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But Idris said that the state government and security agencies have been able to curtail the spread. Niger state information commissioner Muhammad Sani Idris confirmed that Boko Haram fighters, who were initially thought to be armed bandits, had made inroads in the state. Shiroro has a population of 331,000 people and spans 4,700 square kilometres, according to Niger state's official website. The fighting has killed almost 350,000 and displaced millions, according to a United Nations estimate. The failure to rescue the girls “appears to have emboldened Boko Haram to step up abductions elsewhere,” Human Rights Watch reported."Shiroro local government has an uncountable number of Boko Haram fighters," Chukuba said.īoko Haram, whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden", has waged an insurgency since 2009, joined more recently by its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province. The situation has worsened since then: a Human Rights Watch report released in October estimated that at least 500 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since it began its insurgency in 2009. Several hundred women marched on the Parliament building in Abuja, and a social media campaign employing the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls took off. The government’s failure to respond to the enraged parents of the girls prompted a rare, grass-roots protest movement to pressure President Goodluck Jonathan to take action. But the group attracted international attention, when, on April 15, militants marched into a girls’ school in Chibok, in the remote northeast corner of the country, kidnapped more than 250 teenagers, loaded them onto trucks and drove them into a dense forest at night.
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That atrocity, like many others, was quickly forgotten in Nigeria and barely noticed outside of it. Last February, Boko Haram slaughtered 50 teenage boys - some burned alive - at a college in northeastern Nigeria. Roughly translated, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden.”
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In its effort to overthrow the Nigerian government, Boko Haram militants have tried to violently root out Western influence by attacking schools. Earlier this year in Maiduguri, more than 500 people were killed when security forces responded to what the military portrayed as a jailbreak attempt by Boko Haram.
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The group continued to engage in mounting battles with the Nigerian military.
BOKO HARAM INSURGENCY SERIES
In early 2012, Boko Haram conducted a series of attacks in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, killing more than 100 people, then the group’s deadliest strike. After the group’s founder was killed by the Nigerian police in 2009, his followers went underground, swearing vengeance. Boko Haram was largely contained to the northern part of the country in the beginning, before expanding its reach with the help of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist organization’s affiliate in West Africa.Ĭlashes between Muslims and Christians, common in Nigeria, radicalized the group, as did frictions with local authorities that escalated into retaliatory attacks. The Nigerian government and the military have been roundly criticized for failing to stop Boko Haram, which was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 by the Muslim cleric Mohammed Yusuf. Such official announcements have been greeted with broad skepticism in Nigeria, where the government has regularly promised a resolution to an insurgency now in its sixth year. Numerous other attacks that followed have been attributed to the Boko Haram militants. The day after the government’s announcement of a cease-fire deal in October, at least 60 young women were reported to have been kidnapped by militants in Adamawa State, just south of the Boko Haram stronghold near Maiduguri. It aims to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government, then establish an Islamic caliphate in its place. The deadly bombings and brazen kidnappings are the hallmarks of the insurgent group, which has terrorized local populations and regularly engages the Nigerian military in bloody combat.