Will Nigeria Finally Take Decisive Action to End Its Longstanding Problem of Terrorism?

Almost ten years ago, the late former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari declared that his government had “technically won the war” against the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram. This was over a year and a half after 276 girls were kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno state. Buhari had given the military a deadline to clear off Boko Haram within six months of his entrance into office as a civilian president, and his declaration was meant to ease tensions and project confidence that he would rid the country of terrorism.

Buhari’s claim was a bald-faced lie, and arguably the foundation of what can be called gross negligence by the Nigerian government amidst a severe crisis. In the decade since, armed attacks have been ultra-frequent, with at least 16 mass school abductions. Per HumAngle, nearly 2,000 students have been abducted, and about two-thirds are girls and young ladies.

In the early hours of Friday, November 21, 2025, dozens of students were abducted by armed attackers at St Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Papiri, a community in Niger state, north-central Nigeria. The exact number of students and staff forcefully taken is yet to be confirmed. This incident follows an attack on Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga, a town in northwestern Kebbi State, where 25 students were kidnapped and two people — security master Hassan Yakubu and watchguard Aliyu Shehu — were killed. One of the 25 kidnapped escaped.

“If the president said that Boko Haram were technically defeated, we in the field saw that the military won in the strongholds where Boko Haram were stationed, but the problem is that these same people were just pushed out to the bush, and that gives them a breeding ground to evolve and be more sophisticated,” Usman Abba Zanna, a multimedia journalist working in Maiduguri, Borno state, explains to OkayAfrica.

Zanna’s work has seen him interface with a few of the many, many people affected by the conflict, as well as the mode of operation of the terrorist groups, particularly how they’ve grown their capacity for advanced warfare. “We have cases where Boko Haram and other forms of violent groups are deploying drones, using advanced internet services like Starlink, and we also see them developing a more sophisticated network of spies,” he says. “Buhari said they’re technically defeated, but does that mean they’re down completely? No, they were just pushed away from the main local government headquarters where they operated. They went into Sambisa and reinforced themselves.”

The Reductive Narrative of a 'Christian Genocide'

For years, journalists, activists, observers, and many citizens have complained about the Nigerian government’s lack of urgency in dealing with the terrorism that has rocked the majority of the country. Since 2011, Nigeria has been consistently ranked in the top ten of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), and rose up two spots to sixth place on the latest edition.

The last few weeks have brought arguably the highest attention to Nigeria’s gross insecurity crisis, since the 2014 abduction of the 276 Chibok girls that sparked the international outcry of ‘Bring Back Our Girls.’ This time, however, the catalyst is an alleged Christian genocide, a narrative being led by U.S. President Donald Trump. Earlier this month, the Trump administration designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), alleging that the Nigerian government was doing little to curtail Islamist insurgents from attacking Christians.

In a social media post before the designation, Trump stated that the U.S. “may very well go into that now disgraced country, guns-a-blazing,” threatening military action. On Thursday, November 20, the U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Africa held a hearing on Nigeria’s CPC status, but it could not reach a consensus on whether the claim of a Christian genocide is fitting for the crisis.

It is factually correct to state that hundreds of Christians have been killed by armed insurgents in the last decade-plus, many in their places of worship. Just this week, at least two people were killed at a Christ Apostolic Church in Eruku, Kwara state. Perhaps the most gruesome in recent memory was in June 2022, when armed men opened fire into St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo state, in the country’s southwest, far from the northern region where terrorism happens the most.

Eleven years before that, a suicide bomber detonated a car outside St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, Niger state, an attack that killed at least 40 people. Boko Haram was responsible for the attack, as well as another in February 2012, when another suicide bomber drove a vehicle filled with explosives into the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in Jos, Plateau state.

However, to frame Nigeria’s insecurity issue as a Christian genocide is reductive. “I think it just oversimplifies the core issues that a typical Nigerian faces,” Zanna says. “In all of the violence that’s happening across these regions, you see that everybody falls victim to these events. In my community, we’re religiously mixed, so when the narrative that a particular community has been targeted as lead main victims complicates the understanding of the conflicts that we have.”

