Boko Haram was founded in 2002 by a charming individual called Mohammed Yusuf. He founded a religious school which aimed to create an Islamic State (where have we heard that before?) and to oppose Western education, which was seen as a bygone of decades of British colonial rule. By denouncing police and state corruption Boko Haram quickly became very popular amongst poor Muslim families and especially unemployed youths, and quickly became a breeding and recruitment ground for young jihadis across Nigeria and surrounding nations.
Despite this, Yusuf and the gang carried out it’s activities in relative peace for it’s first 7 years of existence, and actually withdrew away from the outside world into remote hideouts in North-Eastern Nigeria. Unfortunately for Nigeria this wasn’t to last, and in 2009 Boko Haram staged a major, extremely violent uprising.
