Government crackdowns on increasingly violent protests and a blanket Twitter ban suggest weakness at the top, while citizens face rising terrorism and kidnappings. Conflict Zone meets Abuja's ambassador to Germany.
Image: Siphiwe Sibeko/REUTERS
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Yusuf Tuggar on Conflict Zone
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Less than a year after protests against police abuse turned into the largest anti-government demonstration in Nigeria's 20-year-old democracy, an onslaught of political, economic and security crises along with various outbreaks of violence around the country have ensnared the government. Conflict Zone met with Nigeria's ambassador to Germany, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar.
The political brand and two electoral successes of President Muhammadu Buhari were built on the promise of ending violence and improving public administration. But the deterioration of the conditions in the south, where the Biafra independentist rebels have increased attacks on government forces, has opened a new armed front in what had been a somewhat dormant conflict. This comes as the government in Lagos continues to struggle with the situation in the north, where Boko Haram Islamists have been fighting the government for close to two decades.
Kidnappings of schoolchildren
In the first half of 2021, Boko Haram escalated its mass kidnapping campaign in the northeast of the country, where since December more than 800 students were taken. Asked about these kidnappings by Conflict Zone host Sarah Kelly, Tuggar called the situation "most unfortunate, it's tragic." He said there was no immediate solution but that the government was working to eradicate the root causes of terrorism. "We have endured years of underdevelopment, which this administration is looking to reverse."
Uwaisu Idris: Nigeria kidnapping 'indication of the growing insecurity'
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In mid-June, the conditions in the region took a new turn for the worse as a conflict line opened among various Islamist groups. The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, was killed by forces acting on behalf of the "Islamic State" (IS), which has been active in the area for the past decade. Turning an already violent stage into a considerably more dangerous one, in May of this year the Council on Foreign Relations reported that IS is now the dominant force in what until now has been Boko Haram's turf — meaning that IS has effectively established a West African foothold in Nigeria under Buhari's watch.
A very dangerous situation with an unimaginable cost in blood for the local population of northeastern Nigeria has now become a geostrategic time bomb, opening a military black hole at the gates of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The escalation has exposed the way in which the limits to the efficacy of the government in Abuja also represents a major regional strategic vulnerability.
Biafra conflict returns
In the southeastern region of Biafra, the secessionist push that detonated the Nigerian civil war and famine between 1967 and 1970, killing close to 1 million people and displacing close to 4 million, has come back to haunt the Buhari government. Long-simmering tensions and widespread dissatisfaction with neglect and lack of development in the Igbo-dominated region have resulted in a spate of violent attacks on government figures and military personnel. In May, the government launched Operation Restore Peace, which critics have described as a repressive strategy designed to destroy the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement and its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network.
Buhari announced earlier this month that his forces had been granted permission to be ruthless. "We have given the police and the military the power to be ruthless with people stealing another person's belongings and destroying others' property," he said.
Pressed on the meaning of Buhari's statement and whether it was a carte blanche for mass extrajudicial killings, Ambassador Tuggar explained that the president's words meant no more than upholding the sovereign right of Nigeria to claim "monopoly of violence so that non-state actors will not unravel such countries and unleash mayhem and death and murder and massacre."
Examining international solidarity with Biafra
More than three decades ago, the civil war against Biafra in Nigeria shocked the world. Many called for an end to the war — including well-known German personalities. But where did this wave of solidarity come from?
Image: Getty Images/AFP
53 years of Biafra — the echo of independence
Two and a half years. More than 2 million lives: On January 15, 1970, the civil war in Nigeria finally ended. It was fought with the weapon of hunger and shook people all over the world. At the time, many Germans spoke out against the civil war. Half a century later, calls for an independent Biafra are growing louder again. We take a look back 50 years on.
Image: Getty Images/AFP
War at the expense of the weakest
Members of the Igbo, a predominantly Christan population in Nigeria, proclaimed the indepdendent Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967. The region's nearly 14 million inhabitants celebrated their new state, but a year later, the first war since decolonization broke out. The name Biafra soon became synonymous with misery, hunger and death.
Image: picture-alliance/Leemage/MP/Lazzero
Terrible loss
When Nigerian troops took the city of Port Harcourt in May 1968, the separate state of Biafra lost its only point of access to the sea. From that point on, those who were trapped relied on supplies dropped from the air. It was a clear victory for the Nigerian army. The insurgents under General Ojukwu's leadership were far inferior and poorly trained.
