BOKO HARAM AT A GLANCE

Boko Haram, is an Islamic terrorist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon.
Boko Haram initially focused on opposing Western-style education

Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language
The group's leader is Abubakar Shekau. The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).Since the current insurgency started in 2009, it has killed .
20,000 and displaced 2.3 million from their homes[13] and was ranked as the world's deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015.

After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalization led to a violent uprising in July 2009 in which its leader was summarily executed. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, and progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.

Of the 2.3 million people displaced by the conflict since May 2013, at least 250,000 have left Nigeria and fled into Cameroon, Chad or Niger.[20] Boko Haram killed over 6,600 in 2014.[21][22] The group have carried out mass abductions including the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014.

In mid-2014, the militants gained control of swathes of territory in and around their home state of Borno, estimated at 50,000 square kilometres (20,000 sq mi) in January 2015, but did not capture the state capital, Maiduguri, where the group was originally based. In September 2015, the Director of Information at the Defence Headquarters of Nigeria announced that all Boko Haram camps had been destroyed.