The crisis is complex, with multiple actors and factors. Boko Haram, which has splintered into factions, based the beginning of its terrorist attacks on opposition to Western education. Armed groups, primarily operating in the northwest, ventured into kidnap-for-profit, a business that Islamist insurgents have also joined in on. Across the middle belt region, farmer-herder conflicts over resources have escalated into massacres, with roots in ethno-religious conflicts dating back to the early 2000s and even further back to pre-independence.

It is factually correct to state that hundreds of muslims have been killed by armed insurgents, considering that the northern parts of Nigeria are majority muslim. Some of the fatalities have also happened in places of worship. More than 80 people died after two suicide bombers detonated at the Kano Central Mosque in November 2014. Just over three years later, 86 were killed in a twin suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Mubi, Adamawa state, just six months after 50 were killed by a suicide bomb in a mosque in the same town.

Corruption, Abuses, and the Crisis of Trust

“Do you know that an average ISWAP or Boko Haram member considers any Muslim who is not in allegiance to them as an infidel?” Zanna explains. “The U.S. narrative is a fallacy of deduction. We don’t need narratives; it’s about clearing terrorism, and we know who the enemies are and where they operate.”

Amidst the Trump-fuelled agenda of a Christian genocide, bizarrely supported by a speech given by American rap artist Nicki Minaj at a United Nations event, as well as Nigerian government officials responding to downplay the severity of the crisis, what’s clearly most pertinent is decisive action. For many Nigerians, the insecurity has been politicized for gain by those in the system. “The military budget of Nigeria has increased [over the years],” Zanna says. “It means procurement, logistics, and other monetary things have increased. It means that, as a body, many in the system don’t even want the war to end because they are benefiting from it.”

Soldiers on the frontline have lamented about poor welfare and being underequipped to deal with terrorists, despite millions of dollars allocated in the yearly budget. With little to no accountability, it means military leaders and government officials loot a significant portion of the funds meant to combat terrorism.

There’s also the matter of war crimes committed by Nigerian forces, which has created a chasm of distrust between the people meant to be protected and those meant to fight for them. “The reason why some people sympathise more with Boko Haram is because the military has committed war crimes against civilian populations,” Zanna says. “They go into the territories where civilians are not armed, they attack them, kill them, and even abduct them for detainment without even trial. It is complicating the whole social structure of trust between the civilians and the military, which is not supposed to be.”

Similar to Buhari, current President Bola Tinubu has been rather tepid in his response to the rampant insecurity in Nigeria. Perhaps, renewed agitation in the last few days could spur some positive action. However, there’s the possibility that the government is waiting for things to dial down. Even now, it has blamed the recent surge of violent activity on attention from the U.S., with a government official claiming that Trump’s threats have “inadvertently emboldened opportunistic violent groups.”

Even the attention by Nigerians may dial down because many seem to have been “desensitized to the crisis because there’s an attack on the headlines every day,” Zanna says. “An average Nigerian has already consumed so much bad news that he just swipes pages and has to keep going on with life. This is the main reason people are desensitized to information that suggests or even shows brutal events like abductions, mass killings, and even war crimes committed by the state and the military. To be candid, we are actually in trouble because too many of us have now been directly or indirectly involved as a victim.”

For Nigeria to finally take decisive action, the government must move beyond deflection and political posturing, committing to radical and comprehensive security sector reform. This includes ensuring strict accountability for the billions allocated to the military budget, prosecuting officials and commanders implicated in the diversion of funds, and ending the impunity that has allowed military abuses and war crimes to fuel public distrust and sympathy for insurgents. Only by addressing the root causes of the crisis — corruption, lack of trust, and the failure to provide basic security — can a true, long-lasting victory against terrorism and safety for the everyday Nigerian be achieved.