ACADEMIA Letters

Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter?

Isaac Albert

Introduction
Existing works on counterinsurgency focus on the military and police means of punishment
and prosecution. This combat model of counterinsurgency is more popular than the social
model of having the insurgents weakened from within through state political actions. The
weakness could also be caused through internal rivalries between the insurgents. This social
model manifests openly as factionalisation of the movements. The question asked and an-
swered in this paper is whether such factionalisation really matter in ending insurgency. The
situations for illustrating this paradoxical situation in insurgency are drawn from the Niger
Delta and northern parts of Nigeria where different forms of violent extremist groups prolifer-
ate and state forces have not been able to defeat them whether militarily or through negotiation
or mediation. Four relevant cases are considered. They show clearly that the factionalisaton
of insurgents matter in counterinsurgency but the matter must be handled carefully to prevent
unexpected outcomes.

The Four Cases

The first case is drawn from the Niger Delta crisis that has been raging since the 1990s between
some armed youth in the oil-rich Niger Delta region and the Nigerian state over oil exploration
and allocation of oil revenue to the different groups in the Nigerian federation. The militants
and the people they represent are not happy that the oil prospecting activities in their backyards
damage their environment and that what is allocated to the people of the region from the oil-
dependent federation account is too little. Hence, the militants attack the oil companies in

Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, [email protected]

Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666.

1
their communities as well as the Nigerian security agencies protecting them. The second
major insurgency for illustrating the matter at hand is the Boko Haram crisis which became
a full-blown insurgency in 2009 following the extra judicial killing of Mohammed Yusuf, the
leader of the Islamic movement formally known as Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-
Jihād ( now known as “Boko Haram” meaning “western education is blasphemous”). The
sect resorted to terror strategies for avenging the death of their leaders in 2010 and the crisis
expanded from Nigeria to Cameroun, Chad, and Niger resulting in thousands of deaths. The
last two insurgent groups addressed by the paper specialize in banditry, cattle rustling, and
extortionate kidnapping in North West and North Central Nigeria most especially Katsina,
Zamfara and Sokoto States. The four groups create warlike scenarios in their jurisdictions
and by so doing add to the records of insecurity in Nigeria. At one time or the time, each of
the groups was factionalised. Do these really matter in ending the crises? Before answering
this question, it is necessary to review what happened to each of them.
From the 1990s up to the present, the Niger Delta militants factionalised severally most
especially as they compete with each other for influence in the oil-rich region. But the most
phenomenal took place during the amnesty granted the militants by the federal government in
2009. Unable to defeat them but desperate to make the militants stop attacking oil facilities
in their region, the government offered them amnesty and support services for dropping their
arms. While some militant leaders and the cells they commanded accepted the offer, Henry
Okah who was considered to be the overall leader of the militants refused to fully buy into the
project. The others demystified him by revealing how he coordinated the militants’ attacks
using the code name “Jomo Gbomo”. From his points of weakness the federal government
accused him of being behind the bombing of Abuja on October 1, 2010. He was said to have
coordinated the attack from South Africa where he lives. He is today serving jail terms in
South Africa for it.
The second case is the factionalisation process of Boko Haram leading to the overthrow
of Abubakar Shekau in 2016 as the leader of the sect. He led the movement in a brutal manner
from 2010 to 2016. In his operations, he killed both Muslims and Christians so long as they
do not subscribe to his type of Islam. Many of his subordinate commanders were executed for
being slack in carrying out his orders. He deliberately did this to prevent the commanders from
defecting. For strengthening his hold on the sect, Shekau pledged allegiance to the Islamic
State (IS) in March 2015 and changed the name of his organization to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya
fi Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiyyah, or Islamic State in West in Africa Province (ISWAP). Some of his
commanders subsequently colluded with some foreign elements in ISWAP and overthrew him
in August 2016. He was replaced as the leader of ISWAP by Musab Al-Barnawi and became
reduced to the status of a factional leader in the Boko Haram movement (Zenn 2019). He was

Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, [email protected]

Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666.

2
accused of killing Muslims in his attacks.
The last two cases are drawn from the North West of Nigeria where bandits engage in
ethnic killings, cattle rustling, kidnapping and hostage taking for ransoms on a grand scale.
The most dreaded and notorious of these criminals in Zamfara state was one Tsoho Buhari
(otherwise known as Buharin Daji). In 2018, the government granted him amnesty to end
banditry and cattle rustling in the state. But he went back to the bush to continue his criminal
activities until his decomposing body was shown on the pages of newspapers and television
screen around the country some months later. He rustled about 700 cattle, with some of them
belonging to the in-law of one of his former unit commanders known as ‘Jabe’. The latter asked
him to return the cattle to their owners but he refused. During the counter attack that followed,
Buharin Daji and some of his gang members were brutally killed. Nigerians thought that this
would end the cattle rustling menace in Zamfara and neighouring states given the notoriety
of this particular gang leader. It never did.
What happened amongst the bandits in Kaduna state was not too different from the case of
Buharin Daji presented above. The gangsters involved in kidnappings, killings and banditry
on the Kaduna-Abuja road and also in the Chikun/Kajuru general areas killed hundreds of
people. A disagreement soon broke out amongst them in December 2020 over the sharing
formula for a large herds of rustled cows over which a notorious terrorist, Nasiru Kachalla
and his colleagues were killed. The news of Kachalla’s death was received joyfully by the
people given the number of criminal activities traced to him (Wuyo 2020). He was wanted
by security agencies for masterminding several criminal acts, including kidnappings, killings,
cattle rustling and banditry.

