fueling

The ring light in Amina Yusuf’s* room stood near an old white wardrobe. For months, it remained unused, except during the occasional recordings where she mimed along to Hausa love songs, glancing between her phone screen and the mirror at the other side of the room. These moments were fleeting, unsure steps in her experiment with social media, particularly TikTok.

But when the news came that Facebook had rolled out monetisation features for content creators in Nigeria, something stirred. Opportunity, like the sudden spark of light, loomed and offered a new possibility. Not fame, no – at least not yet – but fortune, or its illusion.

“As soon as I heard about it,” she said, fiddling with the edge of her veil, “I knew this was a way to earn from what I was already doing.”

She speaks with the assurance of someone who has discovered a private economy within a public world. Amina converted her dormant Facebook profile, once used to scroll aimlessly through posts and video reels, into a professional page. She followed every breadcrumb Facebook’s interface dropped: optimize your bio, post consistently, engage followers, and cross-promote from Instagram. Soon enough, the app crowned her eligible for monetisation.

And that’s when her trouble began.

In this algorithmic marketplace, virality is currency. With 190 thousand followers on Facebook, her reach was growing – thousands of views, shares, and comments flooding her posts. Amina’s strategy was simple: find trending TikTok videos and repost them. It didn’t matter whether the videos were true or false, informative or inflammatory.

“My job is just to share,” she said. “It’s the viewer’s responsibility to figure out if it’s true or not.”

“Sometimes I earn between 10 to 15 dollars a day,” she said, not with pride, but a sense of surprise. “That’s a lot of money for someone like me. I even paid my school fees with it.”

As a university student in Northern Nigeria, where classrooms are overcrowded, lectures often suspended, and lecturers underpaid, she says her digital hustle has made her richer than her lecturers.

“I earn more than them,” she said plainly. “Imagine that.” She referenced how recently a university professor revealed the dire professional conditions they find themselves in.

To digital rights activists and fact-checkers, Amina is not just a clever student seizing a modern opportunity. She is part of a growing ecosystem that profits from confusion. What she calls content, they call misinformation. Monetised misinformation.

Facebook’s monetisation in Africa, especially in Nigeria and particularly in the northern part of the country, has become a double-edged sword. On one hand, it democratizes income in a region that ranks high in poverty rate. On the other hand, it rewards spectacle, sometimes at the expense of truth. Sensational headlines, recycled conspiracy theories, emotional hoaxes: these are the new exports of a digital continent eager to be seen, eager to be paid.

Amina does not deny this. But she also does not apologise.

“I don’t make the videos,” she said. “I just share what people have already posted. If it makes people comment and watch, that’s all I need.”

Her profile on Facebook is a mixture of different videos – politics, religion, celebrity gossip, football, and everything that may generate engagements. Among this, is the amplification of information disorder originally shared by the creators of the videos. 

For example, in a Facebook post that garnered over 60 shares, she amplified a false claim that Osun State Governor Adeleke had announced Babagana Zulum would spearhead the defection of five Northern governors to the new coalition of ADC. Despite the claim being publicly debunked, the post is still on her profile.

An algorithm designed for outrage

By design, Facebook’s algorithm privileges intensity over integrity. According to the platform’s own documentation, content that provokes strong emotional reactions – anger, fear, shock– is more likely to spread. For many users in Northern Nigeria, where Facebook doubles as both a social space and a news source, this has created a chaotic digital environment where engagement is currency and accuracy is often overlooked.

“Facebook isn’t just a platform here,” said Bashir Sharfadi, a journalist based in Kano. “It’s the main source of news for millions. So when influencers post fake news, the impact is immediate and vast.”

A 2020 report by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) West Africa, revealed that most of the viral posts flagged by Nigerian fact-checkers in the previous year originated from influencers who directly benefited from Facebook’s financial incentives. The rewards are tangible and tempting.

One such influencer, who regularly posts unverified videos to nearly a million followers, put it plainly: “It’s about engagement, not content.” He explained how influencers operate in coordinated communities, often through WhatsApp groups, sharing what trends, what triggers reaction. “The only reason we avoid some kinds of content, like nudity, is religious. But many others still post that too.”

The more scandalous the claim, the greater the traffic. And with traffic comes income.

But Sharfadi warns that the crisis goes beyond the individual pursuit of profit. It has become institutional: a digital ecosystem where misinformation is normalised, defended, and scaled.

“Our biggest challenge isn’t detecting lies,” he said. “It’s competing with the incentives that come with spreading them.” 

But Sharfadi has more concerns. People believe misinformation and they don’t care even after it is fact-checked.

