There are signs that as the Nigerian army and the police continue to fail to meet the security needs of the people, they will turn toward repression. In November, Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai called on all troops to put themselves in a "war mode."

Nigerian Major General Ibrahim Manu Yusuf, commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) fighting the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin, announced that 109 Boko Haram fighters and their prisoners had defected in Cameroon.

The freeing of perhaps 344 boys kidnapped from a boarding school at Kankara in Katsina state is unalloyed good news. An attempt to kidnap another eighty school children, at Dandume in the same state a few days later on December 19, was foiled.

This update represents violence in Nigeria and related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger from August 1 to 7, 2020.