In 2009 a once quiet local Salafi group called Boko Haram became increasingly violent in north-east Nigeria and border communities of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Its quest to forbid western education in the heavily Islamic region has led to the kidnapping of many school children, the slaughter of an estimated 2,200 teachers and the burning down of 1,400 schools. But the terrorist group was largely unknown on the world stage until the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014.
The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, used in the international calls for the girls to be rescued, garnered over 3.3 million tweets in less than a month. It became Twitter’s most used hashtag at the time, reaching 6.1 million tweets in 2016. It inspired protests around the world demanding the immediate release of the girls.
