Mohammed Yusuf and the origins of Boko Haram
Boko Haram, also known as Jama'at ahl al-sunna li-da'wa wa-l-qital, was established in 2002 in the town of Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, by 32-year-old Mohammed Yusuf.
Yusuf set up his own mosque in a run-down neighbourhood ... People were intrigued ... There was a lot of curiosity in this radical rejection of the Nigerian state ... It was packed with people ... Yusuf fed the orphans and the street children. It became more than just a mosque.
With the return of democracy in 1999, Nigerians hoped for an end to widespread corruption within the elite and for fairer distribution of wealth.
To bring an end to corruption in politics, the Muslim majority in the north of the country wanted to see Islamic law applied more strictly. And Boko Haram took advantage of this popular demand.
"He [Yusuf] was quite a gifted preacher who became very popular because he was a good orator. And above all, he was a political preacher. It was that which spoke to his followers, the people of Borno. He talked a lot about lies... because for him, the politicians were liars," says Elodie Apard, French Research Institute for Africa.
Yusuf's message quickly resonated with people in the Borno region where the level of poverty was as high as 69 percent in 2011.
Nigeria is the leading economic power in Africa, but more than half of its population lives below the poverty line. Plagued by corruption, which is endemic among Nigeria's elite, politicians have gradually lost the trust of the people.
"Poor people identified with this [Yusuf's] discourse because they were promised paradise. They promised an Islamic state with Shariah, which is a form of social justice. Then the rich would no longer siphon off public money. They joined this group because they believed it would improve their lives through the more rigorous practice of Islam," explains Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos, professor at the French Institute of Geopolitics.
Nigerian authorities were increasingly concerned about the growing popularity of Boko Haram and Mohammed Yusuf's influence on the people.
"Yusuf's sermons were clearly against the state and were very violent in tone. Although Yusuf was not engaged in an armed struggle against the state, his discourse was contributing to it which was disturbing to the authorities. He was widely followed and really very popular. He became a threat," Apard says.
In June 2009, a federal government task force stopped a group of Boko Haram members riding motorbikes as part of a funeral procession. The task force sought to enforce a law that required to wearing of helmets, but they refused to comply, and police officers opened fire on them.
"In a sermon that followed, Yusuf said that if the military was capable of killing people during a funeral, they had no respect for anything. They can come and kill you even if you are doing nothing. He said: 'Now you have shown yourselves, you've killed us en masse, the next time you show yourselves, we will be ready. We will be prepared for you and when you come you will see. Then you will see what you are up against,'" says Apard.
