When I was a little younger and naive, I watched a national security movie on terrorism and I saw the people used to carry out the suicide bombings promised a lot of stuff including the care of the families, I used think it was just a movie and even if it happened for real, Nigerians loved their lives too much to consider suicide bombings. Boy, was I so wrong.
Just a few short years, around 2011, we heard of the first suicide bombing in Abuja, Nigeria. As impossible as I found it to be, that suicide bombings could actually occur in Nigeria, more were to come and Boko Haram has taken responsibility of these bombings. The more painful part of these bombings was the use of children and young people. People who do not understand what they were about.
courtesy:NDTV.com
Since 2011 till date, there has been attacks on churches, markets, the UN building, schools, barracks and on rare cases, mosques.
In 2014, we had a major shock, 276 girls were kidnapped from their school, at Chibok, Borno. Earlier before that 59 male students were killed in their school in Yobe. The most recent major activity attributed to Boko Haram is the kidnapping of about 333 (figure yet to ascertained) male students from their school in Kankara, Kastina on the 11th of December, 2020.
In the case of the Chibok girls, over 100 of them are still unaccounted for and today, efforts are being made to rescue the Kankara boys.
What is the endgame of Boko Haram? Initially it was against western education and Islamization of the country but now, no one really knows anymore.
Who benefits from terrorism? How did they manage to take hundreds of students each time and met no resistance with more than an hour long operation.
These questions I ask but yet no answers.