Islamism and jihadi terrorism in Northern Nigeria
While Nigeria is still battling to extinguish the fires of Boko Haram insurgency in its North-Eastern corner, the emergence of Lakurawa in the North-West, which is said to be heavily armed and in control of some villages as well as communities in Sokoto and Kebbi states, is a clear indication that the Muslim north of Nigeria is a fertile ground for the planting, germinating and nourishing of the seeds of radical Islamist ideology that eventually blossoms into Jihadi groups like Mai Taisine, Boko Haram, Ansaru and Lakurawa. And the main element of this fertility is the dominance of Islamism in the mainstream Islamic theological framework in the Muslim north of Nigeria. In fact Islamism, which is “a broad set of political and religious ideologies that dictates Islam should guide and influence the political and legal system of the state in opposition to secularism,” is mainstreamed in the Muslim north to the extent that political Islam is being surreptitiously deployed to undermine Nigeria’s secular constitutional democratic order.
