Africa Is a Country

The slave holders on the border

The slave holders on the border

By
Melchisedek Chétima
Scott MacEachern
Walter van Beek

Why do people on the border between Nigeria and northern Cameroon refer to Boko Haram as slave holders?

Child refugees in Madagali, northern Nigeria, near where Boko Haram displaced people (Immanuel Afolabi, via Flickr CC.

The Mandara Mountains, on the border between Nigeria and northern Cameroon, are among the regions that have most suffered from attacks by Boko Haram. However, for the inhabitants of this area, this situation is not new; they instantly recognize in the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, another dreaded enemy from the past—Hamman Yaji. Yaji was an early 20th-century Fulani chief and slave trader in the same areas of northern Cameroon and north-eastern Nigeria where Boko Haram operates today. For twenty years, he raided throughout the area, capturing slaves and killing those who resisted him.

Today, non-Muslims living along the border between Cameroon and Nigeria refer to Boko Haram as hamaji, a term derived from their memory of Yaji’s depredations. We will not detail here the story of Boko Haram, which has been the subject of many publications. Rather, we seek to understand why people today refer to Boko Haram in terms reminiscent of the period of slavery: why do they use the term hamaji to describe Boko Haram, and why do they compare Shekau to Yaji?

About the Author

Melchisedek Chétima is a historian of West and Central Africa.

Scott MacEachern is Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University, and author of Searching for Boko Haram: a history of violence in Central Africa (Oxford University Press).

Walter van Beek is an Emeritus Professor of Religious Anthropology at the University of Tilburg, Senior Research Fellow at the African Studies Centre (Leiden), and author of Intensive Slave Raiding in the Colonial Interstice: Hamman Yaji and the Mandara Mountains.

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