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Mail & Guardian
boko haramlatest news & developments
On land and sea: On Christmas Day, US President Donald Trump, in coordination with the Nigerian government, ordered Tomahawk missile strikes
from a US warship in the Gulf of Guinea against what he termed “ISIS Terrorist Scum” in Islamic State-Sahel camps in Nigeria’s northwestern state of
Sokoto.

The white man’s burden trumps Nigeria

US President Donald Trump has made good on his threat to take military action against Nigeria to save Christians from a “genocide”

Refugee blues: A Nigerian girl who fled Boko Haram violence with her family across the border into Niger. Photo: Giles Clarke/Getty Images

An intelligent look at war

A new book examines the use and abuse of military intelligence gathering in Africa

A Nigerian soldier is seen on April 21, 2022 amid small arms and light weapons recovered from bandits during Operation Safe Haven and during the military mop up in Jos and surrounding areas in Plateau State, north-central Nigeria. (Photo by PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images)

Bandits in Nigeria: how protection payments to militias escalate conflict

Instead of advancing a political or ideological cause, the primary goal of the militias is to enrich themselves

Refugees: More than a million people may have been forced to leave their homes in northern Nigeria by the insurgency of Islamist sect Boko Haram.

‘Armed bandit’ or ‘bandit terrorist’? In Nigeria, the game of the name is deadly

Over the past two months a controversy has developed over the government’s desire to relabel armed outlaws as ‘bandit terrorists’.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (Photo by Ting Shen-Pool/Getty Images)

Blinken heads to Nigeria facing calls to rethink ties

With 20% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and its largest economy, Nigeria is critical for any continent-wide strategy and successive US administrations have courted Nigerian…

Parents and relatives hold portraits of the Chibok schoolgirls that are still missing after they were kidnapped by Boko Haram militants on April 14, 2014.  (Audu Ali Marte, AFP/ File picture)

#BringBackOurGirls: A story of the Nigerian girls’ rescue

When 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram from a remote area in Nigeria, the world called for their rescue. A new book, Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the…

Children in Africa are exposed to violence such as armed conflict, with some children recruited as child soldiers. Photo: Stefanie Glinski/AFP

Towards an Africa in which every child feels secure

Ending violence against children is one of the most important priorities, but it won’t happen without political leadership

Lipstick, blush and Boko Haram: Meet the make-up artists of Maiduguri

Despite the insurgency, which has killed many people, caused the displacement of millions, confines women to traditional roles and forbids the education of girls, women are…

According to data from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), the overall number of companies that have been liquidated increased 20.5% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.  (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Debt forgiveness will top the African agenda in 2021

After being praised for their handling of the pandemic, African countries must now confront the economic fallout – even as they grapple with existing political and security…

Protester hold hands to barricade the protesters from the men of the Nigerian Police force as protesters march at Alausa Secretariat in Ikeja, Lagos State, during a peaceful demonstration against police brutality in Nigeria, on October 20, 2020. Authorities of Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sonwo-Olu has imposed a 24-hours curfew on the state effective 4pm on Tuesday, due to the violent attacks on police officers and innocent Nigerians.  (Photo by Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Nigerian government is killing its citizens — again

‘Nigeria kills its people. Nigeria has always killed its people.’

A woman holds her child while standing in a burned out area in the village of Aldeia da Paz outside Macomia. (Marco Longari/AFP)

Isis is not driving the Cabo Delgado war

Can Frelimo and its backers continue to profit from a failing state while an armed insurgency rages in northern Mozambique? And will South Africa help prop them up?

Amnesty International has released a report that implicates Al-Shabaab, the military and mercenaries in atrocities in Cabo Delgado province. (Photo by ADRIEN BARBIER / AFP)

The SADC will regret its approach to Mozambique’s insurgence

The SADC has been lackadaisical in its response to the insurgency in Mozambique and in so doing, is putting several other southern African countries at risk

A staff member of the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) screens passengers at a bus station after the government suspended all unnecessary movements for two weeks to curb the spread of COVID-19 Coronavirus in Kigali, Rwanda, on March 22, 2020. – African countries have been among the last to be hit by the global COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic but as cases rise, many nations are now taking strict measures to block the deadly illness. (Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP)

Covid-19 in Africa: The good news and the bad

What might Africa look like in the wake of the pandemic? There’s enough change happening to keep both optimists happy and pessimists glum

People’s temperature are being measured at a border between Abuja and the Nasarawa State on March 30 2020, after Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari called for a lockdown to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. – Over 20 million Nigerians on Monday scrambled to prepare for lockdown in sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest city Lagos and the capital Abuja, as the continent struggled to curb the spread of the coronavirus. President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered a two-week “cessation of all movements” in the key cities in a bid to ward off an explosion of cases in Africa’s most populous country.  (Photo by Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images)

Covid-19 grounds Nigeria’s medical tourists

The country’s elites, including the president, travelled abroad for treatment but now they must use the country’s neglected health system

In Nigeria’s northern region, where poverty is high and literacy levels are already dangerously low, Boko Haram’s war on education has prompted many parents to disregard schools. (John McCann/M&G)

Surviving Boko Haram’s war on children

After escaping from the clutches of armed groups, abducted children in northern Nigeria should expect a warm welcome on their return home

In Nigeria’s northern region, where poverty is high and literacy levels are already dangerously low, Boko Haram’s war on education has prompted many parents to disregard schools. (Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

Boko Haram’s war on children

After escaping from the clutches of armed groups, abducted children in northern Nigeria don’t get a warm homecoming

The way to combat religious fundamentalist violence is not through further secularisation or attempts to extinguish religious thoughts altogether. (Nichole Sobecki/ AFP)

Secularism is not the answer to fundamentalist violence

A solution to religious fundamentalist violence is neither a secularist view nor religious in nature; it entails a blend of both.

The way to combat religious fundamentalist violence is not through further secularisation or attempts to extinguish religious thoughts altogether. (Nichole Sobecki/ AFP)

Boko Haram displaced feel forgotten amid Nigeria election fever

More than 27 000 people have been killed since the Boko Haram conflict began in 2009 and some 1.8-million others are still displaced

In 2019, the African Union faces many challenges, with conflicts old and new simmering across the continent. To help resolve these crises, the regional organisation should also push ahead with institutional reforms. (Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)

Eight priorities for the African Union in 2019

International Crisis Group lists seven particularly pressing crises the regional organisation should focus on in 2019

Almost all countries on the African continent are blessed with natural resources, including oil, uranium, liquid nitrogen gas, gold and diamonds. (Reuters)

Africa is being colonised all over again

‘We have failed to hold our African leaders to account,’ writes Mustafa Bothwell Mheta