Local Neocolonialism and Terrorism in Africa

Abstract

This study examines the critical nature and the difficulties associated with understanding the fundamental ideology of the postcolonial wave of new terrorism on the African continent. This is facilitated through a contemporary interpretation of elite dominant economic and political structures and their role in the transformation and activation of latent ideologies of socioeconomic liberation. The consequences of the interaction of these dominance structures in the society are examined as a colonial legacy, which predicts and domiciles a state of international dependency and a culture of corruption within postcolonial African states. The remedy for this practice is discussed as a function of good governance and is based on the expansion of communication, socioeconomic opportunities, and social mobility.

Introduction: The Changing Face of Africa’s Social Conflict

Terrorism plays an increasingly arduous role in redefining the political and security undercurrents of the last quarter of the 20th and early 21st century on the African continent. This article emphasizes the manifestations of factors of elite dominance against the influences of globalization in the contemporary wave of terrorism within the sub-Saharan African States. The consequences of the interaction of dominant economic and political structures in the society considerably incite the transformation and activation of latent ideologies of socioeconomic liberation accommodated under various typologies of terrorism. Although it may be tempting to compound the complex nature and situation of terrorism in the continent as simply religious, the concept of socioeconomic liberation provides a common linkage to its manifestations and dimensions. Referencing cases, particularly, from the Nigerian situation, this article underscores the ideological shift and conflict for economic and political authority between the emergent interest groups nay terrorists and the subsisting elite groups within leadership positions in the region. The article is subdivided into four parts. The first part covers the concept of elite dominance and the impact of globalization in encouraging the emergence of terrorist forces. The second part examines the wave of social unrest that serves as forerunners of the destructive and pecuniary led terrorist ideas of the present day—that some have described as the new terrorism (Otenyo, 2004), in contrast with the terrorism of the colonial and postcolonial periods. The social and economic cost of terrorism is the third component and looks at the implications of terrorism and elite dominance for security, growth, and development of the continental economy. Presented in part four is a theoretical examination of elite dominance as a product of a subsisting colonial mentality–wholly encapsulated within political governance on the continent. Finally, the article concludes by raising policy-relevant questions of security and governance on the continent.

Determining the appropriate definition for terrorism is a common issue in terrorism literature. Early scholars simply described it as the destructive and arbitrary employment of violent activities designed to induce fear (E. V. Walter, 1969; Wilkinson, 1974), a position reaffirmed by a variety of contemporary scholars, counterterrorism experts, and policy makers (Abadie, 2004; Franks, 2006; Freedman, 2007; Martins, 2009). However, according to Otenyo (2004), terrorism may be more schematically defined as the new and the old terrorism. He describes the new terrorism as being international in scope and involving the use of modern technology, such as cyberspace. Although the old terrorism laid claims to some altruistic motivations for its actions, the new terrorism uses no nuances to hide its objectionable criminality. The new form is much bolder, cruder, and involves the employment of martyrdom and emotions to induce fear and reverence, and to recruit converts. At the core of the ideals of both the new and the old is religious fervor. Pecuniary gain is also a primary component of each. In the context of the present study, we define terrorism as the uncontested use of violence to achieve ideological, political, and socioeconomic goals by state or nonstate actors against combatants or noncombatants.

In 1994, Martha Crenshaw, a leading scholar of terrorism, observed that terrorism in Africa had not taken the shape of terrorism in the Middle East and Asia. Apparently, she was implying that African governments, particularly those of the sub-Saharan nations, did not support international terrorism. Today, given the plausibility of state encouragement of elite dominance systems on the continent (Imershein, Rond, & Mathis, 1992) that may influence and provide some political impetus for the emergence of the new terrorism on the local continental front, Crenshaw’s assertion is no longer relevant. Elite dominance is a governing system based on pecuniary privilege. Nieto (2014) defined “the elite” as “a group of people with a privileged position inside the political, military, economic, and cultural structure of nations whose decisions have very important consequences for the rest of the society.” Elite dominance is a structural and functional part of most socioeconomic systems, and its political restructuring is an ongoing process (Imershein et al., 1992). The elites as used in the article are based on C. Wright Mills’s (2000) typology—described as the “Power Elite” at the top end of the power hierarchy, and sub-elites—comprising the political, economic, and military confidants and consultants to the former group. The idea that elite dominance systems are associated with the modern resurgence of terrorism in Africa receives a very little inquiry. Although elite dominance as a perfunctory system might appear to have a distant and casual relationship with terrorism, it deserves consideration, nonetheless. Globalization opened up information on the manifestation of elite dominance in poor and sociopolitically weak societies and has encouraged the grouping of forces to counter it. Although some of these forces follow the paths of social unrest and democratization, others rose with insurgencies and terrorism.

The issues examined in this article emphasize the circumstances under which the various elite relationships may have emerged. They also analyze the related consequences—from the perspectives of the conflict of social classes to the rise of postcolonialism, or the new terrorism. The terrorist groups involved in the new terrorism explicate struggles against national and foreign interests. Given the pecuniary nature of current terrorist practices on the continent, the question arises: How can sub-Saharan African nations spread opportunities for social mobility beyond the dominant elite groups? The answer should provide a deeper understanding of the nature, creative tendencies, and sustenance of terrorism on the African continent, as well as its implications for continental and global security.

