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TERRORISM AND RURAL DISPLACEMENT: A CRIMINOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF BOKO HARAM ACTIVITIES IN BORNO STATE.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The security crises, which have been witnessed in the sub-Saharan Africa, have seldom yielded the scale of human suffering experienced in the state of Borno in the last fifteen years. The insurgency led by the radical Islamist group, Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, and technically called Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, has resulted in an approximate of 30,000 to 50,000 deaths, the destruction of thousands of settlements, and the displacement of millions of people since it broke out into full eruption in 2009 (Familusi & Oshomo, 2019, cited The Borno State, the home of origin of the insurgency and its present epicentre, has had the highest proportion of these losses with a population of approximately 2.5 million civilians displaced and hence it is one of the largest internal displacement crises in Africa and there is a need to have a comprehensive criminological analysis on the nexus of terrorism, governance failure and forced migration of the population.
The formation of Boko Haram can be traced back to the years of the early 2000s, when the leader of the terrorist group, Mohammed Yusuf, created a Muslim movement in the town of Maiduguri. The turning point to turning this movement into a full-fledged insurgency to overthrow the Nigerian state and establish an Islamic caliphate came with the death of Nigerian security forces at the hands of Yusuf in 2009. With the succession of the leadership to that of Abubakar Shekau after the death of Yusuf, the group significantly intensified its violent actions, including mass kidnappings, most notoriously the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, systematised massacres of rural groups, suicide bombings, and occupation of large-scale territory within the Lake Chad Basin. As of 2015, Boko Haram possessed an estimated 20,000 square kilometres of land; a multinational military offensive to damage its territorial positions was initiated. In May 2021, factional violence led to the killing of Shekau after Islamic insurgency in West Africa Province (ISWAP) had arisen as the leading insurgent in the region (International Crisis Group, 2024).
The displacement crisis that was created internally by these hostilities is not only wide, but also fluid. In a report released in 2024 by The New Humanitarian, an increase in the number of attacks on civilians in Borno occurred during January to March 2024, with 176 attacks reported in 2024 versus 71 in 2023, with 195 cases of abduction, kidnapping, and forced disappearance also reported. The report also highlighted the highly disturbing fact of forced resettlement, in which the Borno State government, led by Governor Zulum, closed down IDP camps and resettled displaced individuals into the places that remained under the control of the ISWAP; several IDPs have described the event as a second displacement. These trends are a dynamic and active humanitarian crisis that has deeper criminological consequences.
The intensive criminological analysis of the operations of Boko Haram in Borno State requires the involvement of various theoretical approaches. As applied by Jafaru, Malumfashi and Dagaci (2025) in their evidence-based research project to determine the root causes of the Boko Haram insurgency, Relative Deprivation Theory gives prominence to unemployment (mentioned by 73.2 per cent of the respondents), poverty (67.9 per cent), political marginalisation (62.5 per cent), and religious extremism (58.0 per cent) as the main structural causes that give way to the development of terrorist recruitment and radicalisation. These observations help to explain why structural inequalities should be considered as part of counter-terrorist policy, and therefore also dispute the purely military response to the insurgency.
Adeyemi and colleagues (2025) carried out a qualitative study through which the nexus between political violence and displacement in Borno State has been systematically studied taking into account both historical and contemporary perspectives. Their study sets out a clear causal pathway between insurgent activity and internal displacement and records the extreme socio economic consequences of displacement in terms of destruction of livelihoods, erosion of educational opportunities, breakdown of health services and concentration of displaced populations in camps which themselves fall prey to secondary victimisation. The magnitude and urgency of the criminological investigation is self-explanatory since the U.S. State Department (2022) wrote that Boko Haram and ISWAP carried out a significant number of attacks on the population of Borno State, which led to the death and injury of thousands of citizens, as well as the internal displacement of more than two million people.
The Social Disorganisation Theory is a complementary theory. The fundamental breakdown of community social organisation such as school systems, markets, mosques, and civic societies by Boko Haram destroys informal social control that would otherwise stop crime and deviance. The lack of social norms in the IDP camps and host populations coupled with overcrowding, resource contention, and trauma creates new social disorganisation conditions which are criminogenic in nature (Borno State Government, 2023). The paper has cited how, in its regions of operation, ISWAP provides a rudimentary administration and security that has attracted cooperation in hapless civilians weary of insecurity, demonstrating the complex relationship between criminology, governance, and legitimacy in the conflict zones.
