The terrorists took extreme measures to keep them in their ancestral communities; the soldiers took extreme — even unlawful — measures to push them out.
Zara Goni remembers.
It was a Wednesday in June 2014, around 8 a.m. Her people had scuttled indoors when they heard trucks pulling closer as the soldiers inside them launched bullets in different directions. The gunshots continued for a long time. The villagers heard something else, too: the cracking sound of things burning. Outside, the house’s shade, made of sticks and grass, was darkening, shrinking, and falling apart. Fortunately, the fire did not creep into the mud room where Zara hid with the rest of her family. But her husband, Abatcha Goni, was not with them. He had stepped out earlier to attend a relative’s burial ceremony. When the soldiers climbed back into their trucks and zoomed off later that afternoon, Zara came out of hiding to find that a large chunk of her community had been burnt to the ground. Worse, Abatcha had sat under a tree with three other people at the function. They were all shot dead.
There was another burial ceremony that evening.
This tragedy stamped its feet in Awada, a community in the Mafa area of Borno, northeastern Nigeria, with over a thousand households. That day, the spring green from tamarind trees spread over its landscape became blemished with depressing shades of brown and grey and black that whisper defeat after a battle with fire.
For a decade and a half now, Nigeria has been at war with violent extremists, a war that has directly and indirectly cost the lives of nearly 350,000 people. It started when a group that came to be known as Boko Haram started radicalising people in the early 2000s and later decided to forcefully carve out parts of the country to establish a caliphate. Boko Haram has since splintered, leading to the establishment of two other terror groups, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Ansaru, both having strong links with international jihadist networks. Many years into the insurgency, the authorities still struggle to restore peace to the region.
Much has been said about the damage caused by weapons in this war, of the heads lost to machetes, of the limbs lost to bombs, and of the lives lost to bullets. But a trip across the conflict-ravaged communities of Borno would reveal another destructive force — fire, including the ones ignited by government forces.
Last December, HumAngle spoke to a dozen people who lived in areas that are dangerously close to the strongholds of jihadist groups and whose communities were destroyed by state forces — just like Awada. Many of the displaced townspeople told stories of loss — of loved ones and valuables — following military invasions.
Such disproportional military tactics are not new. Chidi Nwaonu, a security analyst, says the use of collective punishment is a hangover from the colonial period that is “unfortunately baked into the psyche of the security forces, political class and even population as an appropriate response” in certain instances.
Nigerian Army spokespersons who commented on our findings described the allegations as false and flimsy, suggesting that the attacks may have been conducted by terrorists dressed as soldiers and that some of the incidents may have been cases of collateral damage. They also stressed that the Army does not condone such actions.
However, the military’s claims are contradicted by our investigation. In addition to interviews with victims, we used satellite data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Google Earth to establish a pattern of fire outbreaks consuming dozens of settlements and towns across Borno. Nigerian Army officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also confirmed that the military had carried out such actions as a form of reprisal when communities came under suspicion of aiding militants.
Such arson attacks affecting civilian communities have gone on for many years despite several domestic and international laws prohibiting the destruction of dwelling houses as well as forced displacement during conflicts.
Meanwhile, the interviews we conducted indicate that once they start, the attacks and arsons usually happen repeatedly. Four months after the Wednesday attack in Awada, the soldiers came again. This time around, Zara said, they killed 12 men and again set fire to houses. There was a third visit in the same period when the soldiers relocated the townspeople to Dikwa and Maiduguri, the state capital.
“They brought many cars to pick us up,” recounted the mother of five. “They said, ‘We are taking you to where there is order.’ Some of us were taken to the Muna displacement camp and others to Custom House.”
Two years later, in 2016, Bogomari, a faraway village in the Bama area, was burned down. There were four more incidents between then and when 30-year-old IDP Zainab Modu finally left in September 2023. Abba Konto, who operated the community’s borehole before Boko Haram destroyed it, left around the same time. He said nothing is even left that could be burned anymore. “Now the people stay in leather tents like nomads. They would run if they heard the sounds of cars approaching.”
In some of the communities, houses were destroyed so often that people resorted to makeshift shelters instead of taking time to build mud structures. They also devised new means of storing their food supplies to protect them from such attacks.
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