Elite Dominance

The forms of modernization associated with elite dominance systems in colonial African States—like sub-Saharan Africa—are similar to the type that Remmer (1976) identified in the Latin American nations, Chile and Argentina. This pattern, called the “comprador bourgeoisie,” is a kind of modernization that is dependent on international economic forces and has its roots in colonial, political, and economic domination (Remmer, 1976). Remmer explains that the comprador bourgeoisie system has a tendency to form and align with and then fall prey to undemocratic forces, contrasted to the more progressive pattern of independent bourgeoisie. Influenced by powerful, external systems that are beyond its control, Remmer argues that this pattern of bourgeoisie tends to form a coalition of elites in both the public and private sectors, each with vested interest in the underdevelopment of their respective nations. In effect, the corresponding international economic control empowers them to maintain their favored statuses. In the case of Chile and Argentina, these patterns became an upper-class economic coalition at the expense of the lower-class groups (Remmer, 1976). The structure of the elite dominance in a society viewed in terms of a pyramidal hierarchy—a few individuals at the very top of the pyramid control the socioeconomic and political power of the society. Although the common notion is that societies are controlled by a diversity of competing interest groups, in reality a very few individuals control the broad stream of power centers across most societies. The late sociologist, C. Wright Mills, provided the fundamental premises of the elite theory. Mills, one of the most referred elite theorists, explains that the centers of elite power in modern societies are located in the bureaucracies of the government, economic, and military institutions. Unlike in the premodern era, when the power of the elites was concentrated in individuals such as monarchs, the powers of the modern elites depend on authority and attributes of social organizations (Mills, 2000). According to Mills, the “positions of the power elite enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women (p. 4).” To complete the elite apparatchik, middle-level elites occur at the spot on the pyramid below the power elites. These comprise the politicians, upper-class individuals, celebrities, and local authorities. It is interesting that Mills noted that though the power elites make the most important decisions in society, however, the decisions they make or do not make are often less important compared to the pivotal positions they occupy. In other words, at the apex of societal power in modern societies where decision making occurs, positions take preeminence over the capability to make the required decisions. Mills observed that “often the power elite are so uncertain of their roles and even more often they allow their fears and hopes to affect their assessment of their own power (p. 4).” The implied paradox is that in the fear to keep the power, the elites focus less on their roles than on the need to resist others who may want to usurp those powers (Mills, 2000).

A critical point in the political development of most postcolonial states, often overlooked, involves the process through which rural elitism mushrooms into an urban form. To understand the African situation of elite dominance, one can draw upon instances from other societies where the impact of elite dominant structures on the societal level has received significant, scholarly attention. Although in most precolonial societies the relationship between the peasants and the local elite may have been consensual and mutually beneficial in some areas of communal management, the colonial evolution of the rural to urban elitism did not provide any opportunities for such agreements in Africa. In other words, colonial-day peasants were not involved in the transition to urban elitism, nor in the negotiations that preceded the political process handed down to the urban elite (Brewster, 2008). Similarly, Brewster (2008) observed that the rural Mexican elite is not considered a major player in local politics, yet the maintenance of power is dependent on exploitation of the peasants through the use of skills of manipulation and practices that were cultured over centuries. In Nigeria, Usman Dan Fodio founded the northern Fulani Oligarchy, Dan Fodio was a feudal warrior with Islamic Middle Eastern origins. He created the Sokoto Caliphate, a politico-religious state successor selected by the British colonial authorities as they prepared to depart Nigeria. The Caliphate ruled Nigeria through a highly manipulative state, social, and religious process for four decades after colonial abdication of power. Dan Fodio’s highly trained descendants were able to spread this structure of dominance through a very brilliant transition of a rural elite class—structured around traditional emirate ruling families—into a national modern urban elite class.

The emergence, dominance, and maintenance of elitism in diverse cultural societies are not unilateral. Some of the forces influencing elitism include political and economic factors, social class, ethnicity, and family. The effects of these forces differ in the context of a particular analysis and locality. For the most part, these systems perpetuate themselves from generation to generation (Brewster, 2008). Brewster contends that there is a very significant dimension of elite dominance. Facing such an advantageous position, elites would take steps to maintain their status for future generations. This is usually the point of conflict in many modern societies, where informed members of the working class seek to encroach upon these elite domains, sometimes without the structures of political power, social class, proper family connection, or belonging to the dominant ethnic groups. Such a revolt is potent enough to present formidable challenges to the status quo. According to Mills (2000), the elite apportion greater attention to the maintenance of their position compared to the requirements of the position.

In a way, economic terrorism pose challenges to the new urban ruling elite, particularly by the peasants excluded from the negotiations that preceded the former’s emergence. However, with increasing evidence of the involvement of the so-called elite class in the sponsorship of terrorist activities, this argument diminishes. In many postcolonial states, the authority of the urban elite is still fundamentally local. In sub-Saharan African states, the structure of the modern elite class is based on the primordial beliefs of the protection of kinships, the maintenance of cultural domains, the advancement of notions of ethnic superiority, preservation of traditional family ties, and broadening of the extant spatial power base. However, the organic state, since compromising these mechanisms, created platforms for the evolution of other power-dominant systems, ones that are controlled by wealthy individuals with amassed land and financial and other capital assets, all protected by networks of paid political machines prone to use violent reprisals against enemy systems. Nonetheless, the real threat to urban elitism is its prejudiced reluctance to renegotiate its postcolonial emergence with local peasants. Intrinsically, these power-dominant systems closely resemble terrorist structures. Because resilience lodges among the primary pillars of elite dominance, alliances routinely exhibit and manipulate raw power. Generally, members of this class emerge from similar social structures. This has enhanced the integration of the structures of dominant institutions in society—through which the alliance of the government, economic, and military elite is coordinated and maintained (Mills, 2000). Referencing the colonial legacy of Mexico’s political elite, Nieto (2014) argued that corruption within the Mexican cultural, political, and economic systems is rooted in colonialism. His account examines the decline of traditional societies and traditionally held customs, norms, and values as a consequence of a colonial hierarchical management system vested in the privileged acquisition of production, labor, and land from the locals. In addition, Nieto looks at one aspect of the colonial theory and concludes that the manifest effect of economic, political, and psychological constraints and disenfranchisements established by the colonial system is the emergence of corruption through nepotism and the social and economic underdevelopment of the people. He noted that the conflict between the traditional values of indigenous Mexican citizens and those of the mixed breed citizens of indigenous and European descent was also a clash of the law and its application. His position can be illustrated, similarly, under the Durkheimian analysis of the transition from the traditional mechanistic to the organic society of 17th-century France. In each of these situations, the inability to control a fast changing society easily led to hemorrhages in both law maintenance and criminal innovations. But in the case of the colonialized, the path of change to the organic society was forced—not negotiated—by an external power, the colonial system, whose primary goal was resource expropriation. Thus, this conflict built into the laws, and the institutions and models of governance as corrupt modifiers have endured. The crisis point in this change involved the locals adapting to new ways of doing things as part of the norm. The political elite has, since, entrenched the system of ruling by corruption in the postcolonial governments.

The adoption of corruption as a mode of governance has become so pervasive in Mexico that a magazine survey reported by Nieto showed that, in as much as the gains of corruption are usefully applied, 48% of all Mexicans did not seem worried by the status quo. In addition, 70% of the respondents support official theft if the public share in the loot. Seen in this light of public acceptance of corruption, by far, the greatest loss to the nation is the modification of traditional norms and values of the society regarding the means to achievable goals. These systems of elite rule by corruption are not unique to Mexico. Rather, they reflect the poor governance of postcolonial sub-Saharan African states.

