How Boko Haram Plans To Benefit From Using Social Media – Japheth Omojuwa

Heavyweight social analyst and outstanding Naij.com guest contributor, Japheth Omojuwa expresses his opinion on how Boko Haram benefits from the use of social media strategy on Nigerians.

Here is the full excerpt:

Boko Haram is obviously making attempts to link to ISIS. There is nothing to suggest they have a formal alliance yet but Boko Haram has certainly been borrowing some of ISIS’s ideas. For instance, declaring a caliphate last August after capturing of Gwoza villages was an act directly off the pages of ISIS’s agenda. One more thing Boko Haram might copy from ISIS is its use of social media. Even though Twitter has not made things easy for them, it is important to look into how they could benefit from using social media tools.

Social media may offer Boko Haram enormous reach of audience that knows no borders or nationalities. With the help of the Internet they would get unlimited access to impressionable young people sharing similar ideas. Thus, social media would further promote Boko Haram ideology and beliefs. If there is anything that drives the liking for Boko Haram and ISIS, it is the amount of media attention they’re granted. To commit crimes is not enough, it is crucial to make sure the consequences of the crimes get on media platforms.

Apart from launching its now suspended official Twitter account in January, Boko Haram has been working with Afriqiyah Media to promote its social media agenda. Afriqiyah Media is a jihadist site with a formal link to ISIS. Last weekend, it shared Boko Haram message relating to the group’s intention to align with the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: “We give you glad tidings that the group’s Shura Council is at the stage of consulting and studying, and we will let you know soon the group’s decision in respect to pledging allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, may Allah preserve him.” It is perfectly clear now that their obsession with seizing territories and using social media along with the much improved video graphics are the signs of using ISIS’s promoting techniques.

This says a lot about Boko Haram’s ambition. Despite facing the renewed onslaught from the multinational forces, the terrorist group is not thinking about getting out of the way soon. If it did, it would not be bothered about social media now, especially as the group never really seemed to pay attention to social media in the past.

The danger is that if we allow Boko Haram to bring the war to social media, we will be dealing with something much bigger than we currently are. Those assuming Boko Haram is never going to find someone on social media willing to join the group are deceiving themselves. We once thought Nigerians would never get involved in suicide bombing. Now we know better.

In attempts to reach more audience and evade media platforms’ regulations Boko Haram has started using indirect forms of addressing the public. For instance, instead of focusing on posting their messages on Twitter timelines, it would probably concentrate on reaching Twitter users who appear to be open to its ideas. One may not know how much Twitter users can get involved with several accounts sharing private messages, but there is a danger here we cannot overlook.

Boko Haram is never afraid to sacrifice its time to impose terror. If the terrorists are that patient with unleashing terror, I bet they’d not mind to be even more patient to finally deploy social media for their good. One effective way to avoid this would be to wipe them out or at least drastically weaken them. Whatever we do, as long as Boko Haram continues to be strong offline, it will always look for the means of getting stronger and that is where their social media agenda should not be allowed to gather pace. Preventing Boko Haram from going online would be much easier than trying to defeat a strong Boko Haram on social media.

Source: Naij

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