Suicide bombings return to Nigeria.. Will Boko Haram re-impose its presence? | news

A wave of suicide bombings has brought back the specter of open war to the city of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria, after years of relative calm that made it a symbol of the decline of the influence of the Boko Haram group in its historical stronghold.

The three simultaneous attacks that the city witnessed last March, which killed 23 people and injured more than a hundred others – according to what the local police announced – are a turning point that brought the file of armed organizations in the Lake Chad Basin back to the forefront of the African security scene, while smaller attacks continue in the surrounding countryside and official warnings intensify against repeating the scenario.

No party claimed responsibility for the operations that struck the vicinity of the university teaching hospital, the central market and the post office area, according to Agence France-Presse, but the Nigerian army described them as coordinated attempts by fighters suspected of belonging to the Boko Haram group. To cause massive human losses.

The war of the two factions and the imbalance of power

For years, Maiduguri has remained an “oasis of relative calm” after the peak years in the middle of the last decade, as the last major attack on the city dates back to 2021, when Boko Haram fighters fired mortar shells that killed ten people, according to Agence France-Presse.

However, December 2025 marked the beginning of this calm being broken, when an explosion – not claimed by a known party – targeted one of the city’s mosques and killed at least seven people, according to the same agency. Data from the American conflict monitoring organization ACLED places the March attacks as the fifth wave of suicide operations since the beginning of 2026.

To understand the return of suicide bombings specifically at this moment, we must return to the division that split the “jihadist” movement in the Lake Chad Basin in 2016 into two factions: “The Group of the Sunnis for Preaching and Jihad,” known as “Boko Haram,” led by Abubakar Shekau, and the “West Africa Province Organization,” affiliated with the Islamic State.

According to an analysis by the International Crisis Group, the two factions have built two contradictory models of governance: a more disciplined bureaucratic model that avoids targeting non-combatants Muslims in the West Africa Province group, versus a violent offensive model that does not distinguish between civilians in the Boko Haram group.

Since Shekau was killed in May 2021 during an attack carried out by the West African Province in the Sambisa Forest, the latter faction seemed to be consolidating its dominance. However, the equation changed between the fifth and eighth of November 2025, when Boko Haram fighters – according to the documentation of the “Africa Defense Forum” magazine, which specializes in African military affairs – launched a naval invasion on the bases of the West African Province organization on the islands of Lake Chad, resulting in the killing of nearly two hundred members of the organization.

In this context, analysts read the return of suicide bombings to civilian centers. While the wing emanating from Shekau, led today by Ibrahim Bakura Duru, expanded according to a research paper by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, it remained unable to achieve a civilian breakthrough into the major cities from which the Nigerian army was conducting its campaign within the framework of “Operation Hadin Kai.”

In a reading published by the African Elements platform, experts describe the recent attacks as “acts of desperation” carried out by Boko Haram to prove its continuity against its competitor, which is structurally and organizationally superior to it.

In a statement reported by Agence France-Presse, analyst Confidence McHarry of the SBM Intelligence Center believes that the army has been busy in recent months pursuing the West Africa Province organization, which allowed Boko Haram cells in the vicinity of Maiduguri to reposition, adding that the city remained fragile despite the apparent calm, as the attacks in the countryside near it never stopped.

A regional dimension that cannot be ignored

These developments come at a time when Washington began deploying about 200 soldiers in Nigeria in February 2026 to provide technical and training support to local forces, according to Agence France-Presse. It also coincides with reports by the Africa Defense Forum, which indicate that West Africa Province is employing advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and drones, in its media and combat operations.

It seems that the equation in the Lake Chad Basin is no longer based on “state versus organization,” but rather on three parties competing for control of space, resources, and local legitimacy. In this tripartite competition, civilians in Maiduguri and its surrounding villages remain the weakest link, paying the price for tactics that come back to the fore whenever the balance of power is disturbed.