Ten years ago a violent uprising began.
Since then, it’s shaken the North East of Nigeria, and neighbouring countries.
It’s a conflict that’s killed more than 30 000 people, and displaced millions more.
I’m talking, of course, of Boko Haram.
But who are Boko Haram?
And why has Nigeria’s battle with them lasted over a decade?
So how did it all begin?
Boko Haram means ‘Western education is forbidden’.
It was formed by this man: Mohammed Yusuf.
He hated the West and was very critical of the government, which he saw as corrupt and
un-Islamic.
He set up a religious complex, including a mosque and an Islamic school in Maiduguri,
the capital of Borno state.
He was a charismatic speaker whose followers were a mixed bag, not only some of society's
poorest but also upper class and university students, who invited him to speak on campus.
They accepted the ideology, they accepted the belief, the belief of establishing a theocratic
Islamic state.
And all the people who joined him, even though Mohammed Yusuf was attending to their needs,
he was providing social services to them,
the core reason why most of them joined was ideology.
In July 2009, Boko Haram staged a failed uprising against the Nigerian government.
Eight hundred people were killed, and many of their members arrested.
Authorities thought they’d successfully crushed the group when Mohammed Yusuf was
killed in police custody.
But that July uprising marked the beginning of a ten year long battle
that continues to this day.
Just a year after the uprising, one of Yusuf’s lieutenants, Abubakar Shekau, announced he
was now the new leader of Boko Haram.
The re-emergence of Boko Haram under Shekau’s leadership marked one of the first times when
authorities claimed to have defeated Boko Haram, only for the group to resurface.
It’s a pattern that would be repeated time and again over the next decade.
In August 2011, Boko Haram made international headlines when it sent a car bomb into the
United Nations compound in Abuja.
Twenty-three people were killed, and more than seventy-five injured.
The next few years would be some of the group’s deadliest.
Between 2013 and 2015, Boko Haram killed more than eleven thousand people.
It was impossible to count the number of dead bodies, there were so many.
Women, men and children were killed.
During that period, the group seized more and more territory - and by 2015 was in control
of much of Nigeria’s Borno state.
It also spread its attacks beyond Nigeria’s borders, to neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
As people fled the terror, the UN estimates that over 2.2 million people were displaced.
But Boko Haram’s most notorious attacks came when they targeted schoolgirls.
One night in April 2014, students of the Girls’ Secondary School of the northern town of Chibok
were sleeping in their dormitories.
But armed members of Boko Haram stormed the boarding school.
They bundled 276 terrified schoolgirls together and took them away.
The abduction led to global outrage.
Prominent global figures asked for more to be done to free the girls.
But although a number of them have been released in the last five years, more than a hundred
of the students are still missing.
The Chibok incident showed Boko Haram that kidnappings could bring them publicity.
Four years after Chibok, they abducted 110 schoolgirls from the town of Dapchi.
Most were released a month later.
But one of them, a Christian student called Leah Sharibu remains in captivity.
Her peers say she refused to give up her faith.
Since 2013, more than a thousand children have been abducted by the terror group.
The Nigerian military have been criticised for their failure to free those kidnapped
by Boko Haram.
Low morale and corruption have left the army floundering.
But Boko Haram’s shifting strategy, including the use of female suicide bombers, has made
them hard to pin down.
In recent years Boko Haram has fractured and split, forging new alliances, and developing
new tactics.
In 2015 Boko Haram lost its self-proclaimed capital, Gwoza, to Nigerian troops.
Over time, the government has taken back territory, forcing the group towards the hilly area east
of Gwoza, as well as Lake Chad and the Sambisa Forest.
Whilst losing territory, Abubakar Shekau looked for new international allies.
He pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State.
But IS had other ideas.
A year later, it announced that the new leader of what was now known as the Islamic State
West Africa Province, was Abu Musab al-Barnarwi.
Remember this guy? Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram?
Well, Al Barnawi is believed to be his son.
Although he keeps a low profile - there are no verified images of him.
So Boko Haram was now split.
Abubakar Shekau remained in control of another faction, now known as
Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad.
Or JAS to you and me.
The Islamic State West Africa Province, also known as ISWAP, has developed new tactics
- focusing on winning the hearts and minds of the communities in the territory it controls.
ISWAP's tactic now is actually, is a combination of, not just warfare, but it's also a combination
of a state building project, so ISWAP is actually engaging in that state-building project, having
their own judicial system where they establish court judgements.
Also monitoring economic activities, especially the fish farming, the cattle rearing and the
farming activity in the region.
Now all of these activities were not the activities we saw from Boko Haram at the early and the
nascent stage.
As IS’s caliphate is lost in the Middle East, ISWAP is attempting to establish one
in West Africa.
If it is successful, this insurgency could be around in another decade.