A Threat to National Security: The Case of Boko Haram in Nigeria

Nigeria has been bedeviled by ethno-religious conflicts with both devastating human and material consequences since the return of democracy in 1999. The current terrorist insurgency by the Northern-based Boko Haram group has continued to pose a serious threat to Nigeria’s security and corporate political entity. This is evidenced in the group’s undeterred spate of terrorist attacks on citizens, the nation’s security personnel, wanton destruction of lives and property. This paper will focus on the assessment of the Boko Haram’s unprecedented campaign of terror that is growing both in number and brutality that has constituted itself as a national security threat to the continual and harmonious co-existence of the component nations that make up the Nigerian state. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n4p28