Islamists have launched about 60 strikes on military targets since August, despite president’s claim that they have been ‘technically defeated’

Boko Haram has launched a series of attacks that have inflicted substantial casualties on Nigerian government forces and contradict claims by senior officials that the extremist Islamist group is on the brink of defeat.

The group made headlines last month when it released 21 female students abducted more than two years ago. The women, taken in a night raid on a school in the small town of Chibok, were the focus of a global campaign and many analysts saw their liberation after negotiations with officials as evidence of Boko Haram’s weakness following an internal split.

On taking power 18 months ago, the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, vowed to crush Boko Haram and has since boasted that the group, which launched a violent insurgency seven years ago, was “technically defeated”.

During a visit to Nigeria in August, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, congratulated the government for reclaiming swaths of territory, while Brig Gen Mansur Dan-Ali, the defence minister, told local media last week that the government had “eradicated almost 95% of Nigeria’s security challenges within one year”.

But clashes with Nigerian security forces in recent weeks have suggested Boko Haram is more resilient than claimed and, though forced out of much of the territory it once held, is still capable of inflicting significant losses.

“There is little to indicate the group is nearing its end or even that it is severely weakened,” said William Assanvo, an expert on Nigeria and militancy at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nigerian army soldiers prepare to fight Boko Haram in Borno state. Photograph: Reuters

Boko Haram launched 12 strikes on military targets in August, 24 in September and 22 in October, according to ISS research.

In one of their boldest recent strikes, militants overran a remote military camp in the north-eastern state of Borno a month ago, leaving 13 soldiers wounded. Local press reports said another 83 soldiers were “missing”.

An army spokesman, Col Sani Kukasheka Usman, called the attack a “temporary setback” committed by “remnants of Boko Haram”.

Recent weeks have also seen further losses in Borno. Two soldiers were reported dead in a bomb attack on a remote road, while at least three more were killed in attacks on bases near the towns of Kangarwa and Kwada. Thirteen militants were reported dead in airstrikes during a four-hour firefight.

The death two weeks ago of a popular officer killed while defending a military post in Malam Fatori, a town in Borno that has changed hands repeatedly, prompted widespread grief in Nigeria and focused attention on the continuing casualties.

Lt Col Muhammad Abu Ali, a 36-year-old father of three decorated for his role in previous operations, was one of seven soldiers who died when attacked by Boko Haram militants. The attack was eventually beaten back and 14 militants killed, according to military spokesmen.

The death of Ali has received widespread coverage in Nigerian media, and led to debates in the national assembly. Local media reported that the chief of army staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, wept as he read an oration during the soldiers’ funeral.

Speaking anonymously to a Nigerian news website, a military officer said Boko Haram had been helped by the beginning of the dry season, which made it easier to travel through the remote scrub and forest where much of the fighting was taking place. However, a shortage of equipment had exacerbated the Nigerian army’s problems, the officer said.

The procurement of arms and ammunition for the Nigerian military has been hampered by corruption on a vast scale, as well as by institutional inefficiency. “The truth is that from September to November this year, we have lost so many troops that can’t even be accounted for … All reasonable persons can see that Boko Haram is still a formidable force,” the officer said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, speaks to one of the freed Chibok girls in Abuja last month. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty

Some details have emerged of the ordeal of the 21 Chibok students freed by Boko Haram last month. Though the women were malnourished and weak when handed over to officials, a source close to the presidency said they were not abused or raped during their captivity.

The freed girls said the militants had treated them well while they were held captive, according to a confidential report based on their two-week debriefing prepared for Buhari and seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

State health workers confirmed the girls had not been not sexually abused while in captivity, the report said.

“The girls said the Boko Haram men always assured them that they would eventually go back home to their families, and were careful about what they said around the girls and how they treated them,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They had been fed well and regularly, until the military cut off Boko Haram supplies,” the government source added.

Thousands of people have been abducted by Boko Haram during its seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state. The abduction of the Chibok girls – about 200 of whom are still missing – prompted outrage worldwide and their plight was publicised using a Twitter hashtag, #bringbackourgirls.

The recently released girls said while the Boko Haram militants advised them to marry and convert to Islam, they were not forced into doing so, according to the report. If they refused they were used as servants and assigned domestic duties.

Most of the girls said they were held in makeshift dwellings made of zinc sheets in the Sambisa forest, while those who were married lived with their militant husbands in camps.

When shown pictures of 142 of their still missing classmates, the girls said 61 had married Boko Haram militants, eight had been killed during Nigerian air force strikes, while three had died during childbirth and one of an unknown cause, the report found.

There have been reports from Nigeria that many of the girls, particularly those who have been “married”, no longer want to return home for fear of discrimination and abuse.

Another Chibok girl and her 10-month-old son were discovered recently by troops screening people who had escaped from Boko Haram’s base in the Sambisa forest.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Poster displaying wanted Boko Haram suspects is seen on a street in Yenagoa in Nigeria’s delta region. Photograph: Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

Experts and campaigners say the issue of abductions is “larger than Chibok” with thousands of people – men and women - held by the movement against their will over recent years.

Kim Toogood, of International Alert, an NGO working with former abductees in Borno, said the experiences of abducted women were varied.

“Some women were treated well but also some were treated very badly indeed,” she said. “One woman said men had never laid a hand on her and one had even facilitated her escape. Others witnessed the execution of girls who had tried to flee. There is great diversity in terms of how women and men are recruited, what they are forced to do.”

Treatment of abductees can vary from faction to faction within Boko Haram, a report by International Alert found.

Boko Haram has always been a coalition of groups rather than a united organisation, and fractured further over the issue of links with Islamic State this year.

Isis, of which the Nigerian group is still theoretically an affiliate, announced in September that Abu Musab al-Barnawi was the group’s new leader, replacing the erratic Abubakar Shekau. The decision may have been prompted by Shekau’s use of female suicide bombers and targeting of Muslims.

Last weekend Shekau issued an audio message calling on supporters not to be “overwhelmed by people like Donald Trump and the global coalition fighting our brethren in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and everywhere”.

British and US special forces have been assisting the Nigerian military.

Government forces have made significant progress against Boko Haram factions operating in neighbouring Cameroon, observers say.



“We’ve seen a dizzying downwards spiral in the number of attacks and suicide bombings,” said Hans De Marie Heungoup, author of a recent report by the International Crisis Group, an NGO. He said that two years ago, Boko Haram launched attacks on an almost daily basis in Cameroon, but the number had fallen to between six and eight a month since September.