The Boko Haram insurgency is an armed conflict that began in northeastern Nigeria in 2009, when the jihadist group Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad—commonly known as Boko Haram, a Hausa phrase loosely meaning "Western education is forbidden"—launched attacks against Nigerian security forces following the death in police custody of its founder, Mohammed Yusuf. Under the subsequent leadership of Abubakar Shekau, the group escalated from localized attacks into a sustained insurgency featuring suicide bombings, mass abductions, and the seizure of territory in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa states.
The conflict drew international attention in April 2014 with the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, which triggered the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. In March 2015, a faction of Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, rebranding as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). A leadership dispute in 2016 split the movement, with Shekau retaining the original Boko Haram faction until his reported death in May 2021 during clashes with ISWAP fighters in the Sambisa Forest.
The insurgency has been countered by Nigerian forces alongside the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), which includes troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin under the auspices of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and authorized by the African Union Peace and Security Council. The violence has spilled across borders, generating one of the world's largest displacement crises in the Lake Chad region, with millions internally displaced and significant refugee flows. UN agencies including OCHA, UNHCR, and WFP have repeatedly classified the Lake Chad Basin as a major humanitarian emergency.
Key dimensions for researchers include: the interplay between counterinsurgency and human rights concerns, the role of governance failures and poverty in northeastern Nigeria, the regional spillover into the Sahel, and the evolving rivalry between ISWAP and remnant Boko Haram factions.
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In April 2014, Boko Haram fighters abducted 276 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, prompting the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign.