Boko Haram - More Complicated Than You Think

[African Arguments]

Nothing in Nigeria is what it seems. Beneath a confusing, disorderly surface lie networks of association and obligation of which outsiders, and sometimes insiders, are unaware. Money is chopped (stolen), people paid off, budgets looted and shared. Power, political and financial, is never transparent. In other nation states a citizen's obligations to the state or employer, trump friendship or family connections. In Nigeria the state and institutions often rank far lower than personal affiliations. Outsiders