Nigeria

In November 2024, an empty field suddenly turned into a bustling scene. Women streamed in carrying baskets of tomatoes, while others unwrapped sacks of oranges. At the time, teenage girls hawked in the crowd with trays of boiled groundnuts balanced on their heads. Along the roadside, two trailers lined up a few metres away as young men tossed heavy sacks of maize into one and rice into the other.

This was the Tumba Ra Ngabili market.

For a trader like Asmau Abubakar, she never imagined a market like this could exist, especially when she reflects on the years when the Boko Haram insurgency was at its peak. She says her fear grew the first time she heard the insurgents had arrived in Madagali in 2014, a few towns away from Michika, her hometown, both in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria.

When rumours spread at the time that the insurgents would not harm women, Asmau urged her husband to flee while she stayed behind with the children. But he refused, insisting the family remain together.

Then came the news that the insurgents were unleashing violence in Gulak. And knowing Gulak was close, Asmau’s family fled to Uba, a neighbouring town, where they passed the night before returning home the next morning.

But the fear never left Asmau. Soon again, word spread that Michika itself would be attacked on a Sunday.

“Before they came, on that Sunday at dawn, my husband got us a car that took us to Yola [the Adamawa State capital] while he fled on foot, passing several villages to reach Gombi,” Asmau recalled. “We were at Mararraban Mubi when I heard the insurgents had entered Michika.”

Many families, like Asmau’s, fled for safety. But that Sunday in September 2014 carried the memory of gunfire echoing in the air, houses burning in flames, and, of course, the lives taken in cold blood. The insurgents did not only stop at attacking Michika, they in fact seized the town and spread into nearby villages, inflicting fear and hardship on the locals. It was a period when they were expanding across northeastern Nigeria in their bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate.

Boko Haram’s violent campaign had started five years earlier in 2009, first as an uprising in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, before spreading across the region. In its wake, families mourned their loved ones, schools and markets were left destroyed, and dozens of communities were turned to ruins, with over a million people uprooted from their homes.

Michika was soon trapped in this same cycle of bloodshed and chaos that forced people across Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe to live with fear as part of daily life. Meanwhile, the insurgents held the town captive for months until January 2015, when Nigeria’s military finally drove them out. So, as locals began to return, they discovered that what awaited them were wrecked houses and the loss of nearly everything they owned.

“The walls of my house were riddled with bullets,” Asmau told HumAngle. “They destroyed doors and windows and looted some of our belongings.”

Even as Asmau and other families in Michika began to rebuild and piece their lives back together, they realised that the insurgency had sown deep distrust between Christians and Muslims. The divide between the two faiths grew so intense that, according to locals HumAngle spoke with, it spread into the main Michika market, where Christians chose Saturdays to sell their farm produce and Muslims traded on Sundays when most Christians were in church.

Asmau has not forgetten that period when she moved between the main Michika market and those in Bazza and Lassa to buy and sell bags of maize, beans, and groundnuts.

“Relations between us Muslims and the Christians became strained,” she explained. “They thought the majority of Muslims were Boko Haram.”

HumAngle also learned that, at the time, Muslims said their children could not have relationships with children from Christian families, and Christians equally insisted their children would not relate to Muslim families.

Rebuilding Trust

This situation persisted in Tumba Ra Ngabili, Asmau’s community, until 2020, when the British Council, in partnership with the Women and Youth Economic Advancement and Health Initiative (WYEAHI), brought women from the area into its Managing Conflict in Nigeria (MCN) programme.

About 200 women from Christian and Muslim households received training in peacebuilding, conflict management, and Early Warning and Early Response (EWER).

“We learned that due to the insurgency, these women lost their livelihoods. So we felt it would be good that after the training, we should also empower them,” said Aishatu Margima, WYEAHI’s Executive Director.

The women were organised into groups of 20, with each member receiving ₦30,000 to start a business or support an existing one.

“I was happy when my name made it to the list of women selected for the training and even more when I got empowered with ₦30,000,” shared Asmau, recalling it was a time when her business was struggling due to low capital and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted movements and closed markets.

The micro-funding and training also transformed Christiana Emma’s life. She had lived in Tumba Ra Ngabili for 20 years and fled to Yola only when the insurgency struck. Though she lost her house and belongings, she returned after Michika was liberated because the feeling that it was her home did not leave her.

