The Nigerian Army has admitted that troops operating in Gudumbali and Kareto in north-east Borno State suffered a setback against Boko Haram insurgents during the week.
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So it came as no surprise when Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS in March 2015.
The militant Islamist group, whose six-year insurgency has caused thousands of deaths in Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil producer, seized 276 girls from secondary school dormitories in Chibok in April 2014. According to the police two more suicide bombers killed at least 15 people in the city of Kano in northern Nigeria and injured another 53 later the same day, although Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency reported numbers over a hundred.
There has been a nine-fold increase in deaths due to terrorism globally, rising from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685 in 2014, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2015 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think-tank based in Sydney, Australia.
A statement released Wednesday read, “President Buhari reassures Nigerians that his administration is very much determined to wipe out Boko Haram in Nigeria and bring all perpetrators of these heinous crimes against humanity to justice”.
The United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Pakistan and South Korea have also offered to increase support to the Nigerian Army’s four-year-old counterinsurgency war against Boko Haram.
Both IS and Boko Haram have continued their mass killings throughout 2015, heavily persecuting Christians, but also Muslims and people of other faiths they deem opposed to their ideology.
The prime targets of terrorist attacks have been citizens and private property. The group’s name, Boko Haram – “Haram” in Arabic means “forbidden” – signifies its stance against the West, particularly Western education. ISIS, on the other hand use explosives more frequently.
President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May this year, and has launched intense military operations to push back Boko Haram, which have been successful and have led to significant victories against the group.
Job, a welder from the same region who had fled his home after Boko Haram began terrorizing the region, said “all the time, we are running for our dear lives”.
The Global Terrorism report highlights that IS inflicts more deaths on the battlefield (20,000) than through terrorism (6,073) attributed to the group.
“Understanding the factors that are associated with higher levels of terrorism is vital to informing countering violent extremism policy”.
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In total, 67 countries had at least one or more deaths from terrorism in 2014, compared to 59 countries the previous year.
