By Farooq A. Kperogi Semioticians (i.e., people who study the function and meaning of signs and symbols) deploy the term “empty sign...
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Semioticians
(i.e., people who study the function and meaning of signs and symbols) deploy
the term “empty signifier” (also called “floating signifier”) to denote things
or concepts that have no fixed, stable meaning; that have vastly variable interpretive
renditions; or that “may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean,”
to quote Jeffrey Mehlman who wrote an influential essay on the subject in 1972.
The
original Boko Haram isn’t exactly an empty signifier in the classical
conception of the term since it has an identifiable ideological character (antipathy
to Western modernity, etc.), a locational identity (northeast Nigeria), and a
recognizable operational modality (violence against people who oppose its wacky
ideology).
However,
over the past few months, the perceptual consensus about the group in the
popular imagination has mutated radically. For many mainstream northern
Nigerian Muslims, Boko Haram initially just meant an embarrassing lunatic
fringe that would sooner or later dissipate. Over time, however, the term came
to be understood as a scurrilous linguistic marker deployed by southern Nigerian
Christians to describe all northern Nigerian Muslims. As a result, many
northern Muslims who truly detest the ideology and operational modalities of
Boko Haram have been pushed to the uncomfortable situation of tacitly defending
the group. But in reality they’re merely defending their northern Nigerian Muslim
identity that is now being unfairly linked with Boko Haram.
For many southern Christians, Boko Haram
initially meant nothing. But later came to represent this omnipresent monster of violence that wants to wipe
out Christians from the surface of the earth. Over time, the term became a
stand-in for northern Nigerian Muslims. On Facebook, Twitter, and other
Internet deliberative arenas, Boko Haram has become the shorthand for northern Nigerian
Muslims.
For
Jonathan administration officials, Boko Haram is this shadowy, sinister group
formed by resentful northern Muslim politicians as a bargaining chip to win
concessions from the reigning government, although the group’s emergence
predated Jonathan’s ascendancy to the presidency by at least 8 years.
For
international observers, especially in the West, Boko Haram is al Qaeda’s
representative in Nigeria that could target Western interests in Africa. It is
divorced from Nigeria’s local politics.
These
characterizations are, of course, broad strokes that ignore many subtleties.
For instance, it is not every Christian that invariably associates Boko Haram
with all northern Muslims. And many northern Nigerian Muslims don’t feel
compelled to defend Boko Haram in order to protect themselves from
stereotypical generalizations.
But
it can’t be denied that the current popular conceptions of Boko Haram are not
exactly consistent with the original identity of the group. Boko Haram has now transmogrified
into a catch-all devil term for any and every violent deed in (northern)
Nigeria. When robbers dress in stereotypical northern Nigerian Muslim robes and
utter “Allahu Akbar!” before dispossessing their victims, they are “Boko Haram”
members. Any church that goes up in flames in any part of Nigeria is invariably
attributed to Boko Haram. The Christian man who was caught attempting to burn a church in President Jonathan’s home state of Bayelsa while dressed in
traditional northern Nigerian attires would have been dubbed a Boko Haram
member had he succeeded.
(Some
months back, a lady identified as Lydia Johnson was stopped dead in her tracks while attempting to set a church ablaze in Bauchi. Not long after that, seven men who were neither northerners nor Muslims were arrested by law enforcement agents for posing as Boko Haram members and threatening, through text messages, to bomb prominent politicians and Western embassies in Nigeria.)
Boko
Haram members, like other murderously wacky fringe groups, are enjoying the
over-sized attention they are getting from everywhere. But many other people
who are not even remotely associated with them are helping them, too. Minutes after
every tragedy, several “Boko Haram” representatives always claim
responsibility. (Compare this to what happened in Norway: an attention-seeking
Middle Eastern terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks until it came
to light that a Norwegian citizen by the name of Anders Behring Breivik was
responsible for it.)
The
latest appropriation of Boko Haram is the alleged email the group sent to media
houses giving an ultimatum to
Christians in the north to leave the region. From my point of view, it is
implausible that such a directive would emanate from the “original” Boko Haram
for two reasons.
One,
Boko Haram primarily operates in the northeastern states of Borno and Yobe, and
these states have a robust indigenous Christian population. Some people
estimate that as much as 30 percent of the populations of these states are
indigenous Christians. I won’t be shocked if some Boko Haram members have distant
relations who are Christians. How plausible is it for a group located in such
states to ask its indigenous Christian population to relocate to the south? The
notion of a wholly Muslim north is a fallacy that gets repeated many times by
people who have no clue about the complex religio-cultural architecture of the
region.
Second,
when Boko Haram emerged in 2002, it wasn’t violent. It was merely a ludicrously
crazed group that derided Western education, venerated its leader as God’s
divine representative on earth (which is blasphemous in mainstream Islam),
preached for the enthronement of its version of Islamic rule in Borno and Yobe,
and ridiculed other Muslims who scoffed at its eccentric beliefs.
Then
in 2009, the Yar’Adua government sent law enforcement agents to raid the
group’s headquarters because its members were allegedly stockpiling arms in
readiness for a violent confrontation with Muslims who disdain their beliefs.
Scores of the group’s members and leaders were murdered in cold blood without
due process. It was after this brutal suppression that the group became
violent. Its violence was initially directed only at law enforcement agents and
Muslim scholars who openly criticized them. It’s difficult to account for their
transmutation into a Christian-hating group.
Many
people believe the Jonathan administration and the “new Boko Haram” may be one
and the same thing. In this moment of extraordinary unity in adversity that the
senseless hike in petrol prices has activated in Nigeria, the government has a
compelling reason to keep the people divided and distracted. And what better
way to do it than to exploit Nigeria’s traditional fissures: pit Muslims
against Christians and southerners against northerners.
I
am not completely sold on this theory. Boko Haram does exist. And its capacity
for evil is boundless. There are also despicably homicidal thugs in Muslim
garbs whose thirst for innocent non-Muslim blood cannot be denied. I have
written about and condemned these groups on this page many times in the past (see related articles below).
But a government that arrested an alleged Boko
Haram leader but gave him a slap-in-the-wrist jail term at a comfortable,
secluded location outside Nigeria’s prison system after an unusually speedy and
secretive trial, that tells its citizens to learn to live with the burden of perpetual violence and deaths, that declares a state of emergency in selected
parts of some states in the country only as a smokescreen to jerk up petrol
prices, that has earmarked an insanely and unprecedentedly gargantuan proportion of the national budget to “security,” and that is gripped by a monomaniacal
obsession to visit horrendous misery on ordinary Nigerians at any cost in obeisance
to IMF/World Bank directives is capable
of anything.
Fortunately,
Nigerians have risen superior to the distraction. There is no greater proof of this—and
of the floating nature of the Boko Haram signifier— than the popular protest
slogan in the demonstrations across the country that says “Goodluck Jonathan is
a Boko Haram.” How apt!
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Incisive and critical analysis. Good job!
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