ABSTRACT
In 2014 the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) calculated that Boko Haram had killed 6,664 people that year, almost 600 more than the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Since the 1999 restoration of a nominally civilian government after a generation of military rule, the secular Nigerian state has failed to deliver good governance. The authority of traditional rulers was based on their ethnic group's cohesiveness and distinctiveness from other groups. Hence, indirect rule tended to reinforce the most conservative elements of traditional behavior and discouraged supra-ethnic cooperation. Poverty is the context in which most Nigerians live and in which Boko Haram operates. However, poverty cannot be seen as the sole or even predominant cause of Islamic radicalism. In northern Nigeria popular protest against the established order and state corruption usually takes the form of radical Islamic renewal. President Muhammadu Buhari charged the security services to defeat Boko Haram by December 2015.
