ВЗГЛЯД ЗАРУБЕЖНОГО ЭКСПЕРТА NIGERIA’S BOKO HARAM TERRORIST GROUP ILESANMI A. BAKARE (Nigeria) People’s Friendship University of Russia Keywords: Boko Haram, terrorism, Nigeria, insurgency, West Africa B order security has come to assume heightened importance in the world today as the rate of criminal activities have also increased in scale especially since the end of Cold War and in the wake of globalization. <...> The world has turned into a ‘global village’ with its own peculiarities as well as problems. <...> The porous borders of Nigeria/West Africa continue to engender cross-border crime and instability in the sub-region. <...> Owing to the lack of an appropriate mechanism for monitoring movements and illegal activities across these borders, several criminal activities across transnational borders becomes the order of the day. <...> Terrorist acts perpetrated by Boko Haram* have damaged the liberty in * Boko Haram is an insurgency/ terrorist group that officially began in 2002. <...> In 2009 it became a deadly jihadist armed rebel group rebelling against the government of Nigeria. <...> The insurgency has spread to neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger thus becoming a major regional terrorist organization. <...> TRANS-BOUNDARY ACTIVITIES THAT STIMULATES THE GROWTH OF BOKO HARAM Nowadays terrorism is a global phenomenon that has an influence on everyone’s life, as it threatens stability and public safety worldwide. <...> Terrorist acts perpetrated by Boko Haram have damaged the liberty in Nigeria, caused the death of thousand people, and harmed the national infrastructure2. <...> In West Africa alone, there are a total of 35 international boundaries characterized by high levels of porosity. <...> This makes them highly vulnerable to threats such as trafficking of people, drugs, small arms and light weapons as well as recent instances of terrorism. <...> Nonetheless, border security issues are not always integrated into national security or economic strategies, and border agencies are usually ill-equipped, ill-trained and poorly resourced3. <...> Some of these activities involve the illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons/ammunitions and human beings, especially women and children. <...> Mercenarism and the recruitment and use of child soldiers in armed conflict, transnational syndicates involved in crimes such as peddling of narcotics, armed robbery and the smuggling <...>