The Mysterious Tukur Mamu Arrested: Boko Haram Conspirator or Simple Newspaper Editor?
The Mysterious Tukur Mamu Arrested: Boko Haram Conspirator or Simple Newspaper Editor?
On September 9, the Nigerian security services announced that military equipment was found in the home of Kaduna-based Desert Herald newspaper editor, Tukur Mamu (premiumtimes.com, September 9). This followed Mamu’s detainment in Cairo International Airport and deportation back to Nigeria, where he was arrested at the airport in northern Nigeria’s largest city of Kano (premiumtimes.com, September 7). Prior to his arrest, Mamu had been negotiating the exchange of dozens of hostages who had been taken captive by a murky contingent of bandits and jihadists from a train on the Abuja-Kaduna expressway.
Notably, only days after Mamu’s arrest, the hostage-takers released the last 23 of their remaining hostages, suggesting that somehow Mamu’s detainment placed pressure on the hostage-takers to make concessions (dailypost.ng, October 5). Further, longtime Boko Haram members who had been arrested as early as the start of the insurgency in 2009 were reportedly freed from prison in exchange for the hostage-takers’ release of the train hostages (fij.ng, October 9). Among those released Boko Haram members was “Alhaji Kambar,” whose last name indicates he was among the five Kambar sons alongside Boko Haram founder Muhammed Yusuf, who was killed in 2009. After Yusuf’s death, one Kambar son, Abubakar Adam, became a key intermediary between al-Qaeda and Boko Haram (france24.com, April 3, 2016). This further supports assertions that the bandits in northwestern Nigeria, and specifically in the train hostage-taking, are tied to Boko Haram.
What makes Mamu unique is not only his role as the intermediary between the train hostage-takers and therefore also jihadists on the one end and the government on the other end, but also his ties to Muhammed Yusuf and Yusuf’s cohorts as early as 2009. Mamu, who is from Yusuf’s and his successor Abubakar Shekau’s native Yobe State, had personally known and sympathized with Yusuf before Nigerian security forces killed Yusuf extrajudicially in 2009 (Desert Herald, January 6, 2015)). While Mamu was never known to support the militancy of the Ansaru faction, which was founded in 2012, he, like Kaduna-based Ansaru, resented the “mainstream” Muslim leadership in Nigeria that “sold out” to the West, including by wearing cowboy hats on international trips. He also believed Nigerian Muslim scholars did not sufficiently defend Muslims, and especially Fulanis, during their conflicts with Christians (Facebook.com/mysunna1, December 7, 2017). This did not mean Mamu necessarily supported the violence that Boko Haram carried out after Yusuf’s death, but it did mean he was “linked” to the group from the start and then later Ansaru and, most recently, the bandit-jihadist hostage-takers in the train attacks.
Mamu became the intermediary for Ansaru within three years of Yusuf’s death in 2012. Ansaru has since 2012 been the al-Qaeda affiliate in Nigeria and has opposed Shekau’s killing of innocent Muslims, which Ansaru believes has deviated from Yusuf’s creed (Terrorism Monitor, January 10, 2013). For example, when Ansaru clarified its position that it disagreed with Shekau but could potentially “work together” with Shekau’s faction in 2012, the Ansaru spokesman released that statement to Mamu at Desert Herald. That statement also foretold how Ansaru members would indeed cooperate with rival factions in the future, including at the time with Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), which, like Ansaru, opposed Shekau’s ruthlessness (al-Haqaiq, June 2018). However, the Ansaru spokesman later criticized Mamu for downplaying the fact that Ansaru was actually a jihadist group, rather than some form of community self-defense organization (Desert Herald, June 2, 2012). In other words, Mamu seemed to want Ansaru to be the latter, but Ansaru reaffirmed it indeed was an al-Qaeda-aligned “jihadist” group.
Mamu’s proximity to Muhammed Yusuf and later Ansaru, if not also being the first journalist to interview Shekau after Yusuf’s death, meant he has always attracted security forces’ attention and has been closer to the group than virtually any other outsider. He was, therefore, arrested in 2010 and 2013, among other times, on suspicion of supporting Boko Haram (Saharareporters.com, February 7, 2010; Saharareporters.com, September 4, 2013). Thus, the latest arrest is not out of the ordinary for Mamu, but the weapons found in his home connects him to militancy in a way unseen before.
Until Mamu’s court trial plays out and the scope of his militant support becomes more well known, it is safest to say that Mamu has played a constructive role in relaying some of the highly clandestine Boko Haram factions’ messages to the public and negotiating the release of innocent civilians, even if he helped the jihadists’ messaging if not also financing, as well. The prospective Mamu trial will likely reveal whether Mamu engaged in these activities with neutrality or with the desire to advance the jihadists’ militant cause. If the latter is proven, it appears the Nigerian security services will have no qualms about Mamu receiving a lengthy prison sentence (vanguardngr.com, September 14).
