How Northern Nigeria's Violent History Explains Boko Haram

Gombe was essentially a happy place, presided over by a benign and astute Muslim emir of the Fulani tribe and a team of enlightened councillors. Apart from the odd dispute over a woman or land, there was little violence. Gambling was frowned on, but a blind eye was turned toward the drumming and dancing that in a pre-television age carried on throughout the year, except during the month of Ramadan. But today Gombe is on the front lines of the obscene and bloody battle waged by Boko Haram to impose an extreme interpretation of Islam on the whole of northern Nigeria. How has it come to pass that 55 years after Nigeria's independence, peaceful towns are being terrorized, attracting suicide bombers and an invading army of fundamentalist Islamists?
 The answers lie in Nigeria's northeasternmost state, Borno—a 27,000-square-mile (70,000-square-kilometer) territory south and west of Lake Chad whose prominent inhabitants are the Muslim Kanuri tribe and where radical dissent led by brutal, fanatical men goes back well over a century.
 By John Hare, National Geographic /continue