From 2011, when it re-emerged, until
early 2015, Boko Haram inflicted one defeat after another on the Nigerian
security services, principally the army. Boko Haram carved out a territory the
size of the U.S. state of Maryland, and threatened Maiduguri, the capital of
Borno state and a major Nigerian city. For many observers, the seeming collapse
of the Nigerian military, once regarded as the best in West Africa, was
bewildering, and a sign that Boko Haram was a formidable fighting force. Boko
Haram was beaten back in 2015 by a multinational effort, South African
mercenaries, and a revived Nigerian military.
However, since Muhammadu Buhari
assumed the presidency in May 2015, there have been regular revelations of
spectacular levels of theft of funding intended to fight Boko Haram during the
Jonathan administration. The latest chapter is the early May
2016 disclosure by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo that the
previous administration lost some $15 billion to fraudulent security spending.
The previous estimate had been that $5.5 billion
had been misappropriated . The vice president observed
that $15 billion “is more than half of the current foreign reserves of the
country.”
Boko Haram’s ostensible success
clearly owed more than observers thought at the time to the criminal
misallocation of resources away from the Nigerian army and the other security
services into private pockets. Boko Haram’s success was not so much the result
of its strength and the weaknesses of the Nigerian military, but in large part
the result of theft.
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