In one recent case, a TikTok video targeting an activist named Dan Bello was re-edited and republished across Facebook and WhatsApp. Dan Bello is a popular Hausa vlogger with millions of followers on Facebook, TikTok, and X, posting mainly on accountability in governance.

The manipulated clip, falsely portrayed Dan Bello as ‘an enemy of Islam’ supporting an attack on Muslim clerics by showing him raising thumbs up on an audio attached to the video. It gained massive traction. The result: a popular cleric condemned Dan Bello publicly, sparking backlash that lingered even after the video was proven to be doctored.

“Even when the cleric apologised, people still believed he had been threatened into doing so,” said Sharfadi. “The damage had already been done.”

Another case involved one Sultan, a TikTok influencer known for posting commentary on current events. During the recent Israeli-Iran conflict, he claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was hiding in a bunker, near death. The clip was later manipulated to feature an image of Nigeria’s President Tinubu and circulated widely.

Sultan is now in jail.

“He was arrested in Kano for something he never did,” posted his lawyer on Facebook. “There was no investigation. No effort to verify. Just a swift response to digital noise.”

The story of Sultan is a portrait of a system where the line between user-generated content and criminal liability is dangerously blurred.

Who bears the burden?

In response to the growing crisis, Meta—Facebook’s parent company—has recently taken down and demonetised dozens of accounts for violating its content policies. But enforcement remains scattershot.

One influencer interviewed for this report admitted to receiving multiple warnings. Yet his account remains active and profitable.

About what caused a restriction on his account, he admitted, “I know it’s wrong, but if I stop, someone else will do it. So what’s the point?”

Critics argue that Facebook’s moderation policies are inconsistent and reactive. Content flagged in English may be removed, while misinformation in Hausa, spoken by tens of millions, is often overlooked.

“What we see is a system where the platform benefits, the influencers benefit, and the public suffers,” Sharfadi said. “It’s not just about demonetization. It’s about influence. These pages, with their massive followings, can be rented. You pay, they publish whatever narrative you want.”

The commodification of disinformation has taken root. Several influencers are now operating as pay-for-post vendors, spreading political propaganda and conspiracy theories on demand.

Fact-checkers like Muhammad Dahiru believe that Facebook must go beyond machine learning and invest in people—moderators fluent in local languages and cultures, equipped to flag false content in real time.

“We need language-specific moderation, especially in Hausa, which is the lingua franca in Northern Nigeria,” Muhammad said. “Otherwise, misinformation will remain the most profitable game in town.”

He added, “There must be accountability. Either platforms police themselves, or governments will do it for them. And when governments control speech, history reminds us what follows.” Muhammad believes the work against misinformation is shared responsibility  “between the government, Facebook, and civil society organisations.” 

For now, Northern Nigeria’s digital public is left to sort through a feed where facts and falsehoods blend seamlessly, where a student like Amina can pay tuition with profits from misinformation, and an activist like Dan Bello can be condemned for something that never happened.

The asterisked name is a pseudonym we have used at the source’s request to protect her against backlash.

Bello Ardo still remembers how they were sent away from Dapchi, a town in Yobe State, North East Nigeria.

It was 2015. He had just arrived with his family and herd, hoping to graze and rest after a long journey from Bauchi State. He approached the District Head, then the Divisional Police Officer, seeking permission to stay. But the community rejected them.

“They said, ‘We don’t want to see cattle here. We also don’t want to see strangers. Take your animals and leave our community,’” he recalled.

He moved southward to Ngamdu in Borno State, only to be met with hostility. “We went three days without water until the community leader intervened,” he said. 

Bello is a herder, an occupation he inherited 45 years ago. His parents were originally from Zamfara in the North West, but migrated to Kano, where he was born. He learnt to herd cattle in the once lush Falgore Game Reserve. 

By 2011, things had changed. The grass thinned, the rivers shrank, and he began migrating in search of pasture, following designated grazing routes, moving from Kano to Bauchi, then Yobe, Borno, and finally Adamawa. In each state, he made brief stops; sometimes staying just a day, and in some places up to three years. But the pattern remained the same: rejection, scarcity, and tension.

Bello is now the State Chairman of Sullubawa, a Fulbe clan known for cattle herding and spread across northwestern Nigeria. But titles mean little when the land offers no relief and the institutions once meant to support herders no longer function. The grazing routes Bello once followed stretched across the country’s northern region. They protected herders, shielded farmers, and helped maintain order. 

Those routes are gone, erased by urbanisation, farmland expansion, and state neglect. In their absence, herders searching for water and grass now stray into cultivated land, fuelling suspicion, resentment, and violence.

What happened to the routes?

There was a time when the routes had names.

Older herders, like Bello, still remember them, not as lines on a map, but as muscle memory. They could list the rivers they crossed, the forests they skirted, and the wells that dotted the way.

“The Falgore Forest was demarcated by the government,” Bello said. “Locally, we call this demarcation ‘centre.’ On the west of this demarcation were farmlands, on the east, wilderness with lush vegetation. To the north, a grazing route for cattle. This  leads to states like Bauchi and Benue.”

Leaving Kano, Bello arrived in Burra, Ningi, and then Tulu in Toro, all in Bauchi. Here, he spent three months in the Yuga Forest. Then he moved eastward, circling back to Gadar Maiwa in Ningi until he reached Darazo, still in Bauchi. From here, he spent the next 30 days migrating into Yobe.

He moved through Funai, under Ngelzarma town, and Dogon Kuka under Daura town, both in Fune LGA. He then travelled north of Damaturu to graze in Tarmuwa, south to Buni Yadi, east to Kukareta, and further on to Gashua and Nguru.

He said all these places have pastures but limited water, except during the rainy season.

Bello left Yobe in 2015 and arrived in Borno. After initial hostilities, he grazed Ngamdu, Benesheikh, Auno, and Jakana. Then, he entered villages like Dalori around the Alau Lake in Konduga. And then he entered the Komala Forest, still in Konduga. He left Borno in 2017 and migrated to Adamawa.

These were not random movements. They followed established corridors, called burtali, designed to support seasonal migration. Marked by the defunct Northern Regional Government during Nigeria’s First Republic, burtali were official grazing routes, some stretching hundreds of kilometres. They connected water points, grazing reserves, and veterinary posts, and were governed by traditional authorities and state institutions.

Herders knew where to move and when. Farmers knew which areas were off-limits during the season. Communities in between prepared for the passing of cattle and offered rest. There was friction, yes. But it was friction with the structure. Disputes could be mediated. Violations could be punished. Movement was predictable, and conflict was, for the most part, containable.

“The easiest way to identify the route is by cattle footprints,” Bello said. “It is always busy. There are also trees like dashi [hairy corkwood] and cini da zugu [jatropha], planted on both sides. The government planted some. Farmers also plant them to protect their fields.”

“Most of those routes have become farmlands, roads, or houses,” he said. “We now migrate through tarred roads and residential areas.” Even during his migration, Bello recalled that some routes were already blocked. “In some places, I followed the burtali and others tarred roads.”

In Sokoto State, Abdullahi Manuga, another nomadic herder, confirmed that most routes have been encroached upon. “When we reach a blockage, we have no choice but to go through towns or residential areas,” he said. 

This, experts say, is where tension begins. “When a route is blocked, the herder will try to find a way around it,” said Malik Samuel, a Senior Researcher at Good Governance Africa. “And in this process, animals stray into farmland or residential areas. This then leads to conflict.” 

Abdullahi explained the challenge: “With over 1,000 cattle, you cannot control all of them. One or two will stray into farmlands, often leading to clashes with farmers.”

The scale of the problem is vast. In 2018, desertification degraded more than 580,000 square kilometres of northern Nigeria, affecting about 62 million people. In Yobe, a HumAngle investigation uncovered how the shrinking ecosystem has intensified competition between farmers and herders. In Sokoto’s Goronyo and Gwadabawa, pastoralists have abandoned the Rima Dam, once a key watering point, due to drying reservoirs and farmland encroachment.

The disintegration did not happen overnight. It came in stages: farmlands slowly consumed designated routes. Grazing reserves fell into disuse. And eventually, the state disappeared from the equation altogether.

“Population has grown, while resources, land and water have not,” Malik said.

He stressed that the burtali were designed to prevent this tension. “These are the only routes known to herders. The reason behind the creation of these routes was to avoid tension between farmers and herders.”

Since 2020, more than 1,356 people have been killed in Nigeria due to farmer–herder violence, according to SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy. Amnesty International has identified the government’s failure to intervene or prosecute perpetrators as a major driver of the crisis.

Climate migration and desperation

Like Bello, Abdullahi is also on the move.

He is originally from Jangebe in Talata Mafara, Zamfara State, and has followed a path shaped by drought, conflict, and disappearance. His reason is the same.

“Scarcity of pasture, the expansion of farmlands, and continuous rustling of our cattle made us migrate,” he told HumAngle. “Most of our animals have been rustled. The bulls in our herd are barely up to five.”

