Description
This paper interrogates vernacular narratives of counterterrorism within the Nigerian context through engaging with the various ways through which Nigerians construct their experiences of the state, Boko Haram, of (in)security and of counterterrorism through a four-month critical ethnography in Northern Nigeria. Rather than treating these as givens, the paper interrogates the emergence of the Nigerian state within the postcolonial context and how this gendered and racialized emergence informs how the state positions itself both globally and locally. Within vernacular discourses by Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) on counterterrorism, the civilian (them) is contrasted from the hardman (the army) and the humiliation of the latter by Boko Haram is viewed as a tragic ‘point of no return’, where civilians must ‘turn to God’ or ‘help themselves’ to achieve their own security. Tropes such as ‘fleeing soldier’, ‘begging soldier’, ‘disguising soldier’ and ‘crying soldier’ are prominent in these narratives which all depict military capitulation and humiliation. I argue that when the hypermasculine machismo of coercive counterterrorism flounders in the face of formidable Boko Haram resistance and violence, army officers and soldiers embrace local knowledges and practices. There is a hierarchy of responses that are not only localized but are also reflexive such as ‘going vernacular’ which requires not merely ‘knowing the terrain’ as military doctrines may require but more importantly, ‘knowing the code’ and ‘weaponizing positionality’ – the insider/outsider dynamic – where state agents seek their own survival and safety rather than abstractions of state survival and territorial integrity. I advance the concept of ‘vernacular nuggets’ which depicts local non-elite ways of managing threats and dangers to capture these local forms of knowledge and practices. People’s construction of insecurity and ultimately displacement from Northeast Nigeria then could be viewed as emerging within the complex vernacular constructions of safety, threats, danger, and the state.
