[2][5] The attacks are said to have resulted in Boko Haram extending its control to over 70% of Borno State, while its leader, Abubakar Shekau, claimed responsibility for the massacre in a video statement, saying that they "were not much" and that the group's insurgency "would not stop".

[9] According to Senator Ahmed Zanna, who represents the district of Borno Central, government forces—despite being the joint headquarters, only Nigerian Army forces were stationed there at the time—resisted the militants, who "attacked from all sides", for several hours, but eventually "joined civilians fleeing into the bush".

[4][5] At least 100 were killed in the initial attack on 3 January, according to Baba Abba Hassan, the district head, later adding that "hundreds of corpses still lay on the streets" of the town and that many women and children were among the victims, having been pursued into the bush by the militants.

[13][14][15] Satellite imagery taken on 2 and 7 January was released by Amnesty International showing that in Baga, which is "less than two square kilometres in size, approximately 620 structures were damaged or completely destroyed by fire."

In Doron Baga, located about 2.5 km away, fishing boats present on the 2nd were no longer visible, and "more than 3,100 structures were damaged or destroyed by fire affecting most of the 4 square kilometre town.

[7] One pro-government newspaper, citing a local fisherman, went as far to claim that Boko Haram had instead been dealt a "heavy defeat" by the Nigerian military in Baga and that the town was firmly under government control.

[19][20] The location of the attack in remote northeastern Borno State, much of which is occupied by Boko Haram, as well as "the routine nature of Nigeria's violence may have diminished" perceptions of the massacre's newsworthiness.

[24][25] However, President Goodluck Jonathan, while campaigning in Enugu for re-election and his People's Democratic Party on 8 January, himself condemned the events in Paris as a "dastardly terrorist attack", while refraining from making any comment on the massacre in Baga.

[28]On 14 January, Goodluck, along with Chief of the Defence Staff Badeh, National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki, and several other senior military commanders, made an unscheduled visit to Maiduguri, meeting with Borno's governor, Kashim Shettima, at the city's airport under heavy guard.

Abiola, published an open letter in The Guardian to Jonathan urging him to end his silence on the attacks, saying that he had "met calamity with insouciance", drawing parallels with his belated response to the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.

"[26] Many analysts and observers expressed similar views, that the downplaying of the attacks by Goodluck, the government, and media outlets supportive of the PDP was intended to reduce the political costs of domestic instability in the election.

Buhari, on 10 January, said that the massacre was further proof to the claim that "Nigeria has become a place where people no longer feel safe, where the armed forces have neither the weapons nor the government support required to do an effective job of protecting Nigerian citizens and their property.

According to analysts, however, to many Nigerians in 2015, Buhari's "reputation for strong leadership and intolerance of corruption" as leader, and his campaigning on such, appealed to an "intense public yearning for an end to Boko Haram’s nihilism and to instability caused by rising communal, criminal and political violence".

[31] The search for security could "override traditional voting patterns based on religious and ethnic affiliations", but the International Crisis Group in a reported warned that the tightening race instead "suggests the country is heading toward a very volatile and vicious electoral contest.