Seven years ago, when pasture began to vanish in his village, Abdullahi left. He first moved into Niger State. Then, he went from Gezoji to Tudun Biri in Igabi town of Kaduna, then he returned to Kwana Maje in Anka, Zamfara State. He moved again, this time to Mallamawa in Katsina, and then re-entered Niger State. Here, he grazed the Ibbi and Wawa Forest until forest rangers challenged him. This made him move to Gidan Kare, a village in Sokoto State, before settling in nearby Dange Shuni town.

Both Bello and Abdullahi left Zamfara. While the former travelled east, through Kano, Bauchi, and Borno, the latter moved west. Their journeys trace a human map of collapse, one that cuts across nearly half of Nigeria’s landmass.

In both men’s stories, geography is memory. But it is also grief.

Bello said that across Bauchi, Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa, formerly lush plains have turned brittle, while rivers have grown unpredictable. Rain falls heavier, less often, and in bursts that flood lowland routes.

The consequences are not only ecological. They are generational. 

Some herders are giving up the trade. Others are sending their children to work in towns. Abdullahi said he now substitutes herding with subsistence farming and being a shop attendant. But even this is a struggle. “he land is already full,” he said. “I have lost interest in grazing. I want to settle in one location and raise cattle on a ranch.”

For Bello, too, something fundamental is shifting.

“The migratory culture is dying,” he said. “It is dying because of the crisis and rejection, limited resources, and sudden realisation of the importance of education.”

He now believes that pastoralists must adapt. 

“Many herders now prefer ranching. We want to combine our traditional knowledge and modern ways to raise cattle differently and educate our children.”

What was once passed down as tradition is now being considered for survival. The land is changing. The climate is changing. And slowly, the herders are changing too.

Farmers at the frontline

“There are several farms here that have encroached on grazing routes,” said Sanusi Salihu Goronyo, a 49-year-old farmer from Sokoto. “Owners of these farms have clashed several times with herders when their animals stray. Some farmers got these lands on lease from local government authorities.”

Sanusi has farmed in the Middle Rima Valley, near the Goronyo Dam, for over 15 years. He grows rice, onion, garlic, and wheat, alternating between rainfed and irrigation farming. He started with five hectares. But unpredictable weather has made farming harder.

“Sometimes the dam overflows and destroys our crops,” he said. “One year, we lost everything we planted; rice, onions. More recently, our onion seedlings died because the soil here could not support them.” Sanusi has since expanded his farm to 20 hectares, hoping to improve his harvests.

In Bauchi, the story is the same. “The burtali has existed for as long as I can remember,” said Kamalu Abubakar, a 32-year-old farmer from Nabordo in Toro LGA. “But many of the routes have been encroached on. Even here in Toro, people who were never farmers now farm, out of hardship.”

He said this desperation often leads people to cultivate land along migration routes. “When herders come through with their animals, it leads to clashes.”

There are no longer visible signs of the burtali. The routes have faded, not just physically, but from institutional memory. “Almost everywhere is farmland now,” Kamalu said. “A few spots are left for grazing; sometimes cattle stray into farms. But some herders intentionally drive animals into fields.”

To herders, the land is a path. To farmers, it is a livelihood. What was once shared in the vacuum left by failing institutions is now contested. What was seasonal has become criminalised.

“When this happens, people take action,” Kamalu said. This “action,” sometimes, means reporting to authorities. Other times, they confront the herders directly.

Kamalu farms on five hectares of land inherited from his father, who leased it from the government more than thirty years ago. These are not wealthy farmers. They survive on small plots. A single ruined field can mean food lost, income gone, or a child pulled out of school.

That shared precarity, between farmer and herder, is rarely acknowledged in how the conflict is portrayed. Most reports focus on violence: killings, raids, destruction. But the real story often begins earlier, with broken systems, shrinking trust, and a quiet dread that builds over time.

Nguru-Hadejia wetlands in Yobe, a once critical water source for herders, have become a point of contention as water access shrinks and farmlands expand. In Bauchi’s western agricultural belt, areas like Toro and the Yankari-Katagum corridor are now recognised zones of ecological tension, where water and land are in short supply.

Sanusi said there are no functioning mediation systems anymore. “In the past, we would call the village head. He would speak to both sides. Now, no one comes”

Some communities in Adamawa State have tried to fill that gap. Bello, a community elder, explained: “When animals stray into farmlands, we get reports from the police. First, we identify the culprit. Then, if he has been arrested, we ensure the farmer is compensated. We also discipline the herder to prevent a repeat.”

