They’re called the “Nigerian Taliban”, but the home-grown Islamic fundamentalist sect appears to have no direct relations to the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

“Being called Taliban allows them to reach an international audience they didn’t have before,” said Seidik Abba, correspondent in France for the Panafrican News Agency.

It’s not clear whether the group draws inspiration from the Afghan Taliban or if the term was just locally used – and then adopted by the group. What is clear, however, is that the goal of the group is the adoption of a strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia.

One of the group’s main gripes appears to be the influence of Western education, which sect members believe, instils immoral values among Nigerian youth. The group is also known as “Boko Haram”, which loosely translates as “Western education is a sin.”

In recent days, the Boko Haram’s primary targets have been Nigerian government representatives and symbols.

“Their goal is not to overthrow the government but to prohibit alcohol, prevent girls from going to school, ban Western-style education, impose Islamic dress codes and to enforce sharia,” said Abba.

These radical militants are mostly disaffected youths and school dropouts, but they also include sons of prominent local families. They were led by Mohammed Yusuf, the sect’s spiritual head, who was arrested and shot dead by the police on July 30. Security forces announced on the same day that they had killed his deputy, Abubakar Shekau.

Widespread sectarian violence

Nigeria has more than 200 ethnic groups, and the country, Africa’s most populous, is divided along ethnic and religious lines. Northern regions are mostly inhabited by Muslims while the country’s south is predominantly Christian.

Nigerian was scarred by the bloody Biafra conflict between 1967 and 1970, when the central government fought against the Ibos, a Christian ethnic group based in the eastern region of Biafra. This civil war was more about politics than religion, but it caused more than a million deaths

In 2000, 12 states out of 36 decided to impose Islamic law, prompting Christian minorities to flee widespread persecution. Since then, sectarian violence has sprung up all over the country, resulting in thousands of casualties.

In February 2000, a Christian anti-sharia demonstration in the northern state of Kaduna led to inter-faith clashes in which more than 2,000 people lost their lives. Hundreds more were killed in the following months as violence spread to other states.

Nigeria is still gripped by periodic ethnic violence. In November 2008, clashes following disputed local elections in the central city of Jos resulted in hundreds of deaths, according to human rights groups.

A former British colony, Nigeria’s laws are based on English common law. But in 2000, 12 northern Nigerian states added criminal law to the jurisdiction of sharia courts, which have long existed in Muslim-dominated areas of the western African nation.

While there are different schools of thought and interpretations of sharia, some of the Nigeria’s sharia court-ordered punishments in recent years – including whipping and stoning to death – have sparked criticisms from international rights groups.

The 2002 stoning to death sentence of a Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, on adultery charges was overwhelmingly condemned by rights groups and Western governments. Her sentence was subsequently overturned by a sharia court of appeal.

Government authority targeted

In July, the Boko Haram shot into the international spotlight following an attack on a police station in the northern state of Bauchi. Radical Islamist militants then clashed with security forces in three neighbouring states.

“This time, the fundamentalists attacked the government instead of other religious groups,” said Abba.

Some analysts also point to rivalry over natural resources as another cause of the recent clashes. Although oil-rich Nigeria is Africa’s second biggest economy, half its population lives under the poverty line.

“The Christian south has hydrocarbons and infrastructures,” said Pascal Drouhaud, a historian and Africa specialist. “The Muslim north is much poorer. It’s a socio-economic problem that has cursed Nigeria’s history over the last 40 years.”