The Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria has decimated the continued
survival of people and continues to be the largest violent extremist threat in
West Africa. Initially, the sect’s leadership did not call for violence; its followers
engaged in periodic clashes with security during its formative years (Blanchard,
2014). However, from 2009 to 2015 Boko Haram insurgency claimed the lives
of more than 13,000 people (Salisu et al., 2015). The group has since intensified
its attacks on security agents and their formations, top governmental establishments,
schools, Mosques, and the general populace. For example, the group
kidnapped 250 schoolgirls in Chibok in April 2014. The threat posed by the
group is undermining the existence of Nigeria as one sovereign political territory.
Moreover, according to Salisu et al. (2015), on August 2014, the sect leader
declared areas under their control as new “Islamic Caliphate,” which would be
governed according to strict Islamic laws. All the territories have been reported
to have been recaptured by the Nigerian Army. However, the group keeps
propagating its extreme narratives in order to recruit more people. More than
1.5million people have been displaced from their settlements, about 30% of this
population is estimated to be young people (Crisis Monitoring Group, 2015).