Experts note that local accountability matters. “In the North East, elders take action when community members rustle cattle. They report to the police. However, in places like the North Central, leaders often stay silent. That is what leads to retaliation,” Malik said.

In the absence of authority, vigilantes have emerged. Some protect farms. Others patrol bush paths. Most are poorly trained and loosely organised. Many are young men with long grievances and short tempers.

The result is tension that simmers without resolution.

Kamalu described his fear. “Maybe one cow enters. Then someone hurls an insult. Then they come back with weapons. Or maybe they don’t. But we don’t know.”

The fear is mutual. Herders move silently, hoping not to be seen, and farmers sleep lightly during the migration season. No one trusts the other or trusts the state to step in.

The deeper costs are not only in lost harvests or stolen cows, but in stalled futures. “Our children don’t get an education,” Bello said. “We don’t have healthcare. No water, no electricity. People stereotype us. It is all because of ignorance. If we were educated, we would have equal opportunities like others.”

Still, some herders are finding alternatives.

“We bought plots of land here in Jimeta,” Bello said. “That is our community now. Our children are in school. We created a ranch to keep our cattle during the dry season. After harvest, we buy stalks from farmers and feed them. Our cattle drink from the River Benue. We use boreholes from nearby communities for our water.”

They hope to buy more land. Build a dam. Dig a borehole. Secure a future.

For now, they adapt, one season at a time.

The security gap

What happens when movement is no longer managed, and survival turns into trespass? That question haunts the herders, who try to pass unseen, and the farmers, who try to protect what little they have. It also points to a more profound crisis that does not begin with herders and farmers but ends with them trapped in the middle of a larger security breakdown.

“The population will keep growing. People will need more land to farm and more space to live,” said Malik. “The government must evolve with these trends.”

The failure to adapt has opened the door for non-state actors. In some cases, herders say the attackers are not even Nigerians. Claims of foreign infiltration, fighters from Niger, Chad, or Mali crossing porous borders, are challenging to verify, but frequently repeated. The risk, Malik warns, is that armed groups now move across the region disguised as herders, exploiting migration routes that span West and Central Africa. Nigeria’s North East, the most significant entry point for cross-border pastoralists, is especially vulnerable.

Malik explained that even internal movement is no longer predictable. Routes once mediated by district heads and grazing committees are now insecure or unmarked. Communities that once welcomed herders have grown hostile. Vigilante groups have stepped in, blocking passage, collecting tolls, or enforcing rules with force.

“We encounter terrorists, especially in Borno,” said Bello. “They rustle our cattle or demand taxes. In 2017, over 100 of our cattle were stolen. Other herders lost more. Through our association, Pulako, we contributed to helping the affected herders, two or three cattle each. But it is part of why we left for Adamawa.”

In northeastern Nigeria, the Boko Haram factions of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’adati wal-Jihad (JAS) and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have embedded themselves in areas long abandoned by the state. Movement is no longer just a logistical challenge but a matter of territory and surveillance. Pastoralists must now navigate dry land, blocked paths, with armed groups asserting control.

“JAS rustles cattle and sells them in the south to fund their operations,” said Malik. “ISWAP taxes herders who graze in territories around Lake Chad. When JAS steals cattle from those herders, ISWAP intervenes to retrieve them. They even resolve herder-farmer conflicts, ensuring farmers are compensated when herds destroy crops.”

In the northwestern region, the dynamic is different. Terrorist groups have created informal taxation systems. “They extort herders, like JAS does,” Malik added. “When herders lose everything, they turn to kidnapping or robbery, or are hired by aggrieved herders to retaliate against farmers.”

We extensively documented this pattern across Nigeria’s conflict zones. In one report, Ahmad Salkida, Founder of HumAngle, who is an investigative journalist and one of the most authoritative voices on the Boko Haram insurgency, explained that herders under Boko Haram and ISWAP control are forced to pay taxes based on the size of their herd. 

“They must relinquish a portion of their livestock,” he noted. “And due to multiple factions,  they occasionally pay double, losing more than they can bargain for.”

In other parts of the region, herding communities are routinely forced to pay protection levies, coerced into supplying armed groups, or punished if they refuse, mirroring the same dynamics of extortion and control seen in the North East.

Mobility, once neutral and even protected, has become political. Herders, no longer shielded by the grazing route system, are exposed on every front. 

There seems to be no national framework for managing trans-regional movement. Until July 2024, when the Nigerian government created the Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, no institution had the authority or tools to track who was moving, where, or why.

