Boko Haram and Identity Reconstruction in Lake Chad Basin Region

Boko Haram poses a significant threat to global security, considering its capability to sustain persistent strikes against Nigerian State and the adjourning neighbours of Cameroon, Chad and Niger republics. At the wake of the group’s public emergence in 2002, the respective governments, citizens and the International Societies greatly under estimated its capability. Initially, Boko Haram was a mere local group with limited domestic objectives and either perceived in religious, political, or ethnic terms. These notions about the group persisted until 2010, when the group began full-scale terrorism as a strategy to confront the states. Not until the United State of America thereto designated the group in 2013 as a terrorist organisation. The affected countries as a choice of modality, adopted a multinational counter- insurgency approach to curb the situation. Despite these, researchers and policy makers have done little to understand and highlight the motivation and the underlying factors why the group would commit suicide, destroy lives and property for reasons that are difficult to comprehend within the scope of ordinary logic. This research establishes that the fervent desire to reconstruct identity along Islamic rules and principles, as a way of life, underlie the determination of the group and their unwillingness to consensus but total defeat of the world system, which they consider evil. The ideological and cultural components of the group’s struggle remain the source of the conflict, strength, persistence, and their resilience.