Elite dominance restricts social mobility within some groups, sometimes to as little as 1% of the population in many postcolonial economies (Coe & Davidson, 2011; Easterly, 2006; Ridge, 2013). Ridge (2013) described social mobility as “the rise and fall of individuals between social and economic groups,” which depends on access to opportunities structured around political, social, and economic power schemas, controlled by the dominant elite groups in society. He notes that social mobility in Britain is limited to about 7% of the population, who are, mostly, graduates of elite private schools. This practice is a form of social engineering. Elite dominance by nepotism—shared personal relations that are, originally, a part of the British Monarchy. It spread abroad as a tool of control in the colonial administrative structure (Rodney, 1974). Elite dominance practices occur at different levels of the societal structure, such as in the form of legacy admissions in U.S. Ivy League colleges, a national ideology of meritocracy and individual opportunities, notwithstanding. Colleges apply elite privilege practices as avenues for colleges to retain financial donations, family loyalty, as well as for maintaining tradition (Coe & Davidson, 2011). Ridge (2013) argued that the continuing skew in the spread of social mobility and economic opportunities for the elite class resulted in a strong reductive effect on the global competitive nature of Britain. Through a network of institutional and relational arrangements, the economic elite in nations like Britain and Germany utilize bureaucratic power, ownership, and social capital to maintain their dominance (Windolf, 1998). Yepiskoposian, Margarian, Andonian, and Rashidvash’s (2011) examination of cultural change among Turkish-speaking people of Northwestern Iran reveal that elite dominance imposes fundamental cultural changes, such as the replacement of the language of the subordinate groups. Similarly, in Northern Nigeria, the elite dominance structures of the Hausa–Fulani ruling families seem to have replaced a significant proportion of native languages of the indigent ethnic groups with the Hausa language (Crawford, 1979). In many instances, for the purpose of accomplishing goals and creating opportunities, and to protect group ideological and social advantages, elites in different societies create structural stratifications of class, ethnicity, and religion.

Nieto’s (2014) definition of the elite contends that their decisions have important consequences for the rest of society, especially when social groups competing for political and economic interests become oblivious to the fact that the popular direction of political power is for the general societal good and well-being. We examine the salient consequences of elite dominance, next, in relation to the emergence and activities of prominent terrorist groups in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

Terrorism as a Postcolonial Conflict of Social and Economic Stagnation

Writing in response to the 9/11 crisis, Stefan Mair (2003) noted that Africa remains an area largely omitted in the conversations on the war on terror. Generally, disaffection and disdain was the response to Al-Qaeda’s initial call for African Muslims to join its terrorist network in the sub-Saharan region. Although as reported in a few nations like Somalia, Sudan and, more recently, Nigeria, Al-Qaeda-style terrorism appeals to some adherents of the Islamic faith, resulting in the growth of formidable followership (Mair, 2003). However, because of the socioeconomic hardships in sub-Saharan African, instead of exportation, terrorism acts inward against the state and its economic institutions. Reported cases of terrorist incidents in sub-Saharan Africa increased dramatically from three in 1970 to 449 in 1990. This figure surged another 100% in 1992. Although there was an annual average decline of about 50% of reported terrorist cases from 1998 to 2004, within a range of 4 years before (1994) and 4 years after this period (2008), the number of reported terrorist episodes peaked to 381 and 372, respectively. In particular, the Nigerian situation has been very troubling. Between 1983 and 1992, for example, reported incidents of terrorism in Nigeria increased by 300%. Terrorist cases rose, again, by 41.6% (17 incidents) in 1997. There were major declines in 1998 and 2002. However, in 2008 and 2010, reported cases of terrorism climbed to all-time highs of 75 and 62 incidents, respectively (Global Terrorism Database, 2011). In general, for each succeeding decade, the pattern emerging from both the Nigerian and the wider sub-Saharan data sets is one of mounting terrorist incidents.

Scholars have reiterated the relationship between globalization, the nation state, and terrorism. Because of the factors of transnational human mobility (e.g., wars, natural disasters, trade and commerce), the development of nations and cultures is influenced by the external political, economic, and social forces (Remmer, 1976). Globalization, defined as “the free movement of capital, goods, knowledge, manpower, and services among countries due to the increased technological and scientific improvements and diminished state-centric power” (Demir & Varlik, 2015, p. 38), also serves to integrate cultures across diverse regions of the world. In spite of the advantages of the socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of globalization, the phenomenon has dire implications for the security of nations. The forces of globalization have considerably weakened the concept of the sovereign nation state which is the bedrock of the fight against terrorism (Demir & Varlik, 2015). Many states in the demanding terrorist regions of the world, such as the Middle East, can no longer sustain the security and stability required to contain the persuasions and activities of terrorists on their own soil. Demir and Varlik (2015) shared the view that the world as a global unit cannot defeat terrorism while undermining the nation state. It is now well documented that the globalization of terrorism enlarges, considerably, the reach and power of its activities, especially in its advancement and use of technological operations platforms (Demir & Varlik, 2015; Ejiogu, 2015; Onwudiwe, 2001). One of the dramatic influences of globalization is the worsening of socioeconomic inequality. It also influences the creation of multiple channels of international interdependencies beyond the interdependence of states (Demir & Varlik, 2015), through which new forms of powers are created and new knowledge of political and socioeconomic inequalities, which feed discontent and ways of challenging dominions, are being learned and practiced. Through the enhancement of political and economic opportunities and global cultural integration, globalization, in a sense, creates conditions which trigger the socioeconomic polarization of society, the strengthening of elite dominance, easy access to terrorist ideals through free and cheap technological platforms, and the weakening of the powers of individual nation states.

