Nigeria's war with Boko Haram and its successors

An armed Islamist movement known as Boko Haram has fought the Nigerian state in the country's north-east since 2009. It and the faction that split from it, which calls itself Islamic State West Africa Province, want to replace the secular republic with religious rule. The war and the hunger and disease that came with it have killed some 350,000 people by a United Nations estimate and displaced more than two million. In the last few years kidnapping for ransom by armed gangs, called bandits, has spread across the north-west and centre, and the line between gangs and jihadists has blurred. Since late 2025 the United States has been bombing in Nigeria, alongside the government.

Where it stands · September 2026

Nigeria's president ordered a rescue operation after gunmen abducted worshippers from a mosque in the north-west in late August. A Nigerian newspaper reported on 9 September that the government and Boko Haram had agreed a secret ceasefire of three months; neither has confirmed it. The army says it repelled an attempt by the Islamic State faction to overrun a base in Borno. The International Criminal Court declined on 4 September to open an investigation into the kidnappings. The two jihadist factions are also fighting each other.

What the dispute is about

The state itself. The movement's founder preached that Western schooling and the secular state were forbidden. His successors differ on tactics: the Islamic State faction taxes and governs villages around Lake Chad and mostly attacks soldiers, while the older faction raids, abducts and bombs.

What kind of violence this is. American politicians and some Nigerian churches describe a campaign to exterminate Christians. Nigeria's government and most researchers say the dead in the north-east and north-west are mostly Muslim, because the people living there are, and that the killings in the central states come from a contest over land between herders and farmers that runs along religious lines.

How the army fights. Air strikes have repeatedly hit villages, markets and camps. Thousands of suspects have died in military detention, according to Amnesty International.

How each side explains it

The Nigerian government's account

In 2014 the insurgents held territory the size of Belgium. They hold none of Nigeria's towns now. The armed forces have killed successive leaders, freed thousands of hostages and taken in tens of thousands of surrendering fighters and their families. Terrorists kill Nigerians of every faith, and the claim of a Christian genocide is false and insults the Muslim dead. Nigeria welcomes American intelligence and air power as help offered to a sovereign partner. Errors in air strikes are investigated.

In our coverage

Nigeria's security forces are making real gains against jihadists and bandits →168 headlines
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Washington's account

Christians in Nigeria are being slaughtered by radical Islamists while the government fails to protect them. The United States put Nigeria on its list of violators of religious freedom, warned that it would act if Nigeria did not, and has since struck Islamic State camps, killing hundreds of fighters. Nigeria's cooperation since then shows that pressure works.

What each account leaves out

The government's leaves out that the insurgents still overrun army bases and killed a general in April; that whole districts are governed by bandits to whom state governors have paid ransoms and amnesties; that its inquiries into air strikes on civilians have punished almost no one; and that it accepted foreign strikes only after being publicly threatened with them.

Washington's leaves out that most victims of the jihadists are Muslims, by every count that records religion; that it cut its food aid to the displaced of the north-east in 2025; and that it has restricted visas for the Nigerians it says it is protecting.

The civilians' and rights groups' leaves out that communities also protect, supply and ransom through the gangs' own informers, which is why the army distrusts them; and that the rescue of hundreds of hostages this year was the work of the same forces they accuse.

The ledger

The Nigerian state

Wanted: the insurgency defeated.
Gained: its towns back, and American air power.
Paid: seventeen years of war, a countryside it does not control, and a foreign air force operating on its soil after a public threat.

The jihadist factions

Wanted: religious rule.
Gained: the islands and shores of Lake Chad.
Paid: their leaders, and a war with each other.

The United States

Wanted: by its own account to protect Christians.
Gained

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

Boko Haram, a nickname the group rejects / its own name, the Sunni Group for Preaching and Jihad
terrorists, bandits, insurgents
Christian genocide
farmer-herder clashes / ethnic cleansing
repentant fighters
collateral damage