Akali Omeni – författare

An essential and timely exploration of Boko Haram, a terror group whose violence has surpassed every other modern terror group including that of Daesh, al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab.This key volume constitutes a vital resource on Boko Haram’s ideology, history, leadership, and pivot towards violence. With particular emphasis on the events, personalities, radical histories and Islamic discourses that shaped Boko Haram’s rise, the volume examines the movement’s formative years under Muhammad Yusuf and its evolution into one of the world’s most violent terror groups. Delving into the traditions, institutional structures and politicisation of shari‘a (Islamic law) in Northern Nigeria, this ground-breaking volume offers crucial insights into Boko Haram as a social movement that exploits political Islam towards deadly ends.

This book offers a detailed examination of the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Nigerian military against Boko Haram between 2011 and 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with military units in Nigeria, Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide an understanding of the Nigerian military’s internal role – a role that today, as a result of internal threats, pivots towards counter-insurgency. The book illustrates how organizational culture, historical experience, institutions, and doctrine, are critical to understanding the Nigerian military and its attitudes and actions against the threat of civil disobedience, today and in the past. The second aim of the book is to examine the Nigerian military campaign against Boko Haram insurgents – specifically, plans and operations between June 2011 and April 2017. Within this second theme, emphasis is placed on the idea of battlefield innovation and the reorganization within the Nigerian military since 2013, as the Nigerian Army and Air Force recalibrated themselves for COIN warfare. A certain mystique has surrounded the technicalities of COIN operations by the Army against Boko Haram, and this book aims to disperse that veil of secrecy. Furthermore, the work’s analysis of the air force’s role in counter-insurgency is unprecedented within the literature on military warfare in Nigeria.This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, African politics and security studies in general.

Boko Haram is the major threat to the Nigerian state, and has emerged as a destabilizing factor across sub-Saharan Africa. This is now a major focus of global policy-making, as between 2013 and 2014 insurgency-related deaths in Nigeria exceeded those in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is the first to focus on the military nature of Boko Haram, the reasons for its success in those specific regions of the Chad basin it operates in and a detailed history of the Nigerian army’s counter-insurgency – with whom, uniquely, the author has spent research time. The book identifies and analyses the battles and skirmishes on the front line, as well as unearthing a wider explanation for Boko Haram’s military success and the causes of the instability in the region.

This book offers a detailed examination of the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Nigerian military against Boko Haram between 2011 and 2017. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with military units in Nigeria, Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide an understanding of the Nigerian military’s internal role – a role that today, as a result of internal threats, pivots towards counter-insurgency. The book illustrates how organizational culture, historical experience, institutions, and doctrine, are critical to understanding the Nigerian military and its attitudes and actions against the threat of civil disobedience, today and in the past. The second aim of the book is to examine the Nigerian military campaign against Boko Haram insurgents – specifically, plans and operations between June 2011 and April 2017. Within this second theme, emphasis is placed on the idea of battlefield innovation and the reorganization within the Nigerian military since 2013, as the Nigerian Army and Air Force recalibrated themselves for COIN warfare. A certain mystique has surrounded the technicalities of COIN operations by the Army against Boko Haram, and this book aims to disperse that veil of secrecy. Furthermore, the work’s analysis of the air force’s role in counter-insurgency is unprecedented within the literature on military warfare in Nigeria.This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, African politics and security studies in general.

An essential and timely exploration of Boko Haram, a terror group whose violence has surpassed every other modern terror group including that of Daesh, al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab.This key volume constitutes a vital resource on Boko Haram’s ideology, history, leadership, and pivot towards violence. With particular emphasis on the events, personalities, radical histories and Islamic discourses that shaped Boko Haram’s rise, the volume examines the movement’s formative years under Muhammad Yusuf and its evolution into one of the world’s most violent terror groups. Delving into the traditions, institutional structures and politicisation of shari‘a (Islamic law) in Northern Nigeria, this ground-breaking volume offers crucial insights into Boko Haram as a social movement that exploits political Islam towards deadly ends.

After fighting in two World Wars and decades of serving Britain as its colonial master, the Nigerian Army had its first indigenous head in 1965. However, the army left behind by the British was stratified along ethnic lines, much like the polity. By January 1966, with the public disillusioned by political crises and critical of the political class, matters came to a head. 'Today', the Western Nigerian premier warned his dismissive Northern counterpart regarding the military men surrounding them, 'they are going to kill us'. Hours later, on 15 January, both men, the Prime Minister and several others, had been murdered in a violent coup d’état. Democracy in Nigeria died to jubilation in the streets. However, the military that seized political power proved unprepared to wield it. Months later, another coup followed. The following year, Nigeria was plunged into a bloody civil war where once brothers-in-arms were forced to pick sides. Employing archival research and a sociological enquiry, Picking Sides connects dots, arguing that the Army’s disintegration in 1966 was over a half-century in the making. Beginning in the mid-19th Century, the groundbreaking volume presents a gripping political history of Nigeria, from the colonial army’s perspective, until the military takeover.