Reflecting on the genesis of contemporary terrorism forms in Africa, external accounts contend that piracy in Somalia is a result of the lack of a rule of law, insecurity, and the absence of government. Somali pirate groups contributed close to 40% of global piracy in 2008 (Ploch, Blanchard, O’Rourke, Mason, & King, 2011). However, insider accounts from Somalia suggest that piracy is a survivalist response to economic despoliation, degraded fishing grounds by international toxic waste dumping, illegal trawler fishing, and drought. Pirate groups in Somalia organize along clan lines in isolated towns and regions (Ploch et al., 2011). Similarly, Niger Delta piracy in Nigeria arose from estranged fishing communities angered by the degradation of their sensitive, deltaic ecosystem by petroleum exploration companies (Ogundiya & Amzat, 2006). State terrorism in Nigeria received global attention as the “Niger Delta Crisis” when the Nigerian military, at the behest of the Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil conglomerate, raised Ogoni villages because of local disturbance and riots on its facilities. By the time the military left Ogoni, about 1,000 villagers were dead and another 20,000 homeless (Saro-Wiwa, 1992).

The increasing inroads of Islamic fundamentalism in Northern Nigeria and the shift of political power to the South in 1999 encouraged the politically motivated Boko Haram band. The Great Lakes region of East Africa has also witnessed the incessant problems of insurgency and insurrection in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. The solid mineral resources in this region of sub-Saharan Africa attract all sorts of foreign interests, insurgency, and rebellions. This has resulted in heightened weapons trafficking, kidnapping, illegal mining and an encouragement of terrorist activities by dissident groups in this area (Daley, 2006; Hayes & Burge, 2003; Montague, 2002). Coltan, for instance, is a choice material in high-tech industries. Its value to industries in the Silicon Valley is such that the U.S. government designates it a strategic mineral (Hayes & Burge, 2003; Montague, 2002). Beyond the traditional, political, and ethnic contests and rivalry in the DRC, international investment in illegitimate mining operations finances rebel forces, thus ensuring the continuing instability of the nation through conflicts, fraud, official corruption, and the weakening of civil institutions. Also implicated in mineral exploitation are the armies of neighboring African nations, Uganda and Rwanda, which secure companies and serve as conduits and stakeholders in mining operations (Montague, 2002). Visible defects in the present-day governance infrastructure in many African states indicate that the elitist reinforcement of the corrupt ideals of colonialism poses barriers to the proper domestication of Western democratic cultures inherited after independence. Most postcolonial African nations embraced the colonial statecraft ideology of undermining the rights of occupied citizens (Dickson, 1989). Early manifestations of this misrule became evident in a series of coups and counter-coups in sub-Saharan Africa (Ciliers, 2003). The continental leadership of the African Union (2004) is concerned with the international variants of terrorism, while subnational and state terrorism, such as corrupt leadership is more critical to Africa. Studies on terrorism assume that only traditional ideological concepts of religion, leftism, conservatism, and ethnonationalism typify terrorist activities (Martins, 2009). But, a critical review of governance on the continent reveals that terrorism underwent a form of local domestication, resulting from the mass perception of alienation from modern, elite progress, as well as from the politico-corporate plunder and the squandering of the continent’s natural resources during the postcolonial era (L. Walter, 1996). A significant portion of terrorist violence in sub-Saharan Africa is unidirectional and vertical against businesses and economic activities. In response, African governments resort to state terrorism, brutalization, unlawful arrests, detention, and torture. State terrorism uses clandestine methods, including murder, to check political opposition (Clutterbuck, 1986). The point made is that in these confrontations, it is not clear when insurgency evolves into terror or when terrorists become insurgents (Kilcullen, 2005). Ogundiya (2009) suggested that to understand the causes of terrorism, it is essential to delineate its typologies. Otenyo (2004) explored terrorism during the colonial period in Kenya (1952-1958). British authorities used the word “terrorism” to describe the activities of the Mau land and freedom fighters. He associates the internal domestic processes in Kenya with the terrorist attacks in that nation. In New Terrorism, Otenyo describes increased religious content and motivation, the practice of martyrdom, the use of strategy and coordinated attacks, escalation of terror networks, and advances in the usage of technology, for example, cyberspace. With regard to the rise of jihadist terror adherents, Otenyo (2004) contended that the main thrust of the elucidations of global terrorism is its explanatory power. However, he questioned the role of poverty in the New Terrorism. Otenyo believes that poverty has little to do with the rise of the new terrorism. This may be true only when stated in such easy, palliative terms. But poverty is a relative term—its dimensions spread much wider than the poverty of the stomach. It is much more than the act of not having enough resources on which to subsist. Poverty encompasses many ingrained psychological dimensions, such as the poverty of believing in a national ideology, hopelessness, losing trust in societal leadership, and living an insecure lifestyle.

Otenyo (2004) equally noted that the new terrorism could be associated with regional waves of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism from the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the 1979 return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran, and Osama bin Laden and the Palestinian Intifada in 1991. These episodes acted as microcosms, delivering other power interdependencies across the globe, eliciting transmissions of knowledge about challenging dominions within other dimensions of struggle. Buttressing Otenyo’s wave of the New Terrorism in Africa, Kagwanja (2006) added that “since the September 2011 terrorist incidents, the United States’s war on terror has accentuated the level of insecurity in the nations of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Comoros, Djibouti, and Sudan.” Insecurity in this region emanates from the diverse forms of state and nonstate actors—criminal and terrorist elements engaged as guerrillas, bandits, cattle rustlers, pirates, liberation movements, vigilantes, and other diverse forms of state terror players. Unlike Otenyo’s observation that poverty has meager influences on the rise of the new terrorism in Africa, Kagwanja emphasizes that poverty, chronic underdevelopment and a deep sense of marginalization, and the negative forces of economic liberalization and the historical linkages to the Middle East are influential to the new terrorism in Africa.

In his book Dilemmas of Weak States: Africa and Transnational Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, Mentan (2004) examined the problem of weak and failed states and their relationships to the rise of terrorist activities in Africa. He clarified that the root causes of conflicts and the weak states of nations in Africa are not the products of a surplus inflow of conventional arms from Europe, Asia, and America—due to the war on terror or any other war, but, rather, the failure of African governments to abide by the social contract between the citizens and the state. The failure of these governments to deliver on the promises of statehood results from corruption, incompetence, a lack of responsibility to governing roles, and a general misunderstanding of the notions of statehood and leadership, all of which leads to a general pauperization of geographic and socioeconomic fringes and hinterlands and a mass migration of the young and audacious to the urbanized centers of government power, where messages that would feed their socioeconomic and political discontent are free and easy to come by. Mentan argues that, the variables that compound these problems in Africa include the following:

1. Chronic conflicts that shatter economies and create vast refugee camps

2. Corrupt, incompetent, and undemocratic African governments, and.

3. International political and economic systems—concerned about Realpolitik, oil supply, and the interest of global finance than about the well-being of Africans (p. ix).

