Salis Abdulsalam, founder of the Displaced Women and Children Foundation, has criticized the Nigerian media and government authorities for contributing to the escalation of the Boko Haram insurgency by popularizing the group’s Hausa name, according to Channels TV on Friday, November 14, 2025.
Abdulsalam explained that the widely used name “Boko Haram,” often translated as “Western education is forbidden,” has framed the conflict as an anti-Western, religious crusade, diverging from the group’s official Arabic designation, Jama’atu Ahl as-Sunnah li-Da’awati wal-Jihad (Group of the Sunni People for the Calling and Jihad).
He said, “Now why do I say that the media created the name, made the name Boko Haram popular. They have their Arabic name.” Abdulsalam argued that this choice by the media, combined with government narratives, has entrenched the perception that the insurgency is fundamentally about Islam versus Western education.
Highlighting the consequences, he noted, “So now because they say Boko Haram in Hausa means Western education is a sin… automatically when they say Western education, the narrative there is… emanated from the missionaries, emanated from the Western world where Islamic practice is limited.”
Abdulsalam concluded that by framing the insurgency in this way, the media has inadvertently reinforced a simplified and misleading narrative of religious conflict, rather than addressing the political, social, and economic factors that underpin the violence.
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