2015 Baga massacre

According to Senator Ahmed Zanna, who represents the district of Borno Central, government forces—despite being the joint headquarters, only Nigerian Army forces were stationed there at the time—resisted the militants, who "attacked from all sides", for several hours, but eventually "joined civilians fleeing into the bush".[9][10] They reportedly seized a large number of weapons and vehicles, according to Zanna.

In the days following the assault, the militants forced Baga's residents into the surrounding area villages.[4] On the evening of Tuesday, 6 January, two local residents reported that the militants began to burn local buildings using petrol bombs and explosives, and according to survivors proceeded to kill those left.[4][5] On 9 January, a resident described the extent of the damage by reporting, "There is not any single house that is standing there."[11] According to Musa Bukar, head of the Kukawa local government area, all 16 villages in the LGA were razed as well, and their residents either killed or forced to flee.[2]

The extent of the killings is as of yet unknown, and reports vary widely.

According to Human Rights Watch:[1]

The exact death toll in Baga and 16 surrounding villages is unknown, with estimates ranging from "dozens" to 2000 or more. "No one stayed back to count bodies", one local resident told Human Rights Watch. "We were all running to get out of town ahead of Boko Haram fighters who have since taken over the area".

Bukar stated that over two thousand people are thought to have been killed.[3] Zanna said that two thousand were "unaccounted for"; other sources said that "dozens" or "over a hundred" had been killed.[4][5] At least 100 were killed in the initial attack on 3 January, according to Baba Abba Hassan, the district head, later adding that "hundreds of corpses still lay on the streets" of the town and that many women and children were among the victims, having been pursued into the bush by the militants.[5][6]

Hassan, however, denied that the attack on 7 January had ever occurred and that the figure of 2,000 deaths was "outrageous".[6] Several government sources allegedly rejected claims of such a high number of fatalities, suggesting that it was considerably lower.[12] However, the Nigerian government has downplayed the extent of, and frequently outright denied the existence of, Boko Haram attacks several times in the past, including a prior massacre in Baga in 2013 where both Boko Haram and the Nigerian military were implicated in the death of over 200 citizens.[13][14][15]

On 7 January, a government spokesperson stated that 1,636 IDPs had been registered following the attack.[19] According to independent reports and local officials, however, least 35,000 people are thought to have fled the region.[3] "Bodies lay strewn on the streets", according to survivors, as the entire population of Baga is thought to have fled, some into Cameroon and Chad.[5][10] Approximately 20,000 sought shelter at camp near Maiduguri, the state capital, and another 10,000 in Monguno were waiting to be transported.[2][3] Bukar said that the town was now "virtually non-existent".[3] Local human rights activists said that they had been told by women who had escaped the town that their daughters, some as young as 10, had been kidnapped.[5]

Chadian Prime Minister Kalzeubet Pahimi Deubet said that at least 2,500 Nigerians and 500 Chadians had sought refuge in the neighbouring country following the attacks, some of whom were trying to cross Lake Chad in flimsy and overloaded canoes.[4][5] Many of those trying to cross the lake were feared to have drowned, while hundreds of others, over five hundred by one account, were trapped on islands in the lake.[2][9] According to local officials who had communicated with the refugees via telephone, refugees were "dying from lack of food, cold and malaria" on one "mosquito-infested island."[5]

Many commentators criticised the international media for a perceived lack of coverage of the massacre, especially in comparison with that received by the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, which had occurred just days before.[24][25] However, President Goodluck Jonathan, while campaigning in Enugu for re-election and his People's Democratic Party on 8 January, himself condemned the events in Paris as a "dastardly terrorist attack", while refraining from making any comment on the massacre in Baga.[26][27] Jonathan's failure to remark on the attacks earned him widespread and international criticism; Julius Malema, leader of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party in South Africa and former head of the Youth League of the ruling African National Congress, disparaged Jonathan, saying:

Goodlook, or Goodluck or whatever his name is or badluck I don’t know ... He is quick to release statement about the killing in Paris; but don’t (sic) say anything about the killings in his own country. That’s an irresponsible leadership.[28]

On 14 January, Goodluck, along with Chief of the Defence Staff Badeh, National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki, and several other senior military commanders, made an unscheduled visit to Maiduguri, meeting with Borno's governor, Kashim Shettima, at the city's airport under heavy guard.[29] The visit was "shrouded in secrecy" and Jonathan made no public comment about his visit or the attacks while there. On 16 January, members of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, including Hafsat Abiola-Costello, daughter of the late imprisoned President-elect M.K.O. Abiola, published an open letter in The Guardian to Jonathan urging him to end his silence on the attacks, saying that he had "met calamity with insouciance", drawing parallels with his belated response to the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.[30]

The issue of the Boko Haram insurgency and the inability of the government to fight the group were closely tied with the country's upcoming presidential elections. According to Manji Cheto, vice-president of a corporate advisory firm, Goodluck "by acknowledging the scale of the violence, [would be] acknowledging a certain degree of his failure as a president, so he’s not going to talk about security with less than six weeks to go before the election."[26] Many analysts and observers expressed similar views, that the downplaying of the attacks by Goodluck, the government, and media outlets supportive of the PDP was intended to reduce the political costs of domestic instability in the election.[22][26]

In contrast, the opposition All Progressives Congress and its candidate, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, were quick to condemn the attacks and the government's response. Buhari, on 10 January, said that the massacre was further proof to the claim that "Nigeria has become a place where people no longer feel safe, where the armed forces have neither the weapons nor the government support required to do an effective job of protecting Nigerian citizens and their property."[26] Buhari, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, seized power in a 1983 coup d'état before being ousted himself in a coup d'état in 1985 on the grounds that his style of rule was excessively repressive. According to analysts, however, to many Nigerians in 2015, Buhari's "reputation for strong leadership and intolerance of corruption" as leader, and his campaigning on such, appealed to an "intense public yearning for an end to Boko Haram’s nihilism and to instability caused by rising communal, criminal and political violence".[31] The search for security could "override traditional voting patterns based on religious and ethnic affiliations", but the International Crisis Group in a reported warned that the tightening race instead "suggests the country is heading toward a very volatile and vicious electoral contest."[31] Although the elections were postponed, the ongoing violence and insurgency of Boko Haram is regarded as having played a major factor in Buhari's ultimate defeat of Jonathan.