[34] Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010 in Bauchi, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.

According to the BBC, due to internal disputes between the two groups, hundreds of militants left Boko Haram and formed their own organization, named "Islamic State's West Africa Province".

[63][64][65] The sharia law imposed by local authorities, beginning with Zamfara in January 2000 and covering 12 northern states by late 2002, may have promoted links between Boko Haram and political leaders, but was considered by the group to have been corrupted.

[70][71] In a discussion organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria, highlighted the low level of literacy and education in the Northern parts of the country as contributing to the perpetuation of Boko Haram.

[54][73][74][75] Yusuf, himself, in one 2009 interview, expressed his opposition not only to Western education, but to the theory of evolution, a spherical (not flat) Earth, and to the idea that rain comes from "evaporation caused by the sun" rather than being created and sent down directly by God.

[90] Many of the group were reportedly inspired by Mohammed Marwa, known as Maitatsine ("He who curses others"), a self-proclaimed prophet (annabi, a Hausa word usually used only to describe the founder of Islam) born in Northern Cameroon who condemned the reading of books other than the Quran.

[91] Ethnic militancy is thought to have been one of the causes of the 1967–1970 civil war; religious violence reached a new height in 1980 in Kano, the largest city in the north of the country, where the Muslim fundamentalist sect Yan Tatsine ("followers of Maitatsine") instigated riots that resulted in four or five thousand deaths.

[79][88][94][95] He is reported to have used the existing infrastructure of the Izala Society (Jama'at Izalatil Bidiawa Iqamatus Sunnah), a popular conservative Islamic sect, to recruit members, before breaking away to form his own faction.

[102] When climate change-induced poverty and violence struck the Lake Chad basin, the terrorist organization was able to recruit in large numbers by offering small loans[103] and promising big rewards.

Boko Haram's spokesman also claimed responsibility for the killing outside his home in Maiduguri of the politician Abba Anas Ibn Umar Garbai, the younger brother of the Shehu of Borno, who was the second most prominent Muslim in the country after the Sultan of Sokoto.

[78][144][145][146][147][148][149] Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published reports in 2012 that were widely quoted by government agencies and the media, based on research conducted over the course of the conflict in the worst affected areas of the country.

Credible reports also indicated ... uniformed military personnel and paramilitary mobile police carried out summary executions, assaults, torture, and other abuses throughout Bauchi, Borno, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, and Yobe states ...

[177] In February 2016, the organizations International Alert and UNICEF published a study revealing that girls and women released from Boko Haram captivity often face rejection upon returning to their communities and families, in part due to a culture of stigma around sexual violence.

The deputy prime minister's wife was subsequently released in October, along with 26 others including the ten Chinese construction workers who had been captured in May; authorities made no comment about any ransom, which the Cameroon government had previously claimed it never pays.

[199] Amid media speculation that the ceasefire announcement had been part of President Jonathan's re-election campaign, a video statement released by Boko Haram through the normal communication channels via AFP on 31 October stated that no negotiations had in fact taken place.

[233] On 9 September 2015, the director of information at the Defence Headquarters, Colonel Rabe Abubakar announced that all known Boko Haram camps and cells had been destroyed, and that the group was so weakened that they could no longer hold any territory: These terrorists have been subdued, even if they are adopting other means and as they are re-strategising, we are also doing the same and pre-empting them.

[241] On 27 October, a military operation freed 192 children and 138 women being held captive in two camps in the Sambisa forest and 30 militants were killed, according to a social media statement from the Defense HQ.

[258] In Goniri, Yobe, seven soldiers and over 100 militants were killed, and a large arms cache was found, according to an army spokesman, who said that the recent apparent rise in suicide bombings was an indication of the success of military operations.

[262] On 18 January, Boko Haram raided two Tourou Cameroon area villages, torching houses, killing some residents and kidnapping between 60 and 80 people including an estimated 50 young children between the ages of 10 and 15.

On 2 December, Cameroon's Defense Minister claimed that, at the end of November, 100 Boko Haram members had been killed and 900 hostages freed, and that a large stockpile of arms and munitions, and black-and-white ISIL flags had been seized.

Eleven militants and two soldiers were killed at Kaika, and in an attempted suicide bombing at Bougouma, "Two members of Boko Haram were neutralised and a third blew himself up, wounding 11 civilians", according to a government statement.

Patrick Rose, a UNICEF regional coordinator, stated: "They are held in military barracks, separated from their parents, without medical follow-up, without psychological support, without education, under conditions and for durations that are unknown".

On 20 May, Nigerian intelligence officials said that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau died after he detonated a suicide vest in order to avoid being captured during a battle with rival Islamist militants aligned with ISIS.

While citizens and organizations developed various coping and circumventing strategies, Boko Haram evolved from an open network model of insurgency to a closed centralized system, shifting the center of its operations to the Sambisa Forest.

Given the present state of affairs, it is absolutely impossible for us to defeat Boko Haram.In April 2018, the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, approved a release of $1bn for the procurement of security equipment to fight insurgency and revolt in the country.

[377] On 28 August 2018, the British government produced a press release describing the details of the newly launched partnership between the United Kingdom and Nigeria which was formed in an attempt to reduce the threat posed by Boko Haram to the citizens of both nations.

The press release gave insight into the multiple methods (including community engagement and direct intervention by the Nigerian government) of preventing and reducing the impacts of attacks carried out by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

U.S. efforts to train and share intelligence with regional military forces is credited with helping to push back against Boko Haram, but officials warn that the group remains a grave threat.

[392] In January 2019, when thousands of refugees from northeastern Nigeria were forced to return from Cameroon, despite the continuous threat to civilian lives by Boko Haram jihadists, the United Nations was "extremely alarmed".

[393] In March 2021, the UN announced it was launching a $1 billion appeal in Abuja, with the goal of providing assistance to an estimated nine million northern Nigerians in need of humanitarian aid because of Boko Haram's 11-year insurgency.