Caught in the crossfire: unravelling the complex interplay of exploitation and agency in children associated with Boko Haram

Boko Haram has increasingly dominated media headlines over the past decade, particularly for its widespread recruitment and exploitation of children through forceful tactics. The group’s notorious 2014 abduction of the Chibok girls was a flashpoint moment, eliciting fervent international outrage and cementing its reputation as a ‘globally acknowledged terrorist organization’. Estimates suggest that between 2009 and 2016, Boko Haram enlisted approximately 8,000 children in Northeast Nigeria. From 2017 to 2019, the United Nations (UN) confirmed that Boko Haram had recruited and utilised 1,385 children. Nevertheless, the actual f igures are likely to be significantly higher given the limitations in available data.

Modern Islamist extremism in Northeast Nigeria traces its roots to the Maitatsine movement of the 1980s, led by Muhammadu Marwa. Its anti-Western ethos inspired Mohammed Yusuf to establish Boko Haram in 2002. After years of escalating clashes with state forces, Yusuf‘s 2009 arrest and subsequent death in custody marked a turning point. The surviving members retreated, re-emerging under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau to wage an extended campaign against the Nigerian State, using a mix of financial incentives, intimidation, and force for recruitment. In response to this rising violence, the Nigerian government outlawed Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation in 2013, with the UN following suit a year later. In 2015, Shekau aligned the group with the Islamic State, renaming it the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). However, a leadership dispute in 2016 led to a split, resulting in two factions: ISWAP, led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, and Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati wal-Jihad (JAS), led by Shekau. A third faction, Bakura, appeared in 2019. Throughout these changes, the extensive recruitment and use of child soldiers by these factions (hereafter referred to as ‘Boko Haram’) remained a constant.

This paper delves into the harrowing experiences of children entangled with Boko Haram in Northeast Nigeria. In scrutinising this distressing landscape, it underlines a fundamental aspect of their everyday life: exploitation and agency, far from being opposing facets of these children’s lives, are instead deeply intertwined in their war-affected reality.