The research is not just a record of the extent of displacement, but a criminological analysis of the processes, effects, and institutional reactions of displacement caused by Boko Haram. This piece of work makes an analytically unique addition to the literature and gives practical suggestions towards a more holistic approach to terrorism and displacement in north-eastern Nigeria by engaging the criminological theory with a situation that has traditionally been dealt with in terms of security studies and humanitarian frameworks.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The rural displacement crisis caused and sustained by the insurgency against Boko Haram in Borno State since 2009 has resulted in one of the most significant, extreme, and enduring rural displacement crises ever recorded in on the African continent. Complete rural populations have been displaced, villages destroyed, farm lands left empty, and hundreds of thousands of families forced to live in temporary internally displaced persons (IDP) camps or in urban host communities, whose effects continue to shake the Lake Chad Basin region even fifteen years after the fact. It is noteworthy that, in spite of the scale of this crisis, the academic literature is astonishingly scanty as far as in-depth criminological studies that explicitly explore the complex interaction between terrorist violence and forced displacement in this situation are concerned. Security studies and humanitarian views have been the only dominant discourses that have focused on military operations, counter-insurgency strategies, emergencies relief distribution, and camp control, with a little consideration of the uniquely criminological aspects within the displacement process.
As such, a number of critical phenomena have been poorly theorised and insufficiently researched. To start with, the problem of secondary victimisation within the context of IDP which victims, who have already become traumatised due to the primary victimisation, face the amplified threats of sexual and gender-based violence, extortion, child recruiting, and trafficking, as well as everyday forms of predatory crimes by not only insurgents but also by simply opportunistic members of the displaced population has received insufficient criminological attention. Second, little attention has been paid to the criminogenic effects of extended social disorganisation, whereby the collapse of traditional social controls, kinship ties, economic means of living, and social institutions over an extended period of time has led to the generation of an open space to new crimes and deviance among both the displaced and host populations. Third, failures in governance such as aid delivery corruption, impunity of perpetrators, open borders, poor policing in the IDP camps and failures of state apparatus to restore sanity in the liberated communities have not been systematically examined as criminological facilitators to the cycle of violence and displacement.
This paper thus fills a gap in knowledge by providing the systematic and theoretically-guided criminological understanding of the operations of Boko Haram and their direct and indirect effects on rural displacements in Borno State. Based on primary data gathered in IDP camps, in host communities, and major stakeholders, on the one hand, and on a broad spectrum of secondary sources (official reports, court records, and media archives, and available surveys), the research is clearly informed by the acknowledged criminological theories. These are social disorganisation theory, routine activity theory, strain theory and situational crime prevention aspects, but adjusted to the peculiarities of the African state condition of displacement because of terrorism. This way, the paper transcends the current security-humanitarian dichotomy to shedding light on the reality of criminal justice and criminology that sustains one of the most persistent crises in Nigeria.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The study is guided by the following specific objectives:
- To examine the nature, patterns, and criminological dimensions of Boko Haram’s activities in rural Borno State from 2018 to 2024.
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To analyse the mechanisms through which Boko Haram activities precipitate rural displacement and the secondary victimisation of displaced populations in Borno State.
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To apply relevant criminological theories to the analysis of terrorism-induced displacement in Borno State.
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To evaluate the effectiveness of state, federal, and international responses to terrorism and displacement in Borno State from a criminological perspective.
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To recommend a criminologically informed, integrated framework for addressing the nexus of terrorism, displacement, and secondary crime in Borno State.
1.4 Research Questions
- What are the nature, patterns, and criminological dimensions of Boko Haram’s activities in rural Borno State from 2018 to 2024?
- Through what mechanisms do Boko Haram activities precipitate rural displacement and cause secondary victimisation of displaced populations in Borno State?
- How can relevant criminological theories be applied to explain terrorism-induced displacement in Borno State?
- How effective are the state, federal, and international responses to terrorism and displacement in Borno State when evaluated from a criminological perspective (2018–2024)?
- What criminologically informed, integrated framework can be recommended to address the nexus of terrorism, displacement, and secondary crime in Borno State?
