stories

1. The Making and Unmaking of Abubakar Shekau – Ahmad Salkida (43,043)

To understand the present and make corrections for the future, we must revisit the past. This investigative exposé details the making and unmaking of Abubakar Shekau; how a boy who was good at playing football became a perfume seller and then a terrorist warlord who orchestrated abductions, killings, and terror across Nigeria.

2. What Resettlement Looks Like When The Gunshots Haven’t Stopped by Sabiqah Bello (35,710)

In this delicate story about Fati Bukar and her son, we look at how lives are affected by insecurity, displacement, and resettlement. This story shows us that the human fallout of the insurgency doesn’t manifest only in the fear of lives and properties; it also takes form in the fear of saying goodbye to a loved one, not to death, but to distance. The story is a reminder that government solutions must involve the people they were created to serve and consider the nuances of their lives.

3. Lost Homes, No Aid: The Forgotten IDPs Uprooted by Terrorists in North Central Nigeria by Isah Ismaila (35,387)

Due to terrorist activities, residents have moved to a Shiroro displacement camp in Niger State, North Central Nigeria. But for these people, life is stalled. Business owners have abandoned their shops, children can no longer go to school, and healthcare doesn’t exist. In this story, we highlight how institutional neglect traps citizens in a cycle of poverty and despair.

4. Boko Haram is Tracking and Assassinating Defectors in Nigeria’s North East. Here is how. By Usman Abba Zanna (29,904)

We reported how former Boko Haram members trying to reintegrate into society have a target on their backs by the group. Here, we showed that renouncing allegiance to the terror groups doesn’t end the war; it simply makes you a different kind of target.

5. Boko Haram/ISWAP Resurgence in Lake Chad Region Sparks Alarm by Usman Abba Zanna (29,553)

Through sophisticated operations, incessant small-scale abductions, and major funds generation from high-profile abductions, we document the resurgence of Boko Haram and ISWAP attacks in the Lake Chad region. These early warning signs show communities witnessing fresh assaults from terrorists, and through open-source monitoring, we reveal how terrorists are amplifying their online presence by leveraging TikTok.

6. Borno’s Resettled Families Are Quietly Fleeing Again by Usman Abba Zanna (24,416)

In 2019, the Borno State government commenced the resettlement of displaced families to Kawuri, their hometown in northeastern Nigeria. The returnees believed that life would return to what they were used to, but their current state is deplorable. In this report, we found that they have no healthcare, no basic essential supplies, and the persistent presence and growing threat of Boko Haram insurgents is forcing them to flee once again.

7. Can Digital Technology Fix Efficiency and Accountability in Nigeria’s Government Agencies? by Ibrahim Adeyemi (21,054)

Nigeria has a long history of a lack of accountability and transparency in public spaces. To reduce this and boost efficiency in Government parastatals, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) established the DocFlow and the MDA Naira Payment Solution. 

The DocFlow system was created to digitalise the daily operations of government workers, replacing paper-heavy processes. The MDA Naira Payment Solution is focused on automating payment processes for Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), with a system promising to make transactions faster and more accurate while also preventing fraud and reducing errors. We looked at the efficiency of these systems.

8. The Implications of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s Exit from ECOWAS by Usman Abba Zanna (19,297)

In January, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger exited ECOWAS and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). While this exit was celebrated by mass rallies across the three countries, it sent shockwaves through the region. Here, we looked at the economic ramifications and implications of this break.

9. Massacres in Border Communities Ignite New Terror Wave in Benue State by Johnstone Kpilaakaa  (18,923)

Benue communities in North-Central Nigeria have been at war with recurring violence between farming communities and nomadic herders over land and resources. This crisis has forced people, young and old, into displacement. In this report, we show that for the old, home no longer exists as they knew it; for the young, home is a place born out of violence and death.

10. The Evasive Funding Channels Sustaining Boko Haram/ISWAP in Nigeria by Aliyu Dahiru (15,036)

People often wonder and ask how terror groups can fund their operations and provide for themselves far away from society. To answer the age-old question of terror financing, this analysis showed us that beneath the violence, beyond the battlefield,  terrorists have taken control and now govern civilian spaces, collecting taxes, enforcing laws, and offering basic welfare, particularly within their strongholds in the Lake Chad region. Other illicit financial flows come from crypto donations, smuggling, and black market operations.