“We started rebuilding with my husband through the grace of God, and to support him, I was selling tomatoes, bananas, and oranges,” Christiana said. She would travel to Besso and Kirchinga villages in Michika and Madagali to collect goods on loan, sell them, repay the loan, and keep the profit.

“The ₦30,000 I got helped me grow my business. I later built a capital of ₦150,000 that allows me to buy goods upfront without taking loans,” she noted. “Today, the proceeds help me cover my family’s bills, from education to feeding and healthcare.”

Restoring peace through trade

In their 20-member group, 16 were Christians and 4 were Muslims. The training enlightened them on love and peaceful coexistence.

The group began holding weekly meetings every Sunday to strengthen relationships and discuss business challenges. And in one of those meetings, they decided to establish a market in Tumba Ra Ngabili.

The women approached the community chief, Lawan Yakubu, who, after consulting with his council members, approved their request and allocated land a few metres from his house for the market.

They believed the local market would make it easier to run their businesses and improve their earnings without the need to travel to nearby villages or the main Michika market. At the same time, they wanted the market to serve as a space for unity where people from all faiths could trade freely.

At first, the women traded in an open field until the Danish Refugee Council, an international humanitarian organisation, while implementing a different project in the community, learned about the market and decided to support and expand the women’s efforts by constructing a block of 16 roofed tents where traders could display their goods.

In the two years since it opened, the Tumba Ra Ngabili market has transformed both business and relationships in the community, especially with Christian and Muslim women trading side by side.

Blessing John, a widow and member of the group who now sells Gwanjo (second-hand clothes), remembers how isolated she once felt and how difficult it was to keep her business running or get help when challenges came.

“Now, I know I can turn to any member of the group, whether at the market or at home, whether a Christian or a Muslim, and get support,” said the 40-something-year-old mother of eight.

Blessing explained that to make it convenient for everyone, the women agreed that the market would mainly operate on Sundays immediately after morning church services. 

“The market also opens on Wednesdays, but Sunday has become the main trading day,” she told HumAngle.

Traders troop into the market, mostly during the harvest period, to buy bags of food crops ranging from maize, rice, beans, groundnuts, and even tomatoes, which are then transported in big lorries to Mubi, Maiduguri, and other parts of the country.

Each trader at the market pays ₦50 to the local government as tax on every market day.

Saving together

The women have also started an Adashe (savings pool) system. Every Sunday evening, after trading, they gather to repeat sessions on “maintaining peaceful coexistence with one another,” and each member contributes ₦1,000. 

The collected ₦20,000 is kept in a wooden box made by a local carpenter. The box has four keys, each held by a team of four members, and it can only be opened when all group members are present. If a member is sick or unavoidably absent, a representative from her family or relations can stand in to ensure the box can be opened.

After collecting the contributions, any member needing a loan can borrow from the pool and repay it with 10 per cent interest within a month. For example, if a member borrows ₦10,000, she will repay ₦11,000. In the early days of the system, Asmau often borrowed from the pool to strengthen her business capital.

“It helps me make more profit since the capital is much larger when I combine my initial empowerment money with the loaned amount,” Asmau said. From the profit, she buys foodstuffs each market day and contributes to the savings pool.

“I have children and pay their school fees with a part of the profit,” she added.

When no one needs a loan, the wooden box is locked and kept by the group’s treasurer, Manga Musa, who shared that the group also has a social fund, to which each member deposits ₦50 weekly.

“It’s the savings we use in case any of us gets sick. We can then support the person without asking for repayment,” she said.

And by December each year, a week before Christmas, the group gathers to share all the money in the savings pool before taking a break and returning in January for the new year. 

“We buy Christmas food and clothes for our children in December after sharing the earnings,” noted Christiana. “For Muslims, during their festive seasons, if they need to borrow money from the pool, we give it to them.”

The struggle to thrive

However, despite their success stories, some challenges raise questions about how sustainable the women’s efforts are without institutionalised support. 

During the rainy season, the market does not come alive like it does in the dry months. When HumAngle visited on a Wednesday, the tents were empty. And even on Sunday, the main market day, only a few items, such as vegetables, fruits, and small household goods, were on display. There were no food crops. 

Locals told HumAngle that this is because most traders are occupied with farming at this time of the year and do not come to the market as often.

Last year, the community suffered a flood, and most traders whose farmlands were flooded did not harvest many food crops that could be brought to the market.

