Boko Haram

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

INTENSIFIED EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN IN NIGERIA AND AFRICA

The imposition of Sharia law in the Northern States of Nigeria at the end of the military dictatorship in 1999 provided the context for the rise and open support for groups such as Boko Haram. As long as there was a military dictatorship to crush opposition to exploitation and economic terrorism, state terror supplemented domestic violence and the exploitation of young girls. However, the anti-dictatorship struggle had taken such deep roots that the resort to religion was deemed the most expedient force to divide the working peoples of Nigeria and to enforce the super exploitation of women. Schools, cultural centers and other places of social interaction had been the networking base for the anti-dictatorship campaign that (had predated and later) was called the June 12th movement in Nigeria. In the midst of the campaigns to bring back popular democratic participation, there was the rapid growth of cults within the Universities to act as a counterweight to the student unions that had become organizing centers for democracy within the University and within the wider society. Fundamentalist churches from North America started a booming business to cash in on the oil boom in Nigeria.

In Nigeria, Christian fundamentalists penetrated social spaces with massive proselytizing. Ethnic militias and communal clashes drained the energies of the poor as young men were treated as disposable bodies. In order to blunt the emergence of alternative forms of organizing the State embarked on political assassinations. The well-publicized assassination of Ken Saro Wiwa in 1995 was one other episode in the militarization of politics and the closing of spaces for opposition forces. This killing as well as the kidnapping and execution of prominent leaders fighting for democracy were deployed so that there could not be sustained mobilization and clarity on the questions of social and economic transformation....