“Past governments tried to introduce ranching settlements,” Malik said. “The Buhari administration attempted, but the public saw it as a land-grab. The problem was poor communication. People have lost trust in the state, so they misinterpreted everything. However, the deeper issue is that each region has a different conflict. The North East is not the North West. So solutions must also be different.”

The state’s absence is not passive. It produces insecurity.

Farmers form vigilantes. Herders arm themselves. Encounters that once ended with negotiation now end in gunfire.

The National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), introduced to prevent this scenario, has stalled, sidelined by politics and inconsistent implementation.

“It is a good idea,” Malik said. “If implemented properly, it could resolve many of these issues.”

With each unresolved clash, local trust erodes. With each unmapped corridor, non-state actors tighten their grip. And as the climate continues to dry rivers and strip pasture from the earth, pressure builds slowly, steadily, dangerously.

What must be done

If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is this: what exists now is not working.

“The solution must begin at the community level,” said Malik. “We need to bring back the conflict resolution systems that once worked, those local processes that helped farmers and herders find common ground.”

However, informal peacebuilding alone would not resolve a structural crisis. The scale of Nigeria’s environmental collapse and mobility breakdown requires coordinated, strategic, and adequately resourced reform.

Malik believes ranching is essential to ending uncontrolled migration and giving herders security, dignity, and economic opportunity.

“Ranching is the most effective alternative. Moving cattle across states will always spark conflict,” he said. “But if ranches are developed properly, with clinics, water, schools, and markets, those are capital incentives. They make settlement viable.”

He insists this will require more than government goodwill.

“The private sector must be involved. Let investors lease land. Let herders produce meat and milk, and let the state earn revenue. With proper management, we wouldn’t need to import beef or dairy.”

Yet trust is fragile. Malik noted how the RUGA initiative failed not because the idea was flawed, but because people were not consulted. The controversial RUGA programme, suspended in 2019, stood for Rural Grazing Area.

“There was no proper engagement. The public saw it as a land grab. The government must learn to communicate. There must be transparency. There must be accountability,” Malik said. 

He added that at the heart of the tension is something simple: survival.

“The farmer wants to plant in peace and feed his family,” he says. “The herder wants to graze and feed his cattle. When people are allowed to be heard, they often find solutions independently.”

Bello shares this vision, but with a local, seasonal approach.

“During the rainy season, the government should provide ranches for us to keep our cattle,” he said. “Farmers can let us graze on harvested fields in the dry season. Our cattle will help clear the land and leave dung for manure. Then, farmers can do irrigation farming on the ranches. If we rotate this way, both sides benefit, without conflict.”

Abdullahi agrees, but calls for sincerity: “If the government is honest about the RUGA settlement plan and implements it, this problem will go away. Also, forest rangers should treat us fairly. Don’t deny us access completely.”

From the farmers’ side, the expectations are equally modest.

“Herders should avoid people’s farms. Farmers should avoid blocking the grazing routes,” Sanusi said.

“The government should support us with fertilisers and pesticides, even if through subsidies,” Kamalu added.

The proposed NLTP is meant to address many of these issues. But it remains stalled, caught between politics and poor communication.

“If implemented well, it could solve most of the crisis,” Malik said.

The ideological battlegrounds of northern Nigeria are disintegrating into a shadow war of self-interest, racial hierarchies, and fragmented loyalties. Once defined by rigid command structures, today’s extremist threat is unrecognised, more volatile, decentralised, and shaped by trauma, greed, and chaos spreading in the Sahel.

Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in the Lake Chad and northwestern corridors, where fighters once bound by allegiance to leaders like Abubakar Shekau now operate as scattered cells, many with no allegiance beyond the immediate spoils of violence. After Shekau’s brutal demise in 2021 at the hands of ISWAP, his loyalists either vanished into civilian communities or re-emerged under new, hyper-localised identities in places like Zamfara, Niger, and Kogi, and they are now emerging in large numbers in Plateau State. Without a central ideology or external coordination, many of these cells have adopted a hybrid identity: part insurgent, part bandit, part mercenary. They extract taxes, conduct kidnappings, and mete out selective justice on communities, not in service of any doctrinal purity, but to retain control and fear.

In the face of racism and setbacks, two jihadists fight on

Deep within Sahelian jihadist networks lies a festering problem rarely acknowledged publicly: the racism faced by Black African fighters at the hands of their Arab and Tuareg counterparts. Slurs like Sammara (slave) or Zool are commonplace within militant camps in Libya, Algeria, Mali, and Niger, echoing the same historical contempt that fueled slave routes centuries ago. For many sub-Saharan fighters, these insults are more than rhetorical. They are reminders that in the eyes of their comrades, they remain expendable.

