Business Insider’s Armin Rosen quotes Dr. Brandon Kendhammer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, in a Jan. 12 story on “Boko Haram May Have Just Pulled Off One Of The Worst Terrorist Attacks Ever.”
Dr. Brendon Kendhammer
As Brandon Kendhammer, a Nigeria scholar and an assistant professor of political science at Ohio University explained to Business Insider, Boko Haram’s gains may have had more to do with the weakness of the Nigerian state than with any long-term strategy.
“They’re trying to destabilize the region and demonstrate that the security forces can’t hack it in northeastern Nigeria,” Kendhammer says.
And they’ve succeeded. “Boko Haram is doing what they’re doing in part because they can,” Kendhammer says. “In the absence of any real Nigerian military capability, they walked into more than they thought they’d be able to.” …
The government seems uninterested in remedying the situation. Jonathan is emphasizing the country’s economic gains during his presidential campaign — Nigeria passed South Africa as the continent’s largest economy in April. And Kendhammer adds that Jonathan is surrounded by political allies from the south and central parts of Nigeria who may not see Boko Haram as a national-level problem.
“If you look at who’s around Goodluck Jonathan, there are so few northerners inside that inner circle that I’m genuinely not sure how seriously this is being taken in Abuja,” he says. “I think there is a large but influential minority of people who think of this as being a problem those Hausas [the dominant ethnic group in Nigeria’s north] are having.”
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