Boko Haram ranks 2nd, Nigeria 5th in new global terror ranking

Only Afghanistan’s Taliban were ahead of Boko Haram on a list of global perpetrators of terror according to a recently obtained report commissioned by the United States government.

Just last week, the U.S. State Department announced a $7 million bounty for information that will lead to the capture of the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.

[READ - #SoE Update: Catch Boko Haram leader and get N1.1bn – US]

An annex to the 2012 U.S. government report on terrorism, but which was recently made available to the press, shows that besides the Taliban in Afghanistan, Nigeria’s Boko Haram had the highest number of terror attacks last year and killed also the second highest number of people.

The report called the ‘Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism‘ or START conducted by the University of Maryland for the American government on global terrorism in 2012 contained some startling figures.

The Taliban killed 1,842 people in 525 attacks last year, easily topping the infamous ranking, while Boko Haram came second having killed 1,132 people in 364 attacks.

Both the Taliban and Boko Haram caused more casualties than Iraq’s Al-Qaeda, India’s Maoists, Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula among other global terrorist groups.

The statistical report also revealed that of the top 10 countries with the most terrorist attacks last year, Nigeria placed a shocking fifth.

Also, Nigeria ranked fourth in number of deaths from terrorist attacks. in 2012, there were a total number of 546 terror attacks in Nigeria with 1, 386 casualties.

Boko Haram accounted for a staggering 81.67% of that number.

The report observes that “the average lethality of terrorist attacks in Nigeria (2.54 deaths per attack) is more than 50 per cent higher than the global average of 1.64.”

The statistical report revealed that in 2012, the majority of highly lethal attacks – 159  in  all - took place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria and Syria, killing a total of 2,880 people.

START was conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, based at the University of Maryland. The consortium is affiliated to the US Department of Homeland Security.