The political and economic elite maintain a hegemony on their nation states in Africa, which enhances the ideological vacuum of leadership and development (Mentan, 2004). This vacuum, some suggests, derives from the inability of these leaders to differentiate their personal interest from the societal goals, thus manifesting the creation of personality cults of leadership that is accountable to nothing and to no one. Mills (2000) has explained that often the modern “Power Elite” assign greater attention to keeping their position than the critical role of making decisions that would advance the progress of their societies. The primary problem of the African leadership brand of elite dominance is found in its ideological vacuum, replete with ill-conceived rules and regulations, and a lack of adherence to its own rules (Mentan, 2004). Mentan makes note of the following statement by a prolific South African-born author, Gavin Williams, which illustrates the degree of cynicism associated with the prospects of this ideological vacuum for leadership and development in Nigeria.

The Nigerian bourgeoisie lack the commitment of a religious socialist or national character of the rationalizing, capital-accumulating, surplus-expropriating classes of Britain, Russia, Germany, or Japan during their period of industrialization. In fact, the Nigerian bourgeoisie does have an ideology in the sense of a theoretical legitimization of the status quo. It is found in the concept of development. (p. 6)

The reasons for the weaknesses of African states listed by Mentan (2004, p. 12) reflect the weaknesses of dominant elite apparatchiks of leadership in many African states: (a) dependence, (b) lack of a coherent ideology, (c) softness, (d) lack of a technical and analytical capacity to comprehend impending consequences of state actions in the current international system, (e) hostile international environment that is impatient with local African needs, and (f) poor record of statehood. The excessive appointment of family and associates in government positions and propensity to advancing their pecuniary interests in governance plays a major role in weakening the elite dominant leadership in sub-Saharan African states. These factors which we explore next, contribute and boost the social and economic costs of terrorism on the continent.

Social and Economic Cost of Terrorism

Terrorism literature has revised the notion that terrorism is an irrational act. The most abject form of terrorism—suicide terrorism—has overcome the conventional wisdom of irrationality? Observers of suicide terrorism say that it is a well-coordinated and organized practice, as has been the case for other forms terrorism. Just as well, terrorism can no longer be described as attacks against noncombatant targets, alone (Moghadam, 2006), because of full-fledged, state-seeking terrorist groups in the middle-east, such as (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), regularly attack and engage armies of sovereign nations, dispossessing them of their sovereign spaces. If suicide terrorism defined as attacks by which success is contingent on the death of its perpetrator (Moghadam, 2006), in what ways might we define socioeconomic terrorism, the primary interest of the present article? Newman (2006) stated that knowledge of underlying sources of conflict in society is fundamental to understanding the specific incidents and categories of terrorism more than the examination of the root causes which are more useful for analytical purposes when considered in conjunction with the precipitant factors of terrorism. As Newman describes the root causes of terrorism in terms of the “forms of causal relationships between underlying social, economic, political, and demographic conditions,” the differences between underlying social conflicts and the aforementioned root causes is semantic in the African context. In many sub-Saharan African nations, the economic costs of terrorism are poorly accounted. Frey, Luechinger, and Stutzer (2004) maintained that the cost of terrorism to the general well-being of the individual citizen exceeds narrow economic repercussions. A quantification of the real cost of terrorism is limited by simple quantitative comparisons of terrorism by the number of incidents (see Figures 1-3), human casualty figures, types of weapon used, reliance on media reports and official statistics, which have problems of underreporting, bias, and other fluctuating methodologies. To support their position, Frey et al. (2004) examined the major aspects of the economy impacted by terrorism (i.e., foreign direct investment, foreign trade, tourism, stock market, and urban economy), and concluded that, despite the substantial cost implications, these effects do not capture the nonmarket costs of terrorism, such as fear, grief for victims, and bereavement.

Figure 1.

Trend of terrorist incidents in Nigeria, 1980-2010.

Figure 2.

Trend of terrorist activities in sub-Saharan Africa, 1970-2010.

Figure 3.

Peak years of terrorist incidents sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria in the past two decades.

How do we explain socioeconomic terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa? We submit that social disorganization and economic depression can explain the subsequent deviance of domestic terrorism (Sandler & Walter, 2004). Examining terrorist violence from an analogous position, Abadie (2004) explained that, if levels of political freedom are considered, risks of terrorism in poorer nations are not less than similar risks in wealthier nations. Domestic terrorism accounts for about 80% of terrorist activity around the world, compared to transnational terrorism, which attracts greater global attention (Abadie, 2004). Poverty is, indeed, a potential trigger of terrorism for the globalized world (Abrahamsen, 2005; Easterly, 2006). In the context of the present analysis, we suggest that the partnership between the local expropriation interests of the dominant elite business and governing class and the interests of foreign multinational groups has a relationship to sociopolitical conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa (Sofiri, 2007). According to Mentan (2004), this collaboration lacks a coherent national developmental ideology. For instance, the Niger Delta crisis of the 1990s was a Nigerian dilemma that revealed the degree of socioeconomic disaffection in the country—a practical manifestation of a people’s economic predicament in the midst of a hegemonic and exploitative institution. The structure of the governmental process in Nigeria enables local exploitation, but does not benefit indigent communities (Ogundiya & Amzat, 2006), perhaps describing a limited technical and analytical capacity to comprehend impending consequences of state actions within the global system. Comparatively, China welcomed global investors into its economy with a grounded national developmental ideology and focus. One imagines what the Chinese sociopolitical state (even with the remnants of its fast receding communist structure intact) would look like without the audacious plan to provide adequate opportunities for social mobility to all its citizens. The terrorist crisis in Nigeria, for instance, as displayed in the Niger Delta region, is emblematic of two competing security positions (Okeke-Uzodike & Isike, 2009). However, there is the state-centric interest, consisting of the elite dominant governing structures and its international allies, while on the other is the human angle, made up of the militia and their communities. Within this ultra-contentious scenario, whose security interests are governments elected to represent, and whose economic interests are the terrorists set to protect? The Nigerian state’s primary focus on the protection of foreign interests, without equally articulating a similar agenda for the interests of its citizens, is a reflection of its dependence on a hostile international environment that is impatient with local African needs (Mentan, 2004). The zeal of religious extremists in Nigeria seems to relate to socioeconomic disorientation as well. This is the primary dilemma of the Nigerian terrorism situation. State-created social, economic, and political imbalances in Nigeria have increased in the past three decades (Okeke-Uzodike & Isike, 2009). The case of the Boko Haram sect does not differ much when examined from the perspective of broken down state and social institutions, and the diminishing levels of state control found in the inability to assure the dues of contractarian citizenship. Profligate leadership, fraud, corruption, and resource expropriation do not endear civic citizenship. It is as if the social, political, and economic damage, imposed by decades of poor leadership across the continent have awoken and emboldened these terrorist groups to challenge the status quo.