Her Missing Son Returns In Her Dreams 

“I enjoyed editing several stories this year, but this one stayed with me because of how Sabiqah narrated it with an intimate voice that draws you directly into the woman’s inner world: the dreams, the dread, the relentless memory of her child. 

The writing does more than tell a personal story; it brings the national crisis of missing persons in Nigeria into sharp, human focus. The storytelling lets the reader feel the ache without forcing it, turning one woman’s sorrow into something universally recognisable and impossible to look away from.”

– Johnstone Kpilaakaa, Sub-editor and head of standards.

Widowed by Boko Haram, Swept by Floods, but She Refused to Sink

“It was written by Abdulkareem Haruna; therefore, there was almost no serious work from my side. It’s best for me because it tells a story of resilience. The story of a woman who could have abandoned everything and buried herself in despair, but she refused to be drowned in the abyss of two big tragedies: the Boko Haram war and a natural disaster.”

– Aliyu Dahiru, Head of the Extremism and Radicalism desk

From Elephants to Warthogs: The Shadow Wildlife Trade Financing Boko Haram in Nigeria

“One thing I love about this story is the adrenaline of promptness and emergency it gave while editing it. We were working on a tight deadline, and it needed to be delivered excellently. The reporter, Al-amin Umar, made this a lot easier because he understood his role and did it to the best of his ability. He followed guidelines religiously and ensured the story came out well. The subject matter was also crazy to probe within limited time and resources. But we pulled it through regardless. It’s a story worth celebrating.” 

– Ibrahim Adeyemi, Investigations Editor

Displaced People with Disabilities Face Severe Struggles in Borno Camps 

“Disabled people’s stories are usually underreported, especially those in IDP camps. This story, by Abubakar Mukhtar Abba, is very in-depth and takes us on a journey into what it means to be displaced and disabled in an unaccommodating environment. It pointed out their struggles with accessibility and how that impacts their health and the community generally, highlighting why accessibility is a fundamental right and benefits society in general. It also shows how a lack of inclusion pushes disabled people away from camps, causing social, environmental and health problems due to how they are excluded from society. 

This story brings those at the fringes of society into the spotlight while maintaining their full humanity and dignity.”

– Hauwa Abubakar Saleh, Assistant Editor, Features Desk

The Intersection Between Healthcare and Loyalty to Terror Groups 

“We are still finding out the ways lives have been affected following the USAID suspension. I find this story particularly enlightening because it shows us how everything affects everything, you do not readily think loyalty to a terror group intersects with healthcare.”

— Shade Mary-Ann Olaoye, Audience Growth and Engagement Editor 

1. The Making and Unmaking of Abubakar Shekau

Abubakar Shekau, a founding leader of the Boko Haram terror group, killed himself with a suicide vest four years ago at his base in Sambisa, during an attack by ISWAP, an offshoot of his group. Through archived materials and interviews with over ten individuals, including former associates, friends, bodyguards, and captives of Shekau, HumAngle’s Editor-in-Chief, Ahmad Salkida, penned what is arguably the most in-depth exposé into the life of the terror leader. 

Following its publication in November, our website suffered a cyber attack that took us offline for a while, but it didn’t hinder a widespread reception of the story, which sparked a national discourse on the history of the insurgency that has gripped Nigeria for over a decade, and how the terror that Shekau ignited has outlived him. 

2. Maitatsine: The Preacher of Fire (1927 – 1980) 

Maitatsine is a Cameroonian and Kano-based Islamic preacher whose teachings and activities turned violent, birthing several cult-like movements in Nigeria’s North that radicalised and also influenced young people. In December 1980, his ideology culminated in one of the deadliest urban uprisings in Nigerian history. This ideology, the rejection of modernity, would later influence terror leaders like Muhammad Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau. 

The exposé carefully examined the unhealed wound that Maitatsine created. It is yet another archival documentation that seeks to contribute to the understanding of Nigeria’s contemporary security challenges and how they emerged from unassuming places. 

