A ceasefire agreement with the jihadist group Boko Haram has been in effect for the past three months and is expected to be extended, but has not been previously reported publicly, The New Humanitarian has learned.
The agreement is linked to hostage negotiations that secured the release in June of 360 civilians abducted by the group from Ngoshe village, in the foothills of the Mandara mountains on the border with Cameroon. The mass kidnapping occurred in March during a Boko Haram attack on a nearby army base.
Three people with contacts among Boko Haram members, some of them senior figures, independently told The New Humanitarian that a truce had been in effect since June and was likely to be extended for a further 40 days. Communities in the Ngoshe area – regular victims of Boko Haram predation – say attacks have stopped since the ceasefire, according to two of the sources.
The deal that freed the villagers also reportedly included a ransom payment of five billion naira ($3.7 million) by the government, a transaction Abuja has denied amid controversy over the alleged misappropriation of some of the money.
The New Humanitarian reached out to spokespeople for the government, defence headquarters, and the army to verify reports of a ceasefire, but received no reply prior to publishing.
What remains unclear is the longer-term significance of any agreement. “It could be just a temporary, tactical ceasefire that benefits both sides, but doesn’t really affect the trajectory of the war,” said conflict researcher Malik Samuel. “I don’t think it’s a step towards a sustainable peace settlement.”
The deal does not involve so-called Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), an offshoot and rival to Boko Haram, based on the islands of Lake Chad and a rural swathe of northeastern Borno State. Clashes have continued between the two groups.
After 17 years of a war that has indirectly cost close to 350,000 civilian lives, the idea of negotiations with Boko Haram – officially Jama’at Ahl al Sunna li Da’wa wal Jihad (JAS) – and other armed groups sharply divides Nigerians. Those living closest to the conflict tend to be far more supportive of dialogue than the rest of the country.
However, the government’s public position is an emphatic rejection of talks with a group legally proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
President Bola Tinubu has instead announced the beefing up of an overstretched army – an initiative related to elections early next year in which public safety will be a key issue. The promised 30,000 new recruits and four extra divisions will provide the “teeth that are needed to defeat terrorism and banditry”, Tinubu said in July.
Nevertheless, behind the scenes, “the government seems very interested in having a dialogue with Boko Haram, perhaps realising a military response alone is inadequate to resolving the problem,” noted Samuel.
“Both sides believe a settlement is possible”
Since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, there has been a long if faltering history of under the radar dialogue approaches, according to security officials, diplomats, and mediators, who spoke to The New Humanitarian on the condition of anonymity so they could talk freely.
“Both sides believe a settlement is possible,” a diplomat with knowledge of the chronology of contacts told The New Humanitarian. “For all parties, a non-kinetic [military] approach is intellectually acceptable. But they still believe that by improving their military situations they can influence those negotiations.”
Those talks have been led on the government’s side by the Office of the National Security Advisor and the spy agency, the Department of State Services. They have repeatedly failed, typically scuppered by spoilers within the government and military, forcing the parties to rebuild confidence each time.
Historically, “we’ve negotiated a couple of ceasefires but they couldn’t be maintained,” said a government security official with knowledge of the dialogue process. “The last hudna [armistice] was in the 2022/2023 period but it also collapsed.”
The current agreement may suffer the same fate. Two sources who told The New Humanitarian about the deal warned that Boko Haram may be using the ceasefire to strengthen its position, potentially by moving “equipment” into the Mandera mountains.
Who’s who
Boko Haram is headed by Ibrahim Bakura Doro, the overall commander and imam (religious leader), based on the islands on the northern section of Lake Chad, on the Niger Republic border.
Boko Haram has three factions, all of which have sworn allegiance to Bakura: Darul Gazwa, operating in southeastern Borno and headed by Alhai Kale; the Sadiku group of Abubakar Sadiku Saidu, active around north-central Nigeria; and the Ali Ngulde faction, which carried out the Ngoshe kidnappings.
The success of the ceasefire depends on whether Bakura, from his Lake Chad base thousands of kilometres away, can yoke the three other Boko Haram commanders into a sustainable deal.
Rival ISWAP is operationally and organisationally distinct from Boko Haram, its jihadist cousin. While Boko Haram survives on looting and extorting civilians – a practice known as ghanima – plundering is banned by ISWAP.
Boko Haram is also more locally focused whereas ISWAP – among the most active of so-called Islamic State-Central’s franchises – is loyal to the transnational “caliphate”, which effectively hands IS-Central veto power over any dialogue initiative, according to people familiar with the group.
