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How does a terror movement like Boko Haram employ language and discourse towards collective action? This is the central question our paper addresses. Focusing on Boko Haram as a militant jihādist social movement organisation (SMO), our article shows how the movement's ideology, evidenced through its discourse, "frames" narratives that identify the problem, call for action and motivate adherents and potential recruits towards violent repertoires. Using interview data, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Social Movement Theory (SMT), specifically framing analysis, we interrogate Boko Haram's Qur'anic exegesis based on the group's publications, exhortations, lectures and sermons between 2008 and 2016. Along with calls for jihād (holy war, within the movement's interpretation) and criticism of Nigeria's federal constitution vis-à-vis Sharī'a (Islamic law) as a superior social alternative, Boko Haram employs a specific takfir (apostate declaration) doctrine that divides the world into two camps: unbelievers (al-kāfirūn) or (kuffar) and believers. Such identity construction constitutes part of a "framing" approach to mobilisation and recruitment. In this sociological analysis of Boko Haram's discourse, we identify diagnostic, prognostic and motivational "framing" patterns employed alongside an injustice master frame as a means to encourage collective action by the "in-group" (adherents and potential recruits) against "out-group" identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Air Force in Nigeria is a compelling subject for sociological enquiry, with an entirely different formative process to the Army. At its inception in 1964, Army officers, not career airmen, commanded the force until 1975. However, whereas the Army cast a long shadow over NAF identity, the Air Force had other institutional pathologies. The "Quota System" of ethnicized recruitment within the military, introduced to balance out ethnic representation, was one such issue. The paper examines how this system, along with the tumultuous politics of 1960s Nigeria, ethnicism and Army influence, shaped the NAF's formative years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Social Movement Theory (SMT) as a methodological framework and explicitly employing the core SMT concepts of political opportunism and framing, this paper seeks to examine Boko Haram's use of discourse in activism. As a rarely employed research method within the Boko Haram literature, SMT holds explanatory power around the movement's approach to transforming motivation potential into actual mobilisation via frame resonance. Focusing on the application of framing within (interpreted) sermons, lectures and exhortations by both Muhammad Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau as former substantive leaders of Boko Haram, this paper unpacks the discourse of Boko Haram's ideology. The paper shows that this ideology, which contrasts the softened core of the Salafist/Wahhabi doctrines from which Boko Haram broke away, relies on problematic interpretations of Qur'ānic exegesis and political thought as both relate to faith and governance in northern Nigeria. One policy recommendation to emerge from this study is that counter-narratives to Boko Haram's ideology should highlight not just why but also how the group's rhetoric employs lies and half-truths in an attempt to rationalise its activism; despite what appears to be an adherence to Qur'ānic exegesis, in making its claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on Biafra's calculus of war to shed new light on the rebel-side debate, this article revisits the Civil War of Nigeria (1967–1970) to extract campaign lessons for the Nigerian Army (NA) in its fight against Boko Haram (BH). The paper uses Nassim Taleb's 'antifragility' theory to explain why Biafra rebels crumbled under traditional military campaign stressors imposed on them. By contrast, Boko Haram's 'antifragile' threat has grown, even as campaign stressors imposed by the NA increased. Embracing the differences in operational environment within both conflicts, this article reflects on the implications of BH's antifragility for the NA's counter-insurgency (COIN). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates Boko Haram's military capabilities and details the process of how its standing army, driven by these capabilities, came to pose a phased threat between 2013 and 2015 in particular. This was a period when military fighting dominated the insurgency in north-east Nigeria. Whereas there is an abundance of literature on Boko Haram's histories and the impact of its insurgency on north-east Nigeria, analysis of Boko Haram's military campaigning is still deficient. Attempting to fill this gap, this paper uses field findings and battlefield case studies from north-east Nigeria to highlight how Boko Haram's overt front - its standing army - came to supplant its guerrilla operations as the main security threat to the frontier area. This pivot towards military fighting, for a group initially composed of a few ragtag combatants, on the surface might seem surprising. Yet, whereas Boko Haram may lack the popular support required for 'people's war', classic insurgency theories nevertheless hold some explanatory power for this deliberate shift: away from guerrilla warfare as the expedient of the weaker side, and towards the use of a large standing army of locals to swarm, and sometimes successfully overrun, state forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]