3. The Boys Lured into Boko Haram’s Enclave with Food Rations

When terror groups are referred to in the media, the description is often ‘armed men’, but that’s not always the case, as we’ve reported on women terrorists and this time, young boys. For this investigation, we spent time with Hassan Audu, a 16-year-old who, alongside his brother, was captured by Boko Haram terrorists, who in turn used food to keep him within their ranks. 

The story offers insight into the terror group’s recruitment strategy for child soldiers and what the governance structure is like in their enclaves in North Central Nigeria, including in the group’s logistics department, where Audu worked.

4. A Robbery Incident Killed His Wife and Unravelled His Whole Life 

We spent eight months tracking the effects of one tragedy on the life of one man and then represented the story in an interactive story that blends photos, videos, illustrations, and animations. Modu Bakura, a 30-year-old resident of Bama, northeastern Nigeria, was robbed three years ago. He lost his wife in the attack and also suffered several injuries that took months to recover from. 

We penned a tender narrative of this incident, and the years that have followed, and how he continues to survive amidst debt and emotional hurt. 

5. What Life Could Have Been for Leah Sharibu at 22  

In May, Leah Sharibu turned 22. It was also her seventh year in captivity after Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) abducted her alongside 104 other schoolgirls from their dormitory in Dapchi, northeastern Nigeria. She’s the only one among the girls who remains in captivity, and has since become a global face of schoolchildren abducted in Nigeria during the reign of the insurgency in the country. 

To commemorate her birthday, we sat with her only sibling to understand who she was before captivity and what she imagined her life would be like in seven years. That conversation gave birth to a speculative non-fiction narrative where we constructed what would have been, while also reflecting on her current reality, and how his family has continued to grieve her absence. 

6. The Disappearing ₦aira

Two years ago, we interviewed everyday Nigerians to highlight the cost-of-living crisis that is faced in the country and how it has impacted their lives. This time around, we looked at the root of the crisis, not just the fruits. Through a data-driven interactive storytelling approach, we showed how the smaller denominations of the Nigerian Naira are disappearing

7. From Elephants to Warthogs: The Shadow Wildlife Trade Financing Boko Haram in Nigeria

Terrorism financing is one issue that comes up every time there’s a discussion about insurgency in Nigeria, and even across the world. 

In this investigation, we uncovered how terror groups like Boko Haram are using wildlife to fund their activities in the country. Not only is this causing harm to communities, but animals like Elephants have also vanished in conflict-affected areas in the North East, prompting poachers and terrorists to turn to Warthogs, an overlooked species with tusks just as valuable.

8. Boko Haram is Tracking and Assassinating Defectors in Nigeria’s North East. Here’s How 

Since the Nigerian government started the deradicalisation of terrorist deserters, we have extensively covered the struggle of reintegration that they face. But this report is different, it explores a challenge that is not often spoken about: the assassination of terrorists deserters by the groups they were once loyal to. Boko Haram, for instance, has created a spy network that tracks its defectors and assassinates them or forces them to return to their enclaves. 

Through interviews with some deserters, we revealed how this approach has increased issues of recidivism and its impact on the Operation Safe Corridor programme. 

9. The Intersection Between Healthcare and Loyalty to Terror Groups in Nigeria  

In last year’s Atypical List, we featured the story of Mariam, who we used to represent women as willing participants in terror. We spoke to her again recently, and she is on the brink of recidivism. The recent USAID funding cut is making it difficult for her to access the anti-retroviral medications that were the very reason why she defected.

10. To Those We Miss

When we report on missing persons, we often tell you how they went missing and how their families are faring. So, we thought, how about we give the families of these missing persons the mic and allow them to bare their minds unfiltered? This gave birth to this heartwarming video, where families sent words to their loved ones who have gone missing, some for decades. 

What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.

✍️ Author Chat

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.

(Humberto Brito)

Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.

All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.

Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?

I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.

The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?

After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.

This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.

All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.

Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.

You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?

I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)

Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”

Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.

Finally, three critics weigh in on the 15 best books of 2025, while Mariella Rudi ticks off the nine best celebrity memoirs of the year.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.

(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)

The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.

What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?

We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?

Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.

What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?

We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.

The Iliad Bookshop is located in North Hollywood at 5400 Cahuenga Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)