Background
In 2016, Nigeria had Africa’s largest population, 186 million and growing, especially in urban areas. The United Nations predicts that by 2050 Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world.
The country has more than 350 ethnic groups and languages and a population evenly divided between Christians and Muslims. Because of this, Nigeria has dealt with weak national identity. In 1967, Nigeria’s Biafra region attempted to secede, sparking a civil war that lasted until 1970. After the war, a generation of military rule left Nigeria’s democratic institutions fragile. Democratic, civilian government was restored in 1999. However, elite leaders continued to rule Nigeria as they did under the military, organizing themselves into political parties based on personalities rather than issues.
Nigeria has Africa’s largest economy and is the continent’s largest oil producer. Since the 1970s, most of the country’s revenue has come from oil sales. The country also has immense reserves of other natural resources, including natural gas, gold, and coal. Despite this wealth, there is vast economic inequality. Some elites are spectacularly wealthy while most Nigerians have remained poor. By 2016, Nigeria was among the poorest, least developed, and most unequal countries in the world. The 2015–16 collapse of oil prices impoverished the country even further, and greatly reduced the government’s ability to respond to the security and humanitarian challenges of Boko Haram.
Against this backdrop of inequality, weak democratic institutions, and fragmented national and religious identities, Boko Haram was born. The Islamist group was founded by Mohammed Yusuf in Nigeria’s northern Borno State in 2002. Boko Haram rejected the secular state, Western education, and traditional Nigerian elites. (Boko, meaning book in Hausa—one of Nigeria’s major languages—refers to Western education and values; haram refers to practices and beliefs forbidden by Islam. The group’s leaders call it by other names, which vary and are rarely used.) Although Boko Haram began as a primarily non-violent group, over time it became large, influential, and violent.
In 2009, Boko Haram launched a rebellion in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Nigerian security services responded brutally, killing over eight hundred people, destroying mosques, and murdering Yusuf in cold blood, an episode that went viral on social media. Boko Haram then went underground but reemerged in 2011 with much more violent leadership. The new leaders advocated practices and principles similar to those of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Boko Haram was especially violent against Muslims who accepted the secular Nigerian state. Boko Haram routinely cited seventh-century beliefs to characterize them as “apostates” who had turned away from Islam, a charge that, according to these beliefs, justifies their execution.
In increasingly sophisticated operations, Boko Haram conducted widespread kidnappings of women and girls, including the Chibok schoolgirls. This incident became well known internationally. It funded itself through ransoms and bank robberies. The group armed itself by raiding government armories, some of which had likely been deliberately left unlocked. It staged devastating attacks on government jails and prisons to free captured fighters.
As of 2017 Boko Haram operated primarily in northeastern Nigeria. However, it conducted operations in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and in Kano, the largest city in the north. Its factions have also carried out operations in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger in the Lake Chad basin. Credible estimates hold that in the six-year period leading up to February 2017, Boko Haram killed over forty thousand people.
Support for Boko Haram has been difficult to judge. Past polling has indicated that about 10 percent of Nigeria’s population viewed the group favorably. However, Boko Haram did not advance a political or economic program. Unlike other radical Islamist movements, Boko Haram showed little interest in the United States. It attacked no Western facilities. Nevertheless, observers voiced concerns that Boko Haram could provide other radical jihadi Islamist movements opposed to Western interests access to sub-Saharan Africa.
In February and March 2015, then President Goodluck Jonathan launched an offensive against Boko Haram. Jonathan employed Chadian, Nigerian, and Nigerien troops supported by South African–led mercenaries. The offensive dislodged Boko Haram from most of the territories it had occupied but did not destroy it. Nigerian authorities were unable to reestablish firm control of those areas. As a result, Boko Haram appeared to continue moving about freely.
In the March 2015 Nigerian presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari defeated Jonathan on an anticorruption platform and a promise to destroy Boko Haram. After his inauguration, Buhari approved corruption investigations of numerous high-level officials of the Jonathan administration as well as senior military officers. Despite these investigations, Nigeria’s overall corruption status has remained unchanged since the election.
Buhari also pursued military effort against Boko Haram but was unable to successfully eradicate the group. The Nigerian military conducted a number of momentarily successful operations against the terrorist group in 2015, and the number of monthly deaths in Nigeria declined. Buhari repeatedly claimed that the struggle against Boko Haram was all but over. But, despite this apparent initial success, Boko Haram remained a serious threat.