Nigeria Undercover with Yalda Hakim Our World

on BBC News Channel, Our World. Yalda Hakim investigates Boko Haram

` the Islamic militants behind the abduction of dozens of schoolgirls

and many other acts of violence in Northern Nigeria.

Boko Haram. Until April of this year, few had ever heard of these

ultraviolent Islamist militants. Or their charismatic leader Abubaker

Shekau. But a mass abduction of over 200 cool girls changed all of that.

The slogan became a rallying cry. We cannot afford to fail them by being

in different. Filming openly in northeastern Nigeria is difficult

and dangerous. But Our World has been their undercover, deep into the

heartland of the militants where innocent people are caught between

the guns of Boko Haram and the brutality of Nigeria's security

forces. We found a land of hopelessness, desperation and fear.

This is the unity fountain in downtown Abuja, the Nigerian

capital. Every day, a small but determined group of protesters

gathered to demand that the government here works to release the

schoolgirls who were taken by gunmen from the town of Chibok in

northeastern Nigeria. Weeks and months have passed and there is

still no sign of the girls but these demonstrators come back day in and

day out demanding for the girls to be returned. For the government, is

has become an international embarrassment and they just want the

issue to go away. Since the girls went missing in April there have

been no concrete operations to try been no concrete operations to try

to rescue them. But dozens more women and children have been

kidnapped and hundreds more Nigerians killed adding to the

thousands who lost their lives since Boko Haram started its campaign in

2009. We cannot live with this insecurity. Our development is

compromised by the scale of terrorism. We cannot be completely

unconcerned about the fact that we are losing the sacredness and

integrity of our human existence in Nigeria to a bandit group. So, how

has this happened in the country recently billed as a future African

superpower? And adjust to our Boko Haram? I will be asking these

questions of those in authority here and meeting victims of the

militants. But we have also had a journalist filming in Maiduguri, in

the conflict zone. He went in under cover for his and his interviewees

safety. We will call him Savi. He travelled to Maiduguri, the regional

capital of Borno state, one of three eastern regions under a state of

emergency. Driving north from Abuja, the situation becomes more

militarized and Nigerian army road blocks are commonplace. Borno state

was once known locally as the home of peace. But that nickname now

seems bitterly ironic. Until last year, Maiduguri itself was the

sender of Boko Haram activities but they have since been pushed out of

the cities into nearby rule areas. Once a major trading hub with a

population of over a million, the whole town is now surrounded by a

series of defensive earth blocks built by the Nigerian army. All his

interviews had to be done anonymously as people here are too

scared of reprisals from either Boko Haram or the Nigerian security

forces. One truck driver told him that to Boko Haram had effectively

taken control of many of the main roads across the region.

This Welders said that while the situation had stabilised in the

city, the rule areas were a completely different matter ``

welder `` rural. Boko Haram is the group's local

nickname. It translates roughly as Western education is a sin. Hundreds

of state schools across the Northeast have been attacked and

almost all those in Borno state have closed down. Boko Haram have not yet

attacked Islamic schools or other areas. This young child told our

reporter that the she was still dared `` she. Admissions at the

University of Maiduguri are down by 80%. Some of those who spoke to him

were too scared even to do anonymous interviews on camera. Many people

have now fled the conflict zone altogether. I am on my way to the

northern city to meet a family who left the region seven months ago and

have joined the 650,000 other Nigerians the UN says have been

internally displaced by this conflict.

Tell me what happened at your school?

So just to our Boko Haram and what do they want? Worn out of the

grinding poverty and marginalisation of northeastern Nigeria, the group

was founded in 2002 by an Islamist called Mohammed Youssef who was

himself, a radical. This man, and Abuja `based political analyst knows

them well. From their inception, they grew as a theocratic agenda to

turn Nigeria into an Islamist state. The see themselves as the

Taliban of Nigeria and they pursue their ideology with the use of force

and violence. The group turned to violence in 2009 following a police

crackdown and after Mohammed Youssef was killed in police custody, a new

leader emerged, Abubaker Shekau. Boko Haram then became much more

aggressive, targeting churches, schools, military facilities and

making widespread use of car bombs and kidnapping. Little is known

about Abubaker Shekau, he has surrounded himself with a cultural

fear. But our interviews and footage shed new light on his life and

mindset. He spent his formative years here in Maiduguri but even by

local standards, he lived in abject poverty in this house in the slum

quarter of the city. And this is the actual room he rented. After being

expelled from a small local Islamist school for his increasingly

fundamentalist views, he then enrolled in this government`run

Islamic school. One former classmate who has never spoken to the media

before the members him as a loner. This man was once well connected to

what became Boko Haram. Although he claims to have left the group, well

before it turned to violence, he knew Abubaker Shekau personally.

