Indiscriminate attacks against civilians have prevented support for Boko Haram

Nigeria's Boko Haram, which once enjoyed strong support in parts of country's north, finds itself increasingly isolated. In 2011, northern Nigeria's highest-ranking Christian official warned that the rebel group Boko Haram's violent campaign seeking to establish an Islamic state could lead to a religious war.

But nearly three years later, Saidu Dogo - the former secretary-general of the Christian Association of Nigeria in the country's 19 northern provinces - said "the thinking of the people is changing completely".

Christians living in Nigeria's north, where Muslims make up the majority of the population, have seen themselves as the primary target of Boko Haram, a group that has killed thousands of people since its founding in 2009. But as the group's attacks have become more indiscriminate, killing Christian and Muslim civilians alike, attitudes have begun to change.

"This thing backfired," said Dogo. Now, he said, "you can see the condemnation is both Muslim and Christian; everybody is condemning this ... everybody is turning against the insurgents".

Boko Haram, which kidnapped more than 200 girls from their boarding school in northeastern Nigeria last month, had in the past tried to win the hearts and minds of Muslim Nigerians. The group's founder, Muhammed Yusuf, rose in popularity during the group's early days by criticising governmental corruption and what he considered to be the incomplete implementation of Islamic law in northern Nigeria. During clashes in 2009, Yusuf was arrested and extrajudicially executed by Nigerian security forces, an incident that helped to attract more recruits to the group.

"In a region in which education standards are extremely low and there is a long-standing history of religious radicalism and anti-establishment dissidence, Boko Haram's cause was able to find rich breeding grounds," said Roddy Barclay, a senior West Africa analyst for Control Risks, a risk consultancy firm.