in Kano, the credibility of the security forces, the government and the state itself has been profoundly undermined.

At first, Boko Haram looked like another messianic Islamic sect emerging from north east Nigeria that would, like others before it, burn out with its very ferocity. The biggest of those movements, Maitatsine, in the 1970s, also believed in killing infidels, and its suppression in Kano in 1980 resulted in the deaths of some 4000 people. Founded in 2002, Boko Haram calls for an Islamic Caliphate in northern Nigeria under strict Islamic law where non-Muslims will not be allowed to live. In 2009 police attacked the movement’s headquarters in Maiduguri, seized its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and executed him. Boko Haram declared war on the state and the police in particular. Already deeply despised by the population, the police became Boko’s chief target.