This is the first time he has spoken publicly.

In his publicity films, Abubaker Shekau is usually brandishing

Kalashnikov, and dressed in military fatigues. But a colleague explained

this is all a carefully constructed image.

Abubaker Shekau and his insurgents are terrifying the local population.

But so are some elements of the Nigerian security forces. Their

record in this conflict is decidedly mixed. On March 14 this year, Boko

Haram filmed this audacious assault by the group on these barracks in

Maiduguri. During the course of the attack, the insurgents freed over

1000 prisoners who had been detained for being suspected members of, or

sympathises with, Boko Haram. These inmates included women and

children. Many of the prisoners who were members of Boko Haram

apparently left with their comrades, but numerous other D10 is

simply went home. Among those who escaped, was this fruit seller, who

our undercover research met in Maiduguri. `` researcher.

Others met a different fate. Amnesty International reports that in the

hours following the breakout, hundreds of escapees were rounded up

by a Nigerian security forces and vigilantes and executed in cold

lard. The Nigerian military issued a statement saying they had repelled

the barracks assault with heavy human casualties on the terrorists.

`` in cold blood. But they had never responded officially to the

allegations of mass executions. Our research also heard stories of the

incompetence. This man works for the government militia formed to support

regular Nigerian troops in the north`east. At a joint mission to

attack a Boko Haram based did not end as he had expected.

The militia man told us the army wanted to avoid a face`to`face

confrontation with Boko Haram's well armed gunmen.

Our undercover research also heard first`hand accounts of military

brutality from this 58`year`old man. The Nigerian authorities say

criticism of the handling of Boko Haram is unfair. There has been a

lot of accusations that the military is corrupt and that they are aiding

and abetting Boko Haram, and therefore the fight against the

insurgency is becoming even more difficult. You should... I think the

difference between the military institutions and individuals. And

there is no institution that you will not have good people and bad

people within it. So you admit... No, I am not admitting, because I

have no evidence. Yet a human rights report and Amnesty International

have spoken to locals that say the military uses force themselves and

unlawfully detained people in the name of capturing these insurgents.

It was a report that came out this year, on the period between 2011 and

2012. We are talking of issues at the moment. But it is still accusing

the military of using heavy`handed tactics. That is being investigated

at an institutional level. We as the military will don't want to comment

on it until all the processors have taken through. You have no comment

on allegations the military had used force or unlawfully detained or

tortured people in the name of capturing insurgents. No. The

military would not do that. It is a professional force. Whatever it will

do would be within the specifications of international

practices. For the Nigerian authorities, their seeming inability

to make any progress in the case of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls has

become symbolic of their failure to deal with the insurgency as a whole.

The credibility of the government is now at an all`time low. Until these

girls are rescued. And the government is in a bind. If they

used force to rescue these girls, and they turn out tragically, the

government will be accused and blamed. And if they agree to swap

the government will still be blamed and accused of surrendering to a

terror organisation. Another possibility, unbearable though it

is, is that the Chibok girls may never come home. We can't afford to

fail these girls. You know, we failed them in that they trusted as

`` the society. The society said that education was important. They

trusted society, they showed for school and exams, and they were

carted away by these wicked fellows. We failed them once in not being

able to abort their abduction. We can't afford to fail them by being

in different to the possibilities of their rescue.

Hello once again. Friday turned out to be a pretty stormy affair for

some parts of England and Wales. As the heat of the afternoon got going,

we saw quite a lot of storm activity gradually easing its way in lanes as

you see here, one from the South Wales through the heart of the

Midlands and East Anglia. Another one a little bit further towards the

north. And some odd rogue showers just following on behind, tending to

gradually fade