Boko Haram: Inside the Mindset of a Nigerian Suicide Bomber

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide. –
Cesare Paverse

Until June 16, 2011 suicide bombing was a
distant phenomena few ever thought could occur
in this realm. The harsh economic climate and
heated geo-political space notwithstanding, it is
very rare to see Nigerians, a people widely
adjudged as the happiest on the face of the
earth, take their own lives. It was even more
unimaginable that someday, a Nigerian
irrespective of whatever influence, will devise
violent and extreme actions capable of brutally
terminating his life, and extending the same
deadly gestures to those around him.
So when Umaru Abdulmutallab, a 22-year-old
Nigerian from an affluent background
attempted to become the country’s first suicide
bomber on a US-bound flight on Christmas Day
2009, many among his compatriots questioned
his nationality, others his sanity.
Nigerians can’t be suicide bombers, it was
reiterated.
Then the dreaded happened. Mohammed
Manga, a 35-year-old Nigerian male, signed his
name in the most gory of inks as the first suicide
bomber ever to strike in the country. A recruit
of extremist Islamic sect Boko Haram, Manga
blew himself up in front of Nigeria’s police
headquarters in Abuja, two and half years after
Mutallab’s first unsuccessful attempt to set the
record aboard the American airliner.
Here comes the multimillion dollar question,
what could make a Nigerian volunteer to be a
suicide bomber?
Could it be the prevailing unemployment
situation in the country which has made the
teeming able-bodied youths roaming the
northern part of the country a potential breed
for terror recruiters? Maybe it is the lure of a
few thousand dollars that make potential
volunteers throw reasons to the winds and get
blown up. Perhaps it is in the hatred
indoctrinated into these would-be suicide
bombers by extremist Islamic preachers at an
early age.
Like his counterparts in Arabia or elsewhere
around the world, research has proven that
money, education or the lack of both, is not a
determinant factor that would either motivate or
hinder a would be Nigerian suicide bomber. If it
will be recalled, Abdulmutallab was from an
illustrious home and had the best education
money could offer. Mohammed Manga on the
other hand was described as a fairly successful
businessman.
In Robert Lamb’s How Suicide Bombers Work,
both the glamorization of martyrdom and its
establishment as a gateway to rewards in the
afterlife are central, yet universal factors in the
suicide bomber equation.
The glamorization of matyrdom is appealing to
the often young and naive Nigerian suicide
bomber, whose average age bracket is put
between 18 – 24. For this set of people, the
thoughts that h is name becomes immortal is
overwhelming. T he pride, prospect and glamour
at the ‘sense of a holy mission’ is appealing, and
this sadly, is a bait their manipulative handlers
exploit to the fullest.
‘A gateway to rewards in the afterlife’ should
not be ruled out as a motivating factor for the
Nigerian suicide bomber. The thoughts of
seventy-two virgins for martyrs who paid the
supreme price for fighting Allah’s cause is too
strong to be relegated to the background.
Likewise are the quests to avenge perceived
political tyranny and economic imbalances.
So how does the Nigerian suicide bomber justify
the killings of innocent souls? Israeli
psychologists eager to understand the mindset
of militant Islamic extremists postulate that at
this point in the mindset of the suicide bomber,
no one perhaps except for members of his sect is
innocent. He is not about killing the innocent ,
he is killing the enemy.