The Boko Haram Menace

Here in Nigeria’s commercial hub, it is tempting to regard Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group that for more than five years has waged war in the country’s far northeast, as a distant tragedy. We are, of course, aware of the fallout: the thousands of deaths, the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, the destroyed infrastructure — schools, churches, mosques, homes, police stations — that will take years, and millions of dollars, to rebuild. But in southern Nigeria, it is easy to feel removed from the crisis.