Boko Haram and the Chibok Girls
A jihadist insurgency in the north-east kills tens of thousands, displaces millions and shocks the world with the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok.
- Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement — Alexander Thurston, Princeton University Press (2018)
- Ten years on: The women of Chibok speak out — Amnesty International (2024)
- Assessing the Impact of Conflict on Development in North-East Nigeria — United Nations Development Programme (2021)
- Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know — John Campbell and Matthew T. Page, Oxford University Press (2018)
The movement grew in Maiduguri in the early 2000s around the preacher Mohammed Yusuf, who denounced Western-style education and a corrupt secular state; “Boko Haram” is popularly translated as “Western education is forbidden”. In 2009 a revolt was crushed, and Yusuf was killed in police custody. Under Abubakar Shekau the group returned as a brutal insurgency, attacking schools, churches, mosques, markets and whole towns, and by 2014 controlled territory in Borno. In 2016 a faction allied to Islamic State split off as ISWAP.
- Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement — Alexander Thurston, Princeton University Press (2018)
On the night of 14–15 April 2014 fighters abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok. The global #BringBackOurGirls campaign followed. Some escaped and others were freed, but ten years later Amnesty International reported that 82 were still missing.
- Ten years on: The women of Chibok speak out — Amnesty International (2024)
- Assessing the Impact of Conflict on Development in North-East Nigeria — United Nations Development Programme (2021)
Why it matters today
The insurgency devastated the north-east and made insecurity the dominant political issue, joined since by kidnapping gangs in the north-west and farmer–herder violence in the Middle Belt. Mass school abductions became a recurring horror, and for many Nigerians #BringBackOurGirls stands for the state's failure to protect its people.
Most of Boko Haram's victims have been Muslims, and northern Muslim leaders, including the Sultan of Sokoto, have condemned it; its violence is rejected by the great majority of Nigeria's Muslims.