Image: picture-alliance/United Archives/TopFoto
The 'Biafra babies'
The Nigerian troops soon started a siege war, in which they tried to starve out the separatists. These so-called Biafra babies soon became known all over the world. The humanitarian catastrophe moved people to the extent that an unprecedented solidarity movement began. At its worst, up to 10,000 children and elderly people died every day in the summer of 1968.
Image: Gemeinfrei
A demonstration for people in need
The civil war over Biafra mobilized the public in Germany like no other previous African event. In August 1968, Biafran and German students began a five-day walk to Bonn. They demanded Biafra be recognized as a sovereign state. The flag with the rising sun (pictured above, right) became Biafra's national flag.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Hennig
Celebrity support
"As Germans, we should know what we are saying when we say the word genocide... because silence becomes complicit." Author Günter Grass was probably the most prominent speaker at a rally held in Hamburg in 1968 against the war in Biafra. His message hit a nerve in Germany: In the 1960s, people had started to deal with the past of World War II.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/ESH
'Hungry for Justice'
In Germany, bishops, parliamentarians and citizens' initiatives all got involved — the Evangelical Church Day in 1968 also focused on Biafra. Money and relief supplies were collected and flown to war-torn Biafra. Former German Air Force pilot Friedrich Herz initially trained in Biafra as a fighter pilot before flying against the Nigerian army.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Reiss
The Society for Threatened Peoples is born
In Hamburg, students Klaus Guerke and Tilman Zülch (pictured above) created the "Komitee Aktion Biafra-Hilfe." The organization received support from such diverse people as the Mayor of Berlin, Heinrich Albertz, writers Günter Grass and Luise Rinser and the Bishop of Münster, Heinrich Tenhumberg. The group later became the international NGO, the Society for Threatened Peoples.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Schutt
A war beyond rational thought
Historian Golo Mann praised those who went to the aid of Biafra, although his comments were not always understood: "A war in which British 'imperialists' and Russian 'communists' pull together on the same rope of crime, in which a former colony is fighting for the supposed unity of its state against a tribe which is not even 'socialist' is quite uninteresting...all theory is indeed harmful!"
Image: picture-alliance/Keystone/Röhnert
'Biafra — millions die'
In London, protesters marched from the former Soviet embassy to the prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street. They accused both the Soviet Union and Britain of supporting Nigeria's war against Biafra with by supplying weapons. Labor party politician Michael Barnes also spoke at a rally organized by the "Biafra Committee."
Image: Getty Images/Daily Express/R. Dumont
'A for Ausschitz — B for Biafra'
Many committed human rights activists were stunned by the lack of international engagement. They expressed their frustration in newspaper advertisements, in strong-worded appeals and even on posters bearing slogans such as "A for Auschwitz — B for Biafra." Well-known Germans like Erich Kästner (pictured above), Ernst Bloch, Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Martin Walser were just a few famous signatories.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Sending medical aid
French doctor Bernard Kouchner traveled to Biafra in 1968, where, as a part of the International Red Cross (IRC), he tried to provide medical aid to the population in need. Kouchner criticized the IRC's stance of not interfering in the politics of the warring parties. He went on to lay the foundations of the international NGO, "Doctors Without Borders."
Image: Getty Images/AFP/D. Faget
Calls for independence continue
Donations from all over the world kept the people of Biafra alive. Aid organizations and the IRC sent 7,350 aircraft loads containing 81,300 tons of food and medication. Despite the aid they received, Biafra had to surrender to Nigeria on January 15, 1970. But even today, the calls for an independent Biafra have not subsided.
In early June, Buhari again stirred major controversy when, via Twitter, he threatened a violent clampdown in the country's southeast. In response, the American microblogging platform deleted the tweet. Just two days later, Buhari's government banned Twitter in Nigeria, making anyone caught using the platform criminally liable — a move it justified in the name of security measures.
Tuggar defended the measure as an extension of the president's stance on the deleterious effects of social media. "Buhari has been consistent about the adverse effect of social media when it chooses not to be responsible for the real life, the real world," he told DW.
Confronted with protesters' claims that democracy in Nigeria is backsliding and Buhari has lost his grip on the country, Tuggar hit back. "Nigeria practices a democratic system of government" and emphasizing the country's separation of powers and democratic principles, he said.
"One of the most important norms of democracy is freedom of speech, which Nigeria upholds, which Nigeria celebrates...you cannot allow certain elements to use those democratic norms to subvert democracy itself, which is what they're trying to do."
