Boko Haram Read Online Free PDF

country’s largest city of Lagos, steps have been taken in a bid to begin taming the famously chaotic former capital of some 15 million people, whose hours-long traffic jams and exhausting pace of life have become legendary, leaving even the most resilient souls gasping for air. Lagos, along with the rest of the south, has been mainly spared the violence, though there have been questions over whether an explosion in June 2014 claimed by Boko Haram signalled the end of the city’s relative peace. If so, the insurgency would reach yet another, far more dangerous stage, and the shoots of progress that have taken root would be tragically ripped out.
    There have of course been other bright spots, and recently Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bankmanaging director, and Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi have worked to bring about reforms where possible and reduce corruption. But the frequent refrain in Nigeria is that when one fights corruption, corruption fights back. When Sanusi began to publicly ask questions in 2014 about billions of dollars linked to the state oil firm missing from Nigeria’s accounts, he was removed from office by the president. From an aristocratic family, he has since become the emir of Kano, one of the country’s most highly respected traditional rulers. He has not entirely abandoned his criticism of government corruption.
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    By May 2012, Maiduguri, still considered the home base of Boko Haram, resembled something approaching a war zone. Entire neighbourhoods appeared deserted and security checkpoints kept the city on edge. Christians trying to attend church passed through metal detectors and razor wire, with women forced to leave their bags outside. It was by no means only Christians being targeted; Muslims were often the victims. Residents were caught between the incessant attacks and the heavy-handed response of soldiers, who had been accused of rounding up young men for arrest, burning homes and killing civilians.
    The extremists had taken to burning schools, and yet classes were still being held in at least one of the damaged buildings. At that school, a teacher said parents insisted that it remain open, so students dressed neatly in yellow and green uniforms were there scampering among piles of broken glass and shards of cement. ‘I’m not scared because I think the worst has happened’, one 14-year-old girl said as she stood near scorched walls and collapsed tin sheets. ‘There’s nothing left for them to attack.’
    How tragically wrong she would turn out to be. On the night of 14 April 2014, hordes of attackers would descend upon the town of Chibok and swarm the boarding school where several hundred girls were sleeping. They were dressed as soldiers and they told the girls not to worry, that they were there to protect them. They ledthem outside and towards waiting pick-up trucks, and it slowly began to dawn on the girls that these men were not members of the military. They fired their guns and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, and they forced the girls into the trucks before driving away towards a camp in the forest. Military reinforcements did not arrive. Parents, their daughters gone and the school burnt, set off towards the forest on motorcycles. They had no choice but to try to find the girls themselves.

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    â€˜I Don’t Know. They’re in the Bush’
    The dead bodies lay under a scorching sun, at least 26 of them, some contorted and twisted, others seeming to have been set out, if not neatly, then at least in something resembling a row. One man’s head was tilted up toward the sky, his mouth open as if he were yelling. The smell was putrid, familiar to anyone who has smelled death before, but worsened by the intense heat, and yet somehow the workers in nearby medical units carried on, moving about the hospital grounds while occasionally covering their noses with their shirts or gowns. They