INSURGENCY AND IT’S EFFECT ON THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH-EASTERN NIGERIA (2009-2017)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of Study
This study seeks to explain the dangers posed by the activities of the Boko Haram insurgency on the socio-economy of Nigeria between 2009 and 2017. It also aims at finding out the challenges and mechanisms of containing Boko Haram in order to ensure national stability, security of lives and properties, religious tolerance and so on among Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. Conflicts and crises are found at every stage of life. Individuals, groups, associations, clubs, societies, local, national and even world community continue to experience conflicts and crises in one way or the other. Conflicts and crises are features of life and they have been since the beginning of creation. So, conflicts and crises are permanent features of life which we have come to live and cope with and resolve from time to time. Their existence cannot be terminated in life unless we want to terminate life itself. However, a poorly handled conflict or crisis could be Nigerian are sincerely concerned that religion is being made to become the key issue in the stormy national question, pushing other elements of ethnicity and sectionalism to the background (West Africa Magazine, 30 March 1987: 559). This concern is heightened by the fact that violence, both overt and covert, has been the crudest and most pervasive of the mechanisms of religious fervor in Nigeria. Therefore, this work aims at exploring the causes, implications and solutions to the menace of Boko Haram sect from the point of view of economic and social differences in Nigeria. Economic instabilities in Nigeria are being caused by both political, social and economic factors to mention but a few. Since independence, Nigeria has never escaped a season that was free of crises both at community level and beyond. The crises, each time the occurred used to bring calamities of monumental effects that often shook the country to its foundations. From the 1980 Maitatsine uprising to the 2009 Boko Haram uprising, Nigeria was bedeviled by ethno- religious conflicts with devastating human and material losses. But the Boko Haram uprising of July 2009 was significant in that it not only set a precedent, but also reinforced the attempts by Islamic conservative elements at imposing a variant of Islamic religious ideology on a secular state. Whereas the religious sensitivity of Nigerians provided fertile ground for the breeding of Boko Haram sect, the sect’s blossoming was also aided by the prevailing economic dislocation in Nigerian society, the advent of party politics (and the associated desperation of politicians for political power), and the ambivalence of some vocal Islamic leaders, who, though they did not actively embark on insurrection, either did nothing to stop it from fermenting, or only freely condemned it.
