Underdevelopment, Relative Deprivation and Insurgency: A Case-Study of Boko Haram in Northeast Nigeria

The insurgency in Nigeria's northeast has brought about across the board displacement, gross human rights violations, security dangers as well as an extending humanitarian emergency. Presently in its ninth year, the Boko Haram insurgency shows no sign of abating and is adding to the long history of marginalization; severe underdevelopment; and an outstanding prevalence level of poverty; illiteracy and unemployment in this West African country (Nigeria). Since the beginning of the Boko Haram crisis in 2009, about 100,000 individuals have lost their lives, a huge number of women and young girls were kidnapped while children drafted as alleged "suicide" bombers into the insurgency. After a visit to Nigeria in 2014, former US Secretary of State John Kerry, identified poverty as one of the driving force behind the Boko Haram insurgency. This study probes into the aforementioned debate by examining if a link exist between relative deprivation and insurgency using the advent of Boko Haram in the Northeast of Nigeria as a case-study. From an online survey with Northeast youths, elite interviews with some Northeast elites, corroborated with perspectives from scholars, and politicians drawn from secondary sources, this study postulates that relative deprivation stands out as the most substantial theoretical explanation of the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast of Nigeria.