“ISWAP needs buy-in from IS. They make the final decision,” a rehabilitated former ISWAP commander told The New Humanitarian. “But Bakura needs money, you can make a deal with him.”
Splits and rivalries: A timeline of Boko Haram/ISWAP discord
Boko Haram began as an ultra-conservative religious movement in the early 2000s in Maiduguri under a young cleric, Mohammed Yusuf. It tapped into a radical zeitgeist that appealed across classes – condemning so-called “Western values” and celebrating 500 years of Islamic learning and empire in Nigeria’s northeast.
Initially, Yusuf resisted calling for jihad, but as tensions with the authorities increased, he launched an urban insurrection in July 2009. It was quickly crushed, and Yusuf was extrajudicially killed by the police.
Abubakar Shekau, his deputy, took over as imam. A wave of bombings, kidnappings, and the overrunning of towns had the army on the backfoot, and rural Borno emptied as people were displaced from their homes.
Shekau declared allegiance to so-called Islamic State in 2015 and the group was renamed Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP).
In 2016, ISWAP split. Dissident commanders led by Abu Musa al-Barnawi and cleric Mamman Nur accused Shekau of despotism and condemned his use of “takfir” – the death penalty for infidels – against rural civilians.
Bitter factional fighting followed, but the dissidents managed to establish themselves in the Lake Chad region and win the blessing of IS-Central. Shekau reverted to his group’s previous Boko Haram designation.
Better resourced and disciplined, ISWAP grew in strength. By 2018 it was sacking military bases as it secured its cross-border supply routes. In 2021, ISWAP overran Shekau’s headquarters and he detonated his suicide vest.
In the upheaval that followed, tens of thousands of Boko Haram fighters and their families surrendered to the Nigerian authorities rather than join ISWAP and submit to its centralised control and the banning of ghanima (plunder).
In 2022, Ibrahim Bakura Doro, based in the Lake Chad region, became Boko Haram’s overall leader and imam. Three other commanders operate under him, leading groups active in the Mandera mountains, southern Borno, and central Nigeria respectively. They have all sworn allegiance to Bakura.
ISWAP has also gone through leadership instability. In 2019, al-Baranawi was replaced and at least three other leaders followed in quick succession. He was re-installed in 2021, and then promoted by IS-Central to regional commander. The current head of ISWAP in Nigeria is Ba Shuwa.
Money is not just an inducement but also a practical requirement. “Any arrangement involves a payment, otherwise how would they eat as there would be no ghanima?” explained the Abuja-based security official.
Buying off opponents has also been the traditional approach of the Nigerian political establishment, from ending the insurgency in the oil-rich Delta in 2009, to ongoing attempts to try and contain bandit violence in the northwest.
However, such a transactional arrangement can be a negative incentive, creating a demand for more. “If you give them money, that doesn’t guarantee peace,” cautioned a former Boko Haram hostage negotiator.
“Do a deal with one, to fight the other”
Yet the scenario the security establishment would most welcome – and see as tantalisingly plausible – is if dialogue could then lead to an alliance with Bakura against ISWAP: “To do a deal with one, to fight the other.”
ISWAP is the most lethal of the jihadi insurgents. It is centralised, bureaucratic, and well-funded, with a tax base that far outstrips the revenue Borno State earns.
It has also proven tactically adaptable, technologically advanced, and its combat successes have attracted experienced fighters and instructors from across the Sahel and North African Maghreb.
The failure of the Nigerian navy to undertake a meaningful lake-based offensive – which would involve navigating through a complex and changing ecology of swamps, channels, and islands – means ISWAP’s bases are relatively safe.
“They are only nervous about the [air force] bombing, but every house has a shelter,” said Abu Jabir, a farmer who lives in ISWAP-controlled territory but comes to Maiduguri to buy fishing gear.
Bakura, however, is seen as a persistent danger to ISWAP. “Bakura people are always attacking: They are powerful, they know how to fight on the water,” he explained.
Bakura holds a particular animosity towards ISWAP. When Boko Haram split in 2016 (see timeline), he remained loyal to the group’s then leader and imam, Abubaker Shekau, who rewarded him with significant autonomy.
But in 2021, ISWAP managed to overrun Shekau’s Sambisa Forest base in southern Borno, and Shekau detonated a suicide vest.
“For Bakura, it’s personal,” said Samuel. “Former Bakura fighters have told me that he prefers to attack ISWAP rather than the military. Even if he attacks military bases, it’s to get weapons to attack ISWAP.”
Edited by Andrew Gully.
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