Mike Smith’s Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War is a brilliant attempt to fill this void. It is the first comprehensive book to be written about Boko Haram and offers an excellent anatomy of the group, its emergence, its activities and the havoc it has wrought on the lives of Nigerians. The book also unpacks the dysfunctional nature of President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime. The current president’s predecessors are not spared either – nor is the country’s colonial past, the legacy of which is, in part, to blame for the fractured society from which Boko Haram emerged.

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