Two former foreign fighters, now back on the frontlines of northwestern Nigeria, spoke exclusively to HumAngle through an intermediary. “Internal rifts and betrayals amongst mujahideen have made collective operations against their enemies near-impossible,” said Abu Maryam. Now isolated, Abu Maryam and three of his friends navigate the perilous landscape of northwest Nigeria, drifting from one group after another.

He left Libya after he could no longer tolerate the racial slurs. “No matter how good you are, if you are fighting among Arab fighters, you are likely to remain a Jundun bila rutba (a soldier without a rank), with rare chances of growing through the ranks to become a Munzir or Ka’id (senior members of military wings),” he said. “I have seen several dark-skinned brothers like me, and on some occasions, they have called me Sammara.”

Abu Maryam left the Fezzan region of Libya in 2022, after spending two and a half years there, because he experienced racial slurs and saw no effort to address the problem. “I had previously lived in Mali, so I didn’t stay there; I came straight to Bosso in Lake Chad to fight alongside fellow mujahideen of ISWAP.” He noted that with ISWAP, fighters initially had a strong bond. However, hatred emerged among brothers who once fought alongside each other but disagreed only on doctrine yet chose violence instead of dialogue to settle their differences. “There was an obsession to control everyone, which was unbearable for me. While I don’t like some Arabs because of racial discrimination, they are not intoxicated with power like I have seen in Lake Chad.”

Another Jihadist interviewed for this article, who gave his name only as Ibrahima, said he was a victim of racial discrimination in his home country of Niger, specifically in the desert of Agadez. He fought alongside some Tuaregs associated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. He did not provide many details about his past; it’s likely Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). He left shortly after and joined ISWAP in early 2022, where he met Abu Maryam. The two bonded quickly because of their similar Hausa and Arabic dialects and experiences as mid-ranking fighters. As fate would have it, both later defected along with a group of fighters and are now reportedly operating in Sokoto.

“We are not aligned with ISWAP since we left our Mubaya’a without permission, and now that we are fighting without a caliph, it makes our Jihad incomplete,” he said.

According to Abu Maryam, ISWAP in Lake Chad is the most organised among all the groups he fought alongside since 2019, when he chose the path of violence as an expression of his religious beliefs. However, constant leadership feuds and disproportionate punishments in ISWAP, such as death or imprisonment for merely possessing a mobile phone or transistor radio, drove them away. “This is why we left,” Abu Maryam said, “because punishment for every wrongdoing must adhere to the provisions of Sharia.”

“We were fighting for justice, but all I found in Agadez was bigotry. Here [referring to ISWAP], it’s no better; leaders fight over money and control. I’m done for now. I’ll wait until I find a cause, a leader worth following,” Ibrahima confessed.

A close observer of Nigeria’s conflict landscape highlighted a significant oversight in Nigeria’s counter-violent extremism program. He noted that the programme failed to exploit certain vulnerabilities among the insurgents, which could have been leveraged to further fracture their ranks. Regrettably, individuals such as Abu Maryam and Ibrahima did not participate in the federal government’s various deradicalisation initiatives. Instead, they have aligned with numerous other fighters, establishing new fronts and forming small, dispersed criminal gangs that are increasingly becoming difficult to track and contain.

Local authorities have the potential to exploit these racial tensions by sending targeted messages, promoting defections, and cultivating distrust among various factions and individuals. A good example of this is the brilliant manner in which Nigerian intelligence capitalised on the demise of Abubakar Shekau to create a pathway for thousands of Boko Haram defectors and residents within their sphere of influence to leave. The extended olive branch was so inviting that it even drew in members from opposing factions, like ISWAP.

The deep roots of racism against Sub-Saharan Africans

This longstanding prejudice against Black Africans has manifested in various forms over centuries, reflecting broader societal attitudes and systemic inequalities that persist to date.

In the 1880s, the Mahdist State in Sudan emerged as an anti-colonial religious movement. However, the regime implemented racial distinctions, creating a divide between the Nile Valley Arabs and the Black Africans. The Black skin fighters, despite their crucial role in military campaigns, remained marginalised in matters of governance and spiritual leadership.

In the context of Libya’s ongoing civil war, sub-Saharan migrants have reported severe racial profiling. A slogan that praises rebel fighters for purging Black slaves was boldly written on a poster in Misrata during the fighting that toppled and killed Libya’s former leader, Muammar Gaddafi. 

