Suicide Insurgency and Boko Haram in Nigeria: Unconventional Warfare Challenges of Peace Enforcement Operations

Abstract

Over the years Nigerians have happily celebrated live with every meagre resource at their disposal. Suicide was viewed by all cultures in Nigeria as a sacrilege. This very happy and contented disposition completely devoid of suicide insurgency was shattered on the 16th of June 2011 in the suicide mission in Abuja. There were concerted peace enforcement operations which culminated into the declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari, on 24 December 2016 that Boko Haram had been technically defeated. Nevertheless, the muchexpected peace is still an illusion because suicide insurgency intensified and was far higher than the previous months and years. The objectives of the study are: (1) To examine the activities of Boko Haram in the light of terrorism and insurgency (2) To evaluate the nature and causes of the suicide attacks of Boko Haram (3) To assess the actions of multinational peace enforcement operations against Boko Haram. The study is guided by a blend of the theoretical framework of the Clash of Civilization and Marxist Conflict Theory. The qualitative research method was adopted with graphs to critically illustrate and analyse the data. The research found out that suicide attacks by Boko Haram radically increased after the peace enforcement operations destroyed their base and sources of sophisticated weapons for direct insurgency attacks thereby driving them to use unconventional methods. The article concludes that suicide insurgency increased because of the technical defeat of Boko Haram and that winning an unconventional war is a herculean task by peace enforcement operations. The article recommends that the peace enforcement operations of the multinational joint task force should be sustained and improved upon to contain suicide attacks.