Beyond Political Islam: Nigeria, the Boko Haram Crisis and the Imperative of National Consensus

The escalation of the Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria that peaked in 2010 has led to the emergence of many theories to explain its causes. These theories focus on the socio-economic/ human needs, vengeance, the Islamic theocratic state, and political dimensions. Beside the socio-economic perspective, which harps on the pervasive poverty in the North, the theocratic state analysis seems compelling not only because it fits into the sect’s mission to Islamize Northern Nigeria and carve it out as a distinct political entity, but it also resonates with political Islam, the driving ideology behind such Jihadi groups as Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) with which the sect has been linked. While this paper identifies with the political causes perspective in offering more cogent explanation of the crisis, it goes beyond theory to underline empirical facts that have shaped the group’s violence. It argues that in its current dimension, the Boko Haram crisis is squarely an outburst of a sense of exclusion by some powerful political forces from the northern part of the country. To save the country from similar crises in the future, Nigerian leaders should devise clearly-defined periodic power-sharing formulae that can enable its component parts to have a voice