Neocolonial Theory of Localization

According to Durkheim’s anomie theory, under the precepts of the social changes that beset France during and after the Industrial and French revolutions of the 18th century, economic inequality was a significant element of the increase of criminal behavior and not just the breakdown of the traditional French society. Similarly, multinational corporations create an environment for crime by enabling huge economic inequality in developing societies. The same patterns of urban elitism and crime that occurred in Western and Eastern Europe during their periods of modernization are currently taking place in Asia and Africa (Vold, Bernard, & Snipes, 2001). However, the major differences may be glimpsed from the ideological vacuum from which societal development in nations like Nigeria are structured and undertaken by the national leadership (see Mentan, 2004). Growth patterns in many developing nations often do not follow real development (United Nations Industrial Development Organizations [UNIDO], 2011). The acclaimed dynamism of the Nigerian society of the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, was totally set around a rush for Nigeria’s natural resources, anchored around the Niger Delta region. This is reflective of colonialism or the rush for the golden age of California gold mines in the United States. Today, this situation has set up bands of dissidents seeking their own path of the lucre, some through instruments of state authority, and others through the ploy of terrorism (Sofiri, 2007). In contrast to the contemporary creed of economic terrorism, postmodern terrorism moved away from the militant-only anarchist and leftist movements of the late 19th century to a more ethnically based rationalist movement with political upfront units (L. Walter, 1969). The problem of locating an ideological position and framework for terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa is similar to factors that prevent total and direct ascription of terrorism to exclusive state-sponsored terrorist activities globally. The closest ideological brand pertinent to terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa appears to be “economic ethnonationalism” (Ogundiya, 2009; Ogundiya & Amzat, 2006; Okeke-Uzodike & Isike, 2009; Sofiri, 2007). Increased terrorist activity in sub-Saharan Africa reflects the dynamic power of globalization’s information age to open up communities long held back by closed governance systems to the reality of socioeconomic mobility and the ability to be involved in the determination of their own destinies. It has been observed that populations unaffected by national political institutions develop little political interests and, hence, are most unlikely to become politically involved (Welfing, 1979). However, today, to the extent that governance in sub-Saharan Africa has remained unresponsive to the needs of its citizens, this position seems to have taken a new turn. Since colonialism cannot be justified, then, correspondingly, indigenous occupation, even under altruistic considerations, also cannot.

Traditionally, colonialism refers to “the establishment of domination over a geographical external political unit, mostly inhabited by people of a different race and culture, where the domination is political and economic, and the colony exists subordinated and dependent on the mother country” (Blauner, 1969, p. 395). Internal colonialism refers to the elimination of foreign control of a state or territory, and the control and exploitation of subordinate groups pass to the dominant group (Tatum, 1994). Internal colonialism reproduces many of the same characteristics of the former colonizing group (Gabbidon & Greene, 2009). In the book Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Justice, Shaun Gabbidon (2010) offers a cross-national explanation of these colonial constructs. He argues that people respond differently to the same forms of alienation. In probabilistic terms, people may differ in their adoption of the same process of oppression (Tatum, 1994).

Similarly, in his book, Sociology in a Changing World, William Kornblum claims that the characteristics of internal colonialism are related to the subjugation of ethnic groups, where the colonized did not enter the union voluntarily. This involves dominance and the destruction of the culture of the colonized by the colonial group. The colonizer begins to view the colonized as a biologically and sociopolitically inferior species (Kornblum, 2007). Kornblum’s colonial theory shadows an intrinsic perspective that manifests in native neocolonial tendencies of governance systems in African nations like Nigeria, today: the growing elitist perception of the other as the socioeconomic nothings. This perception is invidious with the concentration of poverty at one end of the sub-Saharan underdevelopment space, against extreme riches at the other end, under held by less than 1% of the population (Oxfam, 2014). Examining this negative trend of socioeconomic and political aggrandizement within the centrum of a colonial theory, a certain peculiar perspective is derivable. The concept of internal colonialism identifies clear similarities between the relationship of colonial exploitation and dominance, which existed in the past between countries and the relationship which exists, locally, in some countries today. Internal colonialism is structurally described as a society within a society, based on linguistic, ethnic, cultural, political and economic inequalities (Blauner, 1969; Fanon, 1965; Gabbidon, 2010; Kornblum, 2007), and thus the neocolonial native dominance is anachronistic, being that, notwithstanding, the interstitial union of numerous ethnicities, distinct groups tend to form mostly from dominant urban elites and families that assumed rulership from the departing colonials. The postindependence nationalization of peripheral colonial businesses and industry prepared the receptacle for these elite group forms. This form of dominance, which emerged across ethnic lines, has urban elitism as its common denominating factor. The urban elite may emanate through high educational attainment, economic wealth, family connection, or through sheer force of political aggression. Domination in the local neocolonial parlance may not necessarily be ethnically oriented, but, rather, a creation of a system of dominance playing against its own goals of governance. Here, class conflict is equally relevant whether the dominating groups are foreign or local. In contrast to traditional forms of colonialism, the local colonial system is a union entered willingly as a unit (Fanon, 1965).

