The Islamist sect, Boko Haram is intent on ridding northern Nigeria of Western education through violent means. Yet one school in Maiduguri refuses to be intimidated.

By Ekwtosi Collyer, Maiduguri

The call for Friday prayers echoes around the Sultan’s palace. Inside Sultan Alhaji Abubakar Ibn Umar Garbai el-Kanemi prays, while flanked by ten personal guards wearing blood red traditional garments and matching turbans with meter-long curved swords at their sides. Beside them is an entourage made up of the city’s wealthiest men together with spiritual and traditional leaders. Poor men and boys pray outside under the blazing midday sun.

This weekly ritual has persisted since the arrival of Islam in the region by means of jihad a millennium ago. As Sultan of Borno, El-Kanemi rules over the four million people that make up the Kanuri tribe who live in northeast Nigeria, southern Chad and northwest Cameroon. The Borno Emirate dates back to 1396 CE, five centuries before the arrival of British colonialism. The sultan's last name refers to the ancient Kingdom of Kanem, established in the 7th century.

One of the few reminders that the 21st century has arrived in the Sultan’s palace and the surrounding buildings is the strong military presence – soldiers peer out from armoured tanks poised in strategic locations.

Bustling hub 
Five thousand military personnel from around the country are currently deployed in Maiduguri. Their mission? Operation Restore Order. “There’s no doubt order has been restored,” barks Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Hassan, spokesman for the Joint Military Taskforce. He is adamant Operation Restore Order has not violated the human rights of civilians, dismissing as “inaccurate” a statement issued by Amnesty International in June condemning the JTF for subjecting, “thousands of human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, and unfair trials.”

“It was a ghost town here earlier this year. Everyone was gone or locked in their houses. No businesses were open. Look at the town today,” gloats Hassan. Maiduguri is, once again, a bustling hub where trans-Saharan traders do business and fish from nearby Lake Chad enters the Nigerian market.

Faceless leadership
A fragile peace may have returned to Maiduguri, yet civilians complain openly that the JTF is too heavy-handed, “we’ve recorded over 100 deaths caused by the JTF,” alleges a local human rights activist who requested anonymity. He feared Boko Haram, not the JTF.

The words Boko Haram, are whispered, not spoken by local people. The sects’ faceless leadership regularly orders their followers to assassinate residents of Maiduguri, usually in broad daylight. Their hit men take out people accused of helping the security services. Bombs detonated by sect members are less accurate killing fellow Muslims and Kanuri tribesmen indiscriminately.

What is it that Boko Haram is fighting for? Boko Haram translates from Hausa, a trading language spoken in the Sahel region, as books are forbidden. The group’s founder, Yusuf Mohammed, now deceased, told his followers that Western education has corrupted the minds of Nigeria’s ruling elites. He viewed Sharia law as the only remedy for Nigeria’s ills. A fatal malady affecting Nigeria is extrajudicial killing. Mohammed Yusuf was killed by the security forces while in custody in 2009.

Balancing act
Since the death of their leader, Boko Haram has become ever more radical. The two sides have been engaged in mutual retaliation ever since, resulting in the death of hundreds of civilians and the permanent displacement of thousands more.

“We saw a massive increase in the numbers of people coming to enroll children at our school immediately after the violence (that followed Mohammed Yusuf’s death),” says Suleiman Aliyu, the headmaster of the Future Prowess Islamic School. Set up four years ago for orphans and vulnerable children, the school offers Western and Islamic education to both boys and girls tuition free. A daring feat in a city under siege by hard-line Islamist whose battle cry is the end of Western education in the north of Nigeria.

“It’s a delicate balancing act we’re playing here,” Aliyu admits. “On the one hand we instill in the children values aimed at making them good leaders – something Boko Haram would approve of. But we do this using so-called Western teaching methods.”

Perhaps the bottom up approach to education offered by the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation will enable it to evade the wrath of Boko Haram. For now the group seems intent on making corrupt government officials and those who aid them pay with their lives. Recruiting members into the sect will be easy so long as Borno and other northern states rank among the lowest in Nigeria’s annual Education Data Survey.