1.4 Significance of the Study
The study has a significant theoretical, practical, and policy applicability in various levels. The study calls into question the deeply rooted paradigm of the Nigerian government, the state authorities in Borno and their international counterparts (the United Nations, the African Union and other donor agencies) to see the crisis as a military problem or strictly as a humanitarian problem. The recent shift in the way displacement is discussed by criminalising it with the help of the criminological approach proves that the long-term military work is not enough and in many cases may be rather harmful in case it does not imply the social, economic, and governance interventions. The results present evidence-based policy recommendations that would involve the reforms of the security system and justice in the IDP camps, addressing the social factors at the community levels, addressing the issue of corruption in humanitarian aid, and the application of specific prevention programmes that could minimise the risk of secondary victimisation and additional criminality. Such change between hard security and the holistic criminologically informed approach may greatly enhance the efficiency of the stabilisation and long-term solutions programme in the Northeast.
To the academic society, the research forms a unique methodological and theoretical contribution. Although Boko Haram and the crisis of displacement in Borno have become widely studied in the context of political science, international relations, security studies, development economics, and humanitarian studies, there are comprehensive evaluations of the phenomenon through the perspective of criminology based on primary empirical data and general criminological theory which have been quite elusive. By filling this gap on the disciplinary level, the study contributes to the world knowledge about the way terrorism relates to forced migration and it reveals that the traditional criminological notions can be effectively used in non-Western, conflict-driven contexts. It also provides the possibilities to make comparative analyses with other displacement crises in Africa caused by insurgency (or in other countries such as the Sahel, Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo).
To practitioners directly engaged with displaced populations, including NGOs, camp managers, protection officers, community leaders, and local justice actors in Borno State, the study provides practical information. It determines particular criminogenic risks that lie within long-term environments of displacement (such as, convergent of motivated offenders, available target, and lack of effective guardians in overcrowded camps) and the nature of interventions that are most prone to alleviate it, which encompass community-based crime prevention programmes, restorative justice systems, livelihood restoration programmes that alleviate strain, and enhanced situational prevention programmes. By doing so, the study will convert abstract criminological analysis into tangible recommendations that could enhance protection results and hasten the process of changing emergency assistance into long-term recovery of other hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens in Borno.
In sum, these contributions highlight the overall significance of the study since, in shedding light on the criminological undertones of one of the most catastrophic displacement crises in Africa, in general, it not only contributes to the body of knowledge in the field but also provides policymakers and practitioners with the analytical tools and empirical evidence to develop a more effective, humane, and lasting response to terrorism-caused displacement in Borno State and other situations in the global arena.
1.5 Scope of the Study
The study is geographically focused on Borno State, with particular attention to rural communities affected by Boko Haram violence and IDP settlements in and around Maiduguri. The temporal scope is 2018–2024, capturing both the period of significant territorial recovery by Nigerian security forces and the continued attacks and displacement documented through 2024. Limitations include restricted access to conflict-affected communities, the sensitivity of data collection in an active insurgency context, dependence on secondary sources for some dimensions of the analysis, and the rapidly evolving nature of the security situation which may affect the currency of some findings.
References
Adeyemi, Y., Yahaya, A. L., & Dagaci, A. A. (2025). Political violence and internal displacement in Borno State, Nigeria: Historical context, socio-economic impacts, and government interventions. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science.
Amnesty International. (2020). Nigeria: Military razes villages as Boko Haram attacks escalate. Amnesty International.
Borno State Government. (2023). The role of community leaders in the reintegration of ex-prisoners in North East Nigeria. Borno State Government.
International Crisis Group. (2023). Rethinking resettlement and return in Nigeria’s North East. Africa Briefing No. 184.
International Crisis Group. (2024). JAS vs. ISWAP: The war of the Boko Haram splinters. United Nations Peacebuilding.
Jafaru, Y., Malumfashi, A. L., & Dagaci, A. A. (2025). Portrait of the root causes of Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State, Nigeria. Open Access Journal of Social Sciences Research, 3(2), 8–20.
The New Humanitarian. (2024). In northeast Nigeria, those who fled conflict are being returned to conflict. The New Humanitarian, April 23, 2024.
US Department of State. (2022). Country reports on human rights practices for 2022: Nigeria. US Department of State.
UNODC. (2023). The role of community leaders in the reintegration of ex-prisoners: UNODC promotes dialogue in North East Nigeria. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.