Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadist rebels have claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of pupils in an attack on a boys’ school in northern Katsina state, according to a Nigerian online newspaper. More than 330 children are missing from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara after gunmen with assault rifles attacked their school on […]
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Nigeria is facing mounting pressure to find some 200 schoolgirls abducted 1,000 days ago in Boko Haram’s most infamous attack after the rescue of 24 girls raised hopes that they are alive. For more than two years there was no sign of the girls who were kidnapped by the Islamist fighters from a school in […]
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The purported leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video posted on social media on Sunday in which he rejected statements by the country’s military that he had been seriously wounded. In recent years, the Nigerian military has said it has killed or critically wounded Shekau on multiple occasions, […]
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A Nigerian teenager kidnapped by Boko Haram more than two years ago has been rescued, the first of more than 200 girls seized in a raid on their school in Chibok town to return from captivity in the insurgents’ forest lair, officials said on Wednesday. Soldiers rescued the girl near Damboa, army spokesman Sani Usman […]
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A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap. Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to […]
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Muhammadu Buhari, a Sunni Muslim and a former military dictator, has surprisingly won the 2015 Presidential elections in Nigeria after three consecutive defeats. Buhari has campaigned on a platform of ‘change’, promising economic stability, to curb corruption and to utilise political strength in tackling the terrorist group, Boko Haram. The Buhari government, however, has faced international criticism, due to the clash between the army and the minority Shia community in Zaria. Reports of events prior to the clash are unclear, the army asserts that the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff, Genenral Tukur Buratai, was blockaded near Zaria and the convoy was attacked by a petrol bomb. The Shia Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) deny any attack occurred and demand the release of their leader Ibraheem Zakzaky. The government forces raided Zakzaky’s home and the whereabouts of his wife and sons are unknown. The IMN have stated that they have been killed in the raid, however, the Nigerian authorities have declared that his wife is in custody. Iran has condemned the attacks and called for the release of the Shiite leader. The movement has also been confronted by Boko Haram. The problem remains complex: it would be too simplistic to apportion [...]
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