Questions and Answers on Boko Haram

Introductory note: The following is an email interview I gave a reporter with the Pengpai News Agency and the Shanghai Morning Post, in Shanghai China, on the subject of Boko Haram. The interview and stories derived from it will be published in the Chinese language Pengpai. The questions are in bold typeface and my responses … Continue reading →

Boko Haram is Not Maitatsine

As the Boko Haram insurgency has intensified over the last few years, it has risen to the top of the priority list of problems most Nigerians expect the government to address. And in this election season, the Boko Haram terrorism problem has dominated conversations between the campaigns and among Nigerians. President Jonathan’s supporters acknowledge that … Continue reading →

Migration, Cosmopolitanism, and Africa in the Twenty-First Century

The following is an excerpt from my newly published book, Africa in Fragments. It is lifted from the book’s conclusion, where I analyze Africa’s future or futures in light of globalization, migration, and cosmopolitanism. African peoples, problems, and issues have shifted radically as trans-national human mobility has intensified in a globalizing world. The resulting cosmopolitanism … Continue reading →

On Secular Education and Boko Haram

Since publishing my essay, Toward a Better Understanding of Boko Haram, I have received some feedback, with respondents raising questions and issues they feel merit further exploration, explanation, context, and elaboration. One of these issues is the question of whether or not Boko Haram rose out of societal problems supposedly caused by Western education — corruption, poverty, and poor governance, or whether in fact these problems are traceable to Western education as Boko Haram claims. In this post, I respond to these and other issues. Continue reading →

Toward a Better Understanding of Boko Haram

Since they kidnapped more than two hundred schoolgirls from Chibok, Northeastern Nigeria, Nigerian Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, have become the object of global outrage. Anti-Boko Haram activism, although justified and commendable, is often animated by a facile understanding of the group and its entwinements in deeper societal realities. To understand Boko Haram and the foundations of its rage, one has to understand two phenomena associated with the group’s rise. Continue reading →