Explaining the Emergence of Boko Haram - Nigerian terrorists who kidnapped schoolgirls
This is a pretty good overview of the group responsible for kidnapping the Nigerian schoolgirls. It helps to explain the response/non-response of the Nigerian government and attempts to answer the "why" question.
A Brief History of Boko Haram Jideofor Adibe May 6, 2014
Boko Haram members prefer to be known by their Arabic name—Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad—meaning “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad.” The group is believed to have been formed in the town of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria, where the locals nicknamed its members “Boko Haram,” a combination of the Hausa word “boko,” which literally means “Western education” and the Arabic word “haram” which figuratively means “sin” and literally means “forbidden.” While the popular belief is that it was founded around 2001 or 2002 by Mohammed Yusuf, some have argued that the sect was actually started in 1995 as Sahaba. The group claims to be opposed not only to Western civilization (which includes Western education) but also to the secularization of the Nigerian state. There is a fair consensus that, until 2009, the group conducted its operations more or less peacefully and that its radicalization followed a government clampdown in 2009, in which some 800 of its members were killed. The group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was also killed after that attack while in police custody.
Ansaru, whose Arabic name is Jamāʿatu Anṣāril Muslimīna fī Bilādis Sūdān (“Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa”), is a breakaway faction of Boko Haram. It first announced its existence on January 26, 2012 by distributing fliers in Kano, shortly after Boko Haram attacks in the city killed approximately 150 civilians, most of them Muslims. It is from this attack that some media reports described Ansaru’s emergence as a reaction to the loss of innocent Muslim lives. From inception, Ansaru was believed to coordinate its operations in Nigeria with the northern Mali-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA). Both Boko Haram and Ansaru were declared as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States on November 13, 2013.
There are many popular explanations for the emergence and radicalization of Boko Haram. They can be summarized under some key categories as follows:
1. Conspiracy theories:
(a) Northern politicians sponsor Boko Haram to make the country “ungovernable” for President Goodluck Jonathan.
(b) President Jonathan sponsors Boko Haram either to mobilize support from the south and Christians or to weaken and de-populate the north ahead of the 2015 presidential election.
2. The Failed State Argument
Some people have suggested that Boko Haram is simply a symptom that the overarching Nigerian state has failed, or at best, is failing.
3. The Human Needs and Poor Governance Theories
Human needs theorists such as John Burton [1] and Abraham Maslow [2] would argue that one of the primary causes of the protracted conflicts in Nigeria is the people’s drive to meet their unmet needs.
4. The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
Otherwise known as frustration-aggression displacement theory, [5] this hypothesis argues that frustration causes aggression, and when the source of the frustration cannot be challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target.
5. Broader Crisis in Nigeria’s Nation Building
A better and more comprehensive view of the Boko Haram and Ansaru phenomena is to see them as symptoms of the crisis in Nigeria’s nation-building processes.
Read in detail: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2014/05/06-emergence-of-boko-haram-adibe