The Forgotten Victims: Reclaiming the True Story of Boko Haram’s War on Muslims By Dr. Zanna Hassan
For over a decade and a half, Nigerians — and indeed the world — have been fed a one-sided account of the Boko Haram insurgency. It has too often been simplistically portrayed as a “war on Christians.” From foreign reports to local headlines, this framing has eclipsed a painful and overwhelming reality: that Muslim communities, clerics, mosques, Qur’anic pupils, and entire villages have borne the brunt of this brutal conflict.
Between 2010 and 2025, credible regional data indicate that over 25,000 Muslims were killed and more than 6,000 mosques destroyed across northern Nigeria — particularly in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. By contrast, fewer than 200 churches were confirmed destroyed within the same period.
Yet, global media and certain Western think tanks continued to frame the crisis as a religious genocide against Christians, ignoring the thousands of Muslim victims and the communities wiped off the map.
In Borno alone, ancient settlements such as Kawuri, Dikwa, Bama, Ngala, and Konduga were turned into graveyards. In Yale Garuwa, a centuries-old town in Konduga Local Government Area that had never missed a single Jumaat prayer in over 200 years, Boko Haram’s destruction brought the faithful to their knees — forever.
Equally tragic was the abduction of over 200 Qur’anic pupils from the same Konduga axis, later traced to Edo State — a disturbing incident that raised serious questions about the hidden dimensions of this conflict and the complicity of external forces in its escalation.
Many international assessments rely on secondary or partisan sources, often filtered through the lens of religious bias or donor-driven advocacy. Their methodology is selective, their verification inconsistent, and their conclusions often shaped by political convenience rather than empirical balance.
Thus, the stories of burned mosques, murdered ulama, displaced Qur’anic students, and shattered Muslim communities are barely reflected in international discourse. The result is a distorted history — one that sanitizes complexity and rewards sensationalism.
In southern Borno, where mixed communities of Christians and Muslims coexist in towns like Hawul, Chibok, Gwoza, and Askira-Uba, the notion of a one-sided Christian genocide becomes even more problematic. Every family in those areas includes both faiths, and both have suffered immensely.
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Indeed, Boko Haram’s atrocities against Muslims were often more devastating in northern and central Borno than in the south — contradicting the dominant narratives of the conflict.
Beyond the loss of lives, Boko Haram waged an intellectual and spiritual war against Islamic scholarship. Thousands of Qur’anic schools were erased, hundreds of clerics killed or displaced, and priceless Islamic manuscripts burned in towns like Kukawa, Maiduguri, and Gwoza.
What was once the intellectual heart of the Kanem-Borno civilisation has been reduced to ashes, silencing centuries of scholarship and leaving behind a vacuum of faith, learning, and leadership.
Labeling the Boko Haram crisis as a “Christian genocide” was no coincidence — it was strategic. It served the interests of certain international lobbies, faith-based organisations, and domestic actors who thrive on religious sympathy and geopolitical leverage.
This distorted framing influenced aid distribution, foreign policy, and humanitarian priorities, diverting global empathy and funding away from the Muslim-majority areas that suffered the greatest devastation.
While Christians undoubtedly endured horrific violence and deserve full compassion, the exclusion of Muslim suffering from the global narrative is a grave injustice — a form of selective humanity.
As the Shehu of Borno rightly observed, “Silence in the face of distortion is complicity in injustice.” For fifteen years, thousands of Muslim families have mourned in silence — mothers with no graves to visit, children without fathers to return to, communities erased without acknowledgment.
Even the Shehu himself, spiritual and temporal head of Borno’s Muslims, narrowly escaped death after Jumaat prayers, when a suicide bomber struck — a grim reminder that Boko Haram spared neither the palace nor the people, neither the mosque nor the market.
To claim that this conflict was a religious war against Christians alone is to deny the suffering of an entire region and the truth of its tragedy.
Nigeria must confront this moral and historical blindness. We cannot build peace on a foundation of falsehood. There is no hierarchy in grief, no monopoly of victimhood. Every life lost — Muslim or Christian, north or south — deserves remembrance with equal dignity.
To rebuild peace, we must first restore honest memory. We must tell the story of Borno, and of Nigeria, as it truly happened — not as convenient politics or foreign lobbies would have it.
Until that truth is recorded and taught, the souls of the forgotten will remain restless beneath the ruins of their mosques, schools, and homes.
Dr. Zanna Hassan Boguma, FCIPDM, FWIP, is the Zanna Boguma of Borno, a traditional titleholder and public policy scholar
