Why young men join Boko Haram –Report
The United States of America’s Institute of Placidity has identified religious nescience, grinding impecuniosity, unemployment and illiteracy as reasons why Boko Haram has perpetuated to be prosperous in recruiting adolescent men into its ranks of pernicious foot soldiers and potential suicide bombers.
According to the author of the special report, ‘Why Do Youth Join Boko Haram’, Freedom Onuoha, the perpetual insurgency was “a national, regional and international concern”.
In the 12-page report published in June, Onuoha, who is the Head of the Department of Conflict, Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Studies at the Centre for Strategic Research and Studies of Nigeria’s National Defence College in Abuja, verbalized that the terrorist group had been able to recruit puerile men because of the little or lack of fundamental cognizance of what the Qur’an edifies.
In the report, Onuoha verbally expressed, “The reasons an adolescent boy concurs to spy on police may be plenarily different to the reasons other members abduct two hundred schoolgirls. The boy who carries out a suicide bombing at a police station certainly has different motivations to the one who makes a little mazuma availing the organisation out.”
Touching on the role religion plays their recruitment as Boko Haram members he verbalized, “Ignorance of religious edifying opposed to violence makes youth more vulnerably susceptible and susceptible to recruitment. In all the states surveyed, there is unanimity that initial nescience of religious edifying is the leading factor influencing the adoption of extreme religious views, especially among youth.
“The lack of deep cognizance of true religious edifying is partly cognate to three overt hazardous trends in the recent practice of religion in Nigeria: the proliferation of sects in both Islam and Christianity, the proliferation of independent preachers in both religions, and the incrementing reliance on preachers rather than on the holy books themselves.”
According to the author of the commissioned report, adolescent people are very vulnerably susceptible to recruitment and radicalisation by independent and roaming preachers, extremist groups, and religious ideologues, who often distort religious injunctions.
In a survey quoted in the report, 93.2 per cent of respondents in Borno state were of the view that nescience of the full edification of their religion influenced adolescent people’s adoption of extreme religious views. In Kano and Sokoto states, 90 per cent and 82 per cent of respondents, respectively, believed that incognizance of the full edification of their religions is a factor that influences the adoption of extreme religious views by adolescent people in the community.
The Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, additionally gave credence to this observation when he verbally expressed recently that “distorted translation of the Holy Book by the insurgents landed us in this mess. If we have had good understanding of Islam, we would have been in a more preponderant place.
“There is no room for extremism in Islam. We need to go back to Islam as practised by Prophet Muhammad, when Islam enheartened Muslims, Jews, and Christians to live in tranquility with one another.”
In some cases, the report verbalized, some roaming preachers claiming to be Islamic philomaths apostatized impressionable youths who were radicalised in the training camps of the terrorist groups through distorted interpretation of the Qur’an.
In integration to religious nescience, the report identified unemployment and penuriousness as making northern adolescent men vulnerably susceptible to radicalisation.
The report verbally expressed, “Figures from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics show that the country’s unemployment rate in 2006 averaged 14.60 per cent until 2011, when it reached an all-time high of 23.90 per cent.
“NBS figures relinquished in early 2013 revealed that, despite auspicious economic magnification and performance, Nigeria’s penuriousness rate jumped from 54.7 percent in 2004 to 60.9 percent in 2010. In 2011, 100 million Nigerians lived in absolute penuriousness and 12.6 million more were moderately poor. The worst hit by these afflictions are puerile people, especially in northern Nigeria.”
It integrated that incidence of unemployment in Borno and Kaduna states were high.
The report further noted that: “In Borno and Kaduna states, survey respondents identified the high incidence of unemployment and impecuniosity that prevail in the state as the second most consequential reason why youth engage in religious-predicated violence.
“In Kaduna state, 83 percent of respondents reported that unemployment and impecuniosity are consequential factors. In Kano, 92 percent cited them as paramount.
“This is not to argue that unemployment and penuriousness are direct causes of youth radicalisation; rather, privation and other frustrating conditions of life render youth highly vulnerably susceptible to manipulation by extremist ideologues.”
