The Emergence of Boko Haram
Today many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have been hampered by Islamist jihadist groups, who have conducted terror campaigns across the continent from Somalia to Mali. However, the most infamous of these groups is Boko Haram from Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin. Therefore, this report explains who they are, their ideology, where they came from, and the current fight against them today.
The group was first formed in 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf, a preacher and member of the Izala sect of Islam in the northeastern Nigerian region of Maiduguri. He began to preach against secularism to poor Muslim families across the area. From these origins, a group of his students formed a community near Kanama, Nigeria, called The Followers of the Prophet's Teachings. Then, they moved to a town in Kobe state near the border of Niger where it was thought of as a "hijra", to live a pious life based on strict Islamic principles. They called on other Muslims to join the group and live an "Islamic life", distanced from what they viewed as a corrupt and immoral state.
In 2003, Boko Haram clashed with the Nigerian government causing the group to then commit their first attack on the state when they stormed into a police station and raised a Taliban flag. Locals coined the group’s name from a combination of the Hausa word "Boko," meaning Western education, and the Arabic word "Haram," meaning forbidden. At first, the group sought to separate itself from secular society. However, Boko Haram's goal changed to overthrow the Nigerian government and establish a caliphate. This change occurred due to clashes with the Nigerian government, and especially after an incident in 2009 where a dispute between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military led to the group’s attack on police stations and the killing of police officers in Yobe and Bauchi. In response, the Bauchi government began a campaign of besieging the group’s mosque. This siege in turn led some Boko Haram members to indiscriminately kill Christians and Muslims alike in Maiduguri. The aftermath of the clash led to 800 members of the group killed, as well as the death of Mohammed Yusuf after the battle while in police custody. Since the 2009 clash, members have hidden underground and fled to other countries such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, northern Mali, Niger, and Somalia.
In July 2010, Boko Haram’s former second in command, Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video claiming group leadership and threatening to attack Western influences in Nigeria. He also announced the group's solidarity with al-Qaeda. While underground, according to some such as Nigerien foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum, the group would receive training from AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and the Somali group al-Shabaab. Despite claims about their links to other terrorist groups, some have argued that they heavily relied on local funding and the fall of Qadaffi's regime in Libya as fighters returning home from Libya brought with them looted weapons stores and sought other sources of employment. Regardless, Boko Haram resurfaced in September 2010 by doing a prison break in Bauchi, where 700 inmates were freed. They would then conduct a series of sophisticated bombing attacks on Nigeria, such as an attack on the UN in Abuja in 2011 which killed 23 UN employees. Another incident in January 2012, saw the group use more explosives and firearms in Nigeria's second-largest city, Kano, which had a fatality of 186 people. Other notable attacks by the group include the kidnapping of 276 girls with 98 of them still being held since 2023 from Chibok, Nigeria. The Chibok kidnapping was, however, part of a more significant trend as Human Rights Watch reported that between 2013 and 2016, as many as 10,000 young men were kidnapped from their homes and forced to convert to a strict interpretation of Islam. By August 2014, the group occupied a territory the size of Belgium, and began utilising a gendered element in their suicide bomb attacks as 240 female suicide bombers were used between 2014 and June 2017.
By 2015, the group was the deadliest in the region, where they spread into Chad, Niger, and Cameroon, leading these countries to form the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). In the same year, Boko Haram rebranded itself the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) under Abubakar Shekau. However, ISIS began supporting dissenting commanders to break from Abubakar Shekau and become a separate jihadist faction who subsequently took the name of ISWAP and began fighting against Shekau’s group. The fight continues to the present day between the two factions, despite ISWAP killing Shekau in 2021, weakening the original Boko Haram faction and strengthening ISWAP.
Like other Islamist militant groups in the region, Boko Haram has a Salafi orientation to its ideology and as a result are also anti-Sufi, despite northern Nigeria being dominated by Sufi orders. This is because they view Sufism as worshiping shaykhs instead of God and focusing excessively on asceticism rather than jihad. In addition, they also attacked other Salafi groups who criticize their group or who they view as rivals. Thus, Boko Haram had a unique outlook which made them popular with some due to intra-Muslim tensions.This was also compounded by the fall in the legitimacy of hereditary Muslim rulers, such as the descendents of Uthman dan Fodio, the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate.
However, they remain defined by their opposition to Western education, which stemmed from local concerns, in Northern Nigeria, about the lack of Islamic values in Western-oriented schools. Boko Haram has taken this position to an extreme, claiming that Western teaching is incompatible with the Qu’ran. In addition to this and unlike most Northern Nigerians, Boko Haram is against democratic values, which causes tensions between them and residents of the area who believe that elected politicians could implement Sharia law and that democracy and Islam are compatible. However, Boko Haram views democracy as a rival in authority to God and contains many "evils," such as freedom of belief, which would allow apostasy from Islam. In summary, as Salafis, Boko Haram believes they have a claim to the legacy of the early Muslim community and have the right to declare Muslim leaders apostates, rebel against infidel states, and use force to impose a Salafi creed upon citizens.
Nigeria has tried to fight against the group with limited success. The first significant action started in 2013, when then-president Goodluck Jonathan launched an offensive against the group and declared a state of emergency in the Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states. Despite some success during this time, reports of extrajudicial killings by Nigerian soldiers caused discernment in the state's fight against the group. In addition to this, Boko Haram escalated their attacks in Nigeria in 2014-2015, including the infamous kidnapping in Chibok, which caused international and internal criticism against Goodluck Jonathan. Even with the reign of a former military leader after Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, the group still hasn't been defeated. Many scholars believe that the failure to neutralize Boko Haram comes from exclusively focusing on a military solution and neglecting to address root causes, such as a lack of economic development, poverty, and good governance. These issues are compounded by a lack of equipment, isolating smaller forts in rural areas, and Boko Haram's numerous connections with other militant groups in the region. Lastly, the group is also bolstered by its spread to other Lake Chad Basin countries such as Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. Meanwhile Nigeria itself, is now facing other militant groups and insurgencies such as bandits in the Northwest, farmer-herder conflict in the Middle Belt, and a Biafra separatist group in the Southeast. Hopefully, Nigeria and other states in the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel can better confront and defeat Boko Haram and prevent the further destabilization of the region.