Similar to the common identification of autocratic systems with inequality, Albertus and Menaldo (2014) found that economic elites impede the redistribution of resources, even during democratic regimes. Using a global, panel data set, spanning the years 1972-2008, they found that democratic regimes are better able to avoid the trap of elite dominance by crafting a new constitution protected from the prejudices of the outgoing regime. The impact of elite dominance on the underdevelopment and marginalization of minorities—women and the poor in India—suggests discriminatory practices that are, essentially, underinvestments in education and other core developmental areas that are essential to uplifting the socioeconomic conditions of the populace. The top 5% of the population owns the greater share of land in India. Examining the increasing legitimization of corrupt practices in India, Jauregui (2014) discovered that the term jugaad is used as a euphemism for allowing corruption, particularly in the sense that it is a necessary and acceptable vice to achieve the general societal goal for economic superiority. According to Jauregui, jugaad is a sort of “provisional agency” for attaining the so-called ‘better future’. Similarly, in Nigeria, the term settlement is used as a precondition to allowing the corrupters and partners unquestioned access to their loot. Why, in most postcolonial states, has corruption become socially acceptable, rather than a noxious crime against society’s collective values of integrity and equity? It is possible that, by unconsciously redefining and eroding the distinctions between virtue and vice in the minds of the public, elite dominant influences and practices, steamed in a heritage of colonial corruption, replicated itself across a broad spectrum of socioeconomic and political platforms. These forms of elite dominance, exemplified in India, mirror the patterns in local neocolonial dominance forms in sub-Saharan African nations. The paradox is that these elite dominance practices lower spending on developmental projects. At the same time, they increase spending on nondevelopmental interests (Pal & Ghosh, 2007). William Easterly (2001) described a similar examination of elite dominance and ethnic divisions in Pakistan as a Political Economy of Growth without Development. In spite of an estimated US$58 billion worth of foreign aid invested in Pakistan between 1959 and 1999, the elite underinvested in social and economic institutions relevant to the human capital development of the majority population. Apparently, Pakistan had merely witnessed growth but not development, which is an index of quality of life and standard of living of the human population. According to a UNIDO statistical country brief on Nigeria, developmental indicators of growth—Manufacturing Value Added (MVA) average annual real growth for 2000-2005—were 8.78, showing that Nigeria witnessed real growth above the average growth index of 6.70 for developing nations. However, the Nigerian MVA per capita was between 13.24 and 17.60, compared with 256.88 and 324.85 for developing nations (UNIDO, 2011). This is an indication that Nigeria, like Pakistan, witnessed growth but not development (Easterly, 2001, 2007; Easterly, Ross, & Roodman, 2004). Despite a developing economy, the proportion of Nigerians living in poverty rose 61%—from 68.7 million to 112.47 million—between 2004 and 2010. This growing poverty trend accompanies a widening crisis of socioeconomic inequality (British Broadcasting Corporation, 2012). Considering that by 2010, 112 million people of an estimated total population of 150 million (74.6%) lived below the poverty line (Figure 4), the degree of this problem in Nigeria is herculean.

Figure 4.

Nigerian poverty growth trend, 1980-2010.

Today, entrenched and dysfunctional forms of urban elitism and socioeconomic dominance systems are rampant in most sub-Saharan African nations. The governments on the continent generally allocate resource exploration rights to friends, family and associates -since the governments, business leaders, bureaucrats and politicians relate as members of the elite groups. They act as the postcolonial conquerors of the African continental landcape. The operational methods of these elitist cliques are analogous to branched cults, with the means and power to free access of poorly regulated national, socioeconomic and political portfolios. Very recently, Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigeria president, accused a noted Nigerian business personality that he intentionally made her a billionaire. Obasanjo mentioned that his intention was to create 50 billionaires in Nigeria, but sadly he could only create half of that number before the end of his leadership. What criteria of leadership inform a president to create a class of 50 billionaires out of a population of 150 million citizens, where more than 74.6% live under the threshold of poverty? Through organized forms of elite manipulations and group dominance, these “power elites” have made it, virtually, impossible for the vast majority of continental Africans to attain the, seemingly, meager goal of individual well-being. The inverse of Robert Merton’s (1938) strain theory is relevant, here, to accentuate the strain derived from a lack of regulation or enforcement of the core governance structures in Africa. These structures have been diminishing since the postcolonial era. Such strain affects the populace, which struggles to assume the local elitist standard of socioeconomic somethings. Although colonial administrations effectively and appropriately utilized and regulated the structures of its dominance for the sole goal of resource expropriation, postcolonial African governments appropriated only a part of the structure that processed resource expropriation. Under a variety of epicurean maladies, they, unwittingly, allowed the core regulatory and administrative superstructure to diminish to nothingness. As a result, now you find governments that are vastly limited by undefined business processes (Mapuva & Chari, 2010). A ramification of these loose governmental procedures is the increasing loss of confidence in government’s ability to assure the social contract between it and its citizenry. Terrorism—and its venture into the hardcore criminality that is so symptomatically concerned with uplifting the economic status of the terrorist—becomes a radius on the circumference of a backlash, which may well be a path to a definition of sub-Saharan Africa’s brand of postcolonial panic. Remonstrating, thus, is an emblematic syllogism. Mapuva and Chari (2010) agreed that, with neocolonial practices of Africa’s leadership class, traditional colonialism is no longer to blame for Africa’s problems.

Crenshaw debunked the claim of direct causative association of terrorism with extenuating circumstances of ideological persuasions, Western permissiveness, correlates of psychopathology, and nationalism. She argued that most terrorist acts emanate from direct, well thought, rational intentions, where the social, economic, and political environment is merely contextual. A causative factor of terrorism, Crenshaw contends, consists of long-term preconditions and immediate and specific precipitants. Among these preconditions, the most impacting permissive factors are modernization, social facilitation, and a particular government’s attitude and approach to terrorism. However, the terrorist’s ideological permutations receive transnational audiences. Crenshaw suggests that the tangent of mass passivity and elite disaffection could, in fact, be a significant causative condition. She points out that, although terrorism may not always be a direct resultant of oppression, it may result from weakness of group negotiation (Crenshaw, 1981). If one considers the level of naiveté surrounding postcolonial governments in Africa, colonial theory, viewed as a model of oppressive governance, could be inheritable and Orwellian in concept. Naïveté defines the lessons learned by these elitist class from the colonial dominators; the incomplete assimilation of the colonial tactics, appear to extend, ideologically, such oppressive tendencies in, more-or-less, the same way, but couched in more localized argot and crude operational methods.

