In 2010, before the mass killings in Nigeria became known world-wide, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Islamic group Boko Haram, promised to annihilate all traces of Western culture and education in Africa's most populous nation in a 25 minute long video, according to The Washington Post.
Two months after the video's release, dozens of armed militants belonging to the group stormed a prison and freed 150 Boko Haram members, and 700 more inmates, the Post reported. Then on Christmas Eve, the group unleashed a flurry of bomb attacks in Nigeria that killed 38 Christians worshiping at church or shopping for gifts.
"We will continue with our attacks on disbelievers and their allies and all those who help them," the group said, according to the Post.
The killings reflect sectarian tension between Christians and Muslims in the country and shortly after the prison break grew extremely tense, the Post reported.
In the past four years, according to estimates in journalistic and Amnesty International reports, Boko Haram has killed at least 2,300 people, according to the Post. In the first four months of this year alone, Amnesty International says 1,500 people have died in ethnic violence with most killings being indiscriminate and brutal.
Nigerian authorities say Boko Haram are responsible for the middle of the night kidnapping of 234 schoolgirls who were sleeping in dormitories at Chibok school, the Post reported. In the two weeks since, despite parents' searches in remote forests, there has been no sign of the girls.
The terror group, which has not claimed responsibility for the abductions, has roots in an anti-education ideology, speaking to the fact the girls were in school as a motive, according to the Post.
The groups disdain for an education model left behind by Britain is manifested both in the translation of the group's name, which translates into"Western education is sinful," and its terror attacks, the Post reported.
In July 2013, 29 students were burned alive at a school in northern Nigeria,and days later, Boko Haram's leader Shekau said, "Teachers who teach western education? We will kill them! We will kill them in front of their students, and tell students to henceforth study the Qur'an," according to the Post.
Boko Haram massacred 40 more students two months later, and in February of this year, 59 boys attending boarding school were shot dead, and their school razed, the Post reported.
With such a brutal precedent, parents of the missing Nigerian schools have succumbed to panic, underscoring just how powerless the government has been to save the children, according to the Post.