Black African fighters from Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, who are part of AQIM and its associated groups, have consistently expressed concerns about their treatment as disposable combatants. The leadership landscape there is predominantly characterised by Arab or Tuareg fighters. Numerous accounts from defectors over the years lend support to the lived experiences of Abu Maryam and Ibrahima.

The internal divisions within JNIM in Mali and Burkina Faso highlight a complicated relationship that includes doctrinal disagreements alongside underlying tensions between Tuareg leadership and Black African foot soldiers. This dynamic has resulted in Bambara, Songhai, and Hausa fighters experiencing discrimination, according to multiple accounts.

Additionally, despite ISIS’s claims of a worldwide recruitment initiative, Black African fighters were either absent from their propaganda videos or not placed in leadership roles during the peak of their operations in Iraq and Syria. Numerous fighters from Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan have expressed concerns regarding racial isolation and a tendency to be assigned to high-risk missions at a disproportionate rate.

Systemic flaws crippling Nigeria’s counter-terrorism: Data, Identity, and Borders

Nigeria’s failure to consolidate and enforce a unified national biometric database means the state cannot verify who resides within its borders nor who crosses them. This void undermines virtually every aspect of counter-terrorism: Suspects can acquire dozens of SIM cards under false identities or without registration. Although Nigeria mandates NIN-SIM linkage, enforcement remains poor. Criminals discard and switch phones with ease, evading tracking and surveillance. There is no interoperable system linking national ID, voter registration, police records, immigration, and telecom data. Such information makes cross-checking identities across institutions impossible. 

Fighters from Mali, Niger, and Cameroon move freely into Nigeria through routes like the Illela–Birnin Konni axis, the Damasak–Diffa corridor, and the Baga–Lake Chad region. Intelligence gathering and sharing remain fragmented across agencies like DSS, NIA, police, and military. Without a unified database or command structure, actionable intelligence about suspects’ movements, aliases, and contacts is often lost or buried in bureaucracy.

Aside from the borders, even city centres remain porous. In one instance, a former captive reportedly encountered one of his terrorist captors in a mosque in Kaduna. In another, fighters were reported by HumAngle to have evaded official radicalisation programmes by the government and are living normal lives in communities they once referred to as Darul Kufr (land of disbelievers), where they once killed such residents at will.

HumAngle’s continuous investigations in Nigeria and West Africa have shown that former Boko Haram fighters who have not migrated to new battle zones or participated in government deradicalisation programs now work as mechanics, artisans, and market vendors, with some even becoming Uber drivers in major cities.

The reasons some of these fighters gave HumAngle for abandoning local groups are similar to the accounts of Abu Maryam and Ibrahima in the Maghreb. Ethnic tensions remain a major obstacle to cohesion within local armed groups in Nigeria. After the death of Boko Haram leader Shekau, efforts to centralise leadership faltered, partly because some of the commanders considered most eligible were non-Kanuri, highlighting deep-seated tribal divisions.

Within ISWAP, non-Kanuri fighters have also complained of exclusion from key meetings that were mainly conducted in Kanuri. In the northwest, Fulani-dominated groups are similarly resistant to outside leadership. These dynamics reveal how ethnicity continues to shape power and loyalty more than ideology.

In a nation lacking a comprehensive database and where obtaining a SIM card is as straightforward as purchasing a bus ticket, tracking communications and migration of terrorists and other criminals have become a formidable challenge. Fighters exploit Nigeria’s digital opacity, activating and discarding phone numbers at will. Law enforcement, often under-equipped and under-trained, chases shadows across digital landscapes they can neither map nor monitor.

The result is a security architecture built on guesswork. Analysts and security forces continue to lump diverse threats under the blanket term “Boko Haram”. In southern Nigeria, nearly all kidnappers are classified as “Fulani herders”, failing to distinguish between ideological cells, rogue vigilantes, ethnic militias, and survivalist criminal gangs. It also feeds ethnic profiling in northern Nigeria, as observed by several HumAngle reports. 

Yusuf Anka, an award-winning former conflict reporter in northwest Nigeria, said, “If Fulanis are negatively profiled in the north, imagine what their experience in southern Nigeria could be.” The costs of this misdiagnosis have been misdirected airstrikes, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances, and a loss of trust with communities that could otherwise assist intelligence efforts in containing the problem.

From Mali to Borno, from Libya to Zamfara, what we are witnessing is a continental contagion, a pattern of fragmentation, racial tension, and decentralised violence. Terrorism and violent crime threats have gone from coordinated ideology to disjointed insurgency and criminal networks. And Nigeria is now one of its most combustible frontlines.