To appreciate the emerging scenario of local neocolonialism, we can compare the models of economic governance in both eras. Because of an abiding interest in postcolonial expropriation, we find that the struggle for expropriated resource control endures in the African context as a task left unfinished by the continent’s colonial governments. The triangle of colonial resource expropriation has not changed in Africa. Using the Niger Delta phenomenon in Nigeria as a case study, the triangle still consists of the foreign multinational entities and the local, political, and business bourgeoisie. But, unlike in the past, when the third arm of the triangle was that of the colonial government, which provided the legal authority, organization, and security for the enterprise, today, indigenous African governments play that crucial role. The major problem for those who agitate against these forms of unregulated dominance is that the “thin line” between fighting for economic freedom and terrorism have become extremely indistinct. Local postcolonial leadership in sub-Saharan Africa remains an iconic riddle awaiting explanation (Kitching, 1980). African governments of the 1960s, lacking resources and unable to better the lot of their citizens, were known to manage power through subtle “regimes of terror (Welfing, 1979)." It is however difficult to support such rudimentary angles of exoneration today, especially having seen the great amount of resources made available by providence to nations like Nigeria in the past four decades, yet without better results.

Arguments that terrorism has little to do with economics but more with politics, frustration and seated feelings of indignity, or to poverty and limited educational opportunities (Krueger & Maleckova, 2003) rely too heavily on the common religious ideology of terrorism. In reality, it is difficult to consider a separation between political aspirations and economic manifestations. The preeminent raison d ’etat for governance, according to the late French scholar of punishment, Foucault, is to protect the people and their commonwealth (Garland, 1997). Paraphrasing this Foucauldian perspective, politics is inseparable from economic aspirations. This reality is evident in the history and practice of sub-Saharan African terrorism. The confusion surrounding African governments involves understanding that, unlike traditional colonial governments, the former are not governing a conquered people. They are governing their own citizens. Considering the vicarious nature of terrorism evident in sub-Saharan Africa, there is evidence of an elitist, clique-based pattern of political and economic domination. Terrorism, as it appears, emanates from current disagreements among conscious, local groups within the society. The discrepancy is over the terms set for the socioeconomic-related distributions to the commons by the ruling elite. The apparent problem here is that such arrangements are somewhat skewed toward criminal and violent patterns of negotiation. Dominant class-consciousness is a political and theoretical concept common to most societies and underlies progressive challenges to the order of things. In Africa, the problem with this dominant strategy is that it disproportionately opposes progress. So why has there been a sudden upsurge in terrorist activities on the continent in the last three decades? The most promising answer could be that globalization and modern communication technology has created an awareness of the right to liberty and the good life. Media displays of the irreverent profligacy of the political class reduce belief in political and governmental processes. Furthermore, as evidenced by the Niger Delta and Somalian examples, socioeconomic terrorism has proven to be very lucrative.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Africa’s security threat to the West and to the world is a concern pondered only rhetorically, albeit in contemporary, international conversations. Indeed, in terms of threats, sub-Saharan Africa has not merited an emergency call. The causes of terrorist activities in sub-Saharan Africa—like those in the Nigerian entanglement—which have been the focus of this article, rely on a socioeconomic liberation ideology. There is also the confrontation of contending political and religious ideological issues in Africa and, unmistakably, in the emergence of destructive sects like the Boko Haram. Sub-Saharan African terrorism relates to its continuing struggle with resource expropriation and socioeconomic disorientation. Whereas in the colonial past, the fight was against the colonialists, today the colonialists are indigenous and have formed partnerships with foreign multinationals. In deference to securitization theories on Africa, the continent may, indeed, be potent, with occlusions to threaten the global system if multilateral institutions and core national governments continue to treat her like former British Prime Minister Robert Blair’s “scar on the conscience” of the world (see Abrahamsen, 2005), rather than like a partner in healing its attrition. Perhaps, unintended by African governments, decades of leadership in nonpurposive malfeasance have created a culture of coercive youth violence on multiple terror fronts. African citizens have shown a unique quality of patience and tolerance at the height of a clear sequence of exploitation, starting from the European colonial period, through to today, where postcolonial exploitation has continued, this time with local umpires. With the unending journey to nationhood, there is a clear frustration on the part of youths in many African states. Facing increasingly deteriorating poverty levels, socioeconomic disorientation and the profligacy of government, youths, who no longer trust the impartiality and due process of organized governance to provide equal and fair opportunity to improve their lives, choose personal socioeconomic liberation by any means possible. In so doing, and at particular thresholds of national uncertainties, enduring ancient communal and imported systems of political aggression make those choices for them. The analogy of the sociopolitical economy of postcolonial Nigeria does not exonerate the subterfuge of local partnerships and acquisitionists in these activities, but it does identify and explain it. This is the pedagogical problem of a leadership class of urban elites raised under postcolonial control, on a premise of exploitation so beneficial and committing that it has become a distinct culture, averse to the accepted norms of accountability in governance, even as practiced in ordinary, local villages. This class, because of its autochthonous legitimacy and its inability to negotiate the foreseeable backlash of its subtle commission, appears more dangerous than the colonialists. Clearly, the deviation to the criminality of the terrorist form in sub-Saharan Africa involves both the state and the dissident groups. The two groups are like business players with their eyes set on controlling the continent’s remaining natural resources. The fear is that these pockets of terrorist activities may spread and become an accepted norm for negotiating modern socioeconomic liberation. Unlike in the Middle East, where there is broad public support and sympathy for such activities, low community patronage in sub-Saharan Africa relate to its ungrounded ideology. Organizational theorists affirm that environments are prime determining factors for organizational cultures (Wilson, 1968). The environments that created present governance and bureaucratic structures in most nations on the African continent were colonial in nature. Those structures persist, whereas the environments from which they emerged have long been extinct. This is a dilemma of governance in Africa, and one in which nations like Nigeria have demonstrated, repeatedly, their inability to help themselves. Without a structural reformation of governance, management, and administrative practices, throwing money at the plethora of problems inherent in the majority of the states in the subcontinent is an exercise in futility. Conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa clearly reflect a response to poverty, social political maladies, and a noticeable disequilibrium between governments and the environments in which they operate. Structural changes are required in the articulation of the role of government, as well as for citizens in finding lasting solutions to the problem of terrorism in Africa. Improving social mobility should be a public policy goal. Such a policy necessitates giving greater attention to socioeconomic independence, mass education, including vocational tutoring, and the eradication of social barriers, such as economic inequality, environmental renewal, and gentrification. In summary, this article maintains that the genesis of modern terrorism in Africa is associated with governmental and corporate socioeconomic and environmental neglect, and with usurpation by local elite leadership who live, vaingloriously, beyond the means of their nation’s economic capacities. The leadership constraints of the elite that result into the vainglorious governance of African nation’s demands critical research by scholars with interest in the political and economic leadership and on the idealogical basis of the new terrorism on the continent.