Nigeria

Relatively peaceful presidential and gubernatorial elections in March and April 2015 marked a positive shift in Nigeria’s history of political violence. In the northeast, the militant insurgent group Boko Haram killed civilians, abducted women and girls, forcefully conscripted young men and boys, and destroyed homes and schools, displacing hundreds of thousands.  Government security forces, including the police are implicated in human rights abuses throughout the country, with little effort made to bring to hold those responsible to account. In the Middle-Belt, unresolved competition for power and access to land between nomadic pastoralists and farming communities has led to deadly clashes.