Does it Really Matter?

How right are governments and the people that the factionalistion of insurgents would end their
nuisance value? What are the lessons in the cases considered above? The Niger Delta case
worked because the crisis in the region is resource based. The communities and the militants
that claim to be fighting for them were looking for better financial resource allocation. Hence,
what the 2009 amnesty did was simply to buy the militants off ; the programme did not respond
to the needs of the larger communities (Albert 2019). The Niger Delta communities still
live with their problems of environmental degradation and questionable allocation of federal
resources. In other words, the Niger Delta militants that signed unto the 2009 amnesty did so
largely for money, overseas trainings and other opportunities. Okah who refused to be part
of the larger deal and wanted something more impactful on the Niger Delta communities was
abandoned and got jailed for it. For this reason, the factionalistion of the Niger Delta militants

Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, [email protected]

Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666.

3
is said here to have worked for the government.
The removal of Shekau as the leader of the Boko Haram sect, his replacement by Musab
Al-Barnawi and the consequent dismemberment of the sect was initially celebrated by the
Nigerian military as a plus. The then Commander of the Lake Chad Basin Multi-National
force, General Lamidi Adeosun, said it boosted the Nigerian Army’s counter insurgency ef-
forts. He said “The split is assisting the operations in a way…the linkage between his group
and Shekau’s group has been severed” (Olawoyin 2017). But this turned out to be a hasty
assessment of the situation. As the strategy of the Musab Al-Barnawi faction became fully
unfolded, the Nigerian military was worse off. The civilian population that cooperated with
the Nigerian military in the fight against Shekau in the past now started to side with the anti-
Shekau faction now opposed to the killing of Muslims. Nigeria suffered additional loss in
its sovereignty as the new faction of Boko Haram is now commanded from the Middle East
where the Islamic State is based. Under the new situation, the Nigerian military now had to
fight Boko Haram from two fronts. The factionalisation of Boko Haram cast more serious
doubts over a ceasefire agreement with Boko Haram asNigeria now had more than Shekau
(a Nigerian) to negotiate with in ending the crisis. As the new faction reduced its attacks on
Muslim population, it prioritized attacks on military installations. It was one of the reasons
why the Nigerian military had to resort to the strategy of “super camps” under which the mil-
itary focuses more on defending its occupied territories and leaving the insurgents to control
the others.
The death of Buharin Daji, a leader of the insurgent in Zamfara state did not lead to the end
of banditry and cattle rustling in the area. Indeed, the scale of the problem expanded as new
insurgent leaders became produced. Indeed, one of his sons lead one of the notorious gangs
in same Zamfara today. The Governor of the State, Bello Mohammed Matawale, made this
point when he observed in February 2021 that he had reached agreement with some bandit
leaders to drop their drops. He named the son of Buharin Daji, his mother and some loyalists
of the group amongst those he struct agreement with him to drop their weapons (Ogbe 2021).
It is argued here that the peace process that the Governor was talking about here would have
limited success if the other gangsters in Zamfara state are not included in it. Buharin Daji was
killed by those opposed to him. Making peace with members of his family and his followers
without talking to the others would rather heat up the polity.
In all, this paper presents a succinct and concise analysis of the inherent dangers of fac-
tionalization for both insurgent groups and the society fighting them. With the exception of
the Niger Delta militants, the factionalized insurgent groups in Nigeria did increase their vi-
olent activities along several corridors making the fight against them to be more difficult. On
the other hand, the factionalisation of the Niger Delta weakened their focused predisposition

Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, [email protected]

Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666.

4
as freedom fighters. On the balance, the central thesis of this paper is that factionalization of
insurgent groups with criminal intents would engender the emergence of additional insurgent
groups with criminal intents.

References
Albert, I.O, Olarinde, Y.T, Albert, O.O. (2019), “Order outside the law? Rethinking amnesty
as an ADR mechanism in Nigeria”, Beijing Law Review, Volume 10 No. 4 pp. 913 – 925

Albert, I.O. (2019), “Hazy Agenda, Multiple Interests: Stakeholders Engagement with the
First Phase of the Niger Delta Amnesty Deal in Nigeria”, Beijing Law Review, Volume 10
Number 3 pp. 656 - 670.

Ogbe, H. (2021), “Top bandits’s commander, Buharin Daji, to lay down arms soon – Matawale”,
Truenew.ng, February 5, https://www.truenews.ng/top-bandits-commander-buharin-daji-
to-lay-down-arms-soon-matawalle/

Olawoyin, O. (2017), “Factionalisation of Boko Haram boosted counter-insurgency opera-

tions – Nigerian General”, Premium Times, April 20, https://www.premiumtimesng.com/
news/top-news/229161-factionalisation-boko-haram-boosted-counter-insurgency-operations-
nigerian-general.html

Wuyo, I. H. (2020), “Bandits fight each other in Kaduna forest, kingpin Nasiru Kachalla,
others killed”, Vanguard, December 28, https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/12/bandits-
fight-each-other-in-kaduna-forest-kingpin-nasiru-kachalla-others-killed/

Zenn, J. (2019), “Boko Haram’s Factional Feuds: Internal Extremism and External Interven-
tions, Terrorism and Political Violence, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1566127

Academia Letters, April 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Isaac Albert, [email protected]

Citation: Albert, I. (2021). Does Factionalization of Insurgents Matter? Academia Letters, Article 666.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL666.