The United States’ latest report on the state of the anti-terror war in Nigeria bears a strikingly true reflection of the current situation in the country, though the focus was on last year. It is a story of the resurgence of a deadly group that was once driven to the fringes, but is now bouncing back with a vengeance, especially in its well-known tactics of unconventional warfare.
Despite Nigeria’s claims of technically defeating Boko Haram, the terror group that has been waging Islamist insurgency against the government since 2009, the US Department of State report said the group’s killings, bombings and attacks on civilian and military targets have not relented.
This worrying situation is reaffirmed by another report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which in May expressed concerns about the alarming rate of deployment of Improvised Explosive Devices by the extremist group in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, and its environs.
Among other things, the US report accused the Nigerian authorities of failure to rescue all the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls and inability to hold down territories recaptured from Boko Haram, which once controlled territories in the three most affected states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
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