Still, the poor roads leading to Tumba Ra Ngabili, along with a river that traders from distant villages must cross, also limit the amount of produce that reaches the market.

On the other hand, Blessing admitted that business has slowed in recent months. “People focus more on looking for what to eat than buying clothes,” she explained.

Manga said the women’s savings pool is directly tied to market activity. When sales drop, some members struggle to make their weekly contributions, which sometimes delays their cycle of lending and repayment.

Even with the gaps, Blessing dreams of opening a shop to stock clothes instead of pushing them around in a wheelbarrow. Others hope to see the Tumba Ra Ngabili market upgraded into a standard marketplace with proper shops and storage facilities. 

Together, the women want their savings pool to grow strong enough to sustain members and extend support to other women in the community.

Now, what remains uncertain is whether the peace they have built can withstand the challenges that still surround them.

This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The latest round of qualifiers around the globe for the FIFA World Cup 2026 has seen the number of entrants rise to 28.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at some of the best photos from the nations that confirmed their qualification on Wednesday for the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Qatar are the headline news in the latest group of confirmed entrants for next year’s FIFA 2026 World Cup following the most recent round of qualifying matches.

The hosts of the 2022 edition of the global showpiece event reached the finals for the first time through the qualification route, when they beat the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.

South Africa also clinched a tight group, with fellow African giants Nigeria pushed to the playoffs, on a tense final day of group stage qualifiers on the continent. This came a day after Cape Verde’s first qualification for the World Cup finals.

The European teams still have some way to go to finish their qualifying groups, but the picture has become far clearer with some progress already made.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a close look at how the qualifying process stands around the globe:

Which teams are in the FIFA World Cup 2026?

After the latest round of qualifying matches, here is a breakdown of the confirmed contenders from each of the six regions:

Hosts: Canada, Mexico, United States

Asia: Australia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Uzbekistan

Africa: Algeria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia

Europe: England

Oceania: New Zealand

South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay

Who can still qualify for the FIFA World Cup 2026?

Africa: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Nigeria will play off for the final intercontinental spot from the continent. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has yet to announce the dates for those matches.

Asia: The UAE and Iraq will vie for one intercontinental playoffs spot when they compete over two legs in the final stage of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) qualifiers in November.

Europe: 53 of the 54 European teams vying for 16 qualification spots can still confirm their berths, alongside England, as their first-round matches will run until November 18.

North, Central America and the Caribbean: With the World Cup host nations taking three spots, only three are left up for grabs. They will be decided on November 18. Bermuda, Costa Rica, Curacao, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago have all advanced to the third round. The three second-placed teams from each group will then fight for the intercontinental playoffs spot.

Oceania: New Caledonia have qualified for the intercontinental playoffs.

South America: Bolivia have qualified for the intercontinental playoffs, having missed out on one of the six automatic qualifying positions.

28/48 ✅@Aramco | #WeAre26 pic.twitter.com/eaksBnrBYM

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) October 14, 2025

Which major teams have been eliminated from qualification?

Peru and Chile, who were third-place finishers in 1962, were the biggest names to miss out from the South America qualifiers, where Venezuela were also eliminated.

Although not considered a powerhouse in Asia, China will be disappointed not to reach their first finals since 2002.

Angola, Libya, Mali and Namibia will be among those disappointed to be eliminated from the African qualification.

Indonesia were hoping to reach only a second World Cup, and made a valiant run to the fourth round of AFC qualification. But they will be disappointed not to have gone one step further following their Dutch recruitment drive, which included their coach, Patrick Kluivert.

Bahrain, who topped their 2023 AFC Asian Cup group stage ahead of South Korea, only to be eliminated by Japan in the round of 16, will be deflated to have missed out on the chance to showcase their skills on the global stage. Palestine were only seconds away from reaching the fourth round of the AFC qualifier and, following their historic run to the knockout stage of the last Asian Cup, will also be disappointed not to have at least gone one step further in their continental qualifiers.

When will all the teams for the FIFA World Cup 2026 be confirmed?

European qualification rounds stretch beyond the current group stages to March, while the intercontinental playoff final is scheduled for the same month, so the final 48 teams for the World Cup will not be known until less than three months before the tournament. March 31, 2026, is when all qualification will come to an end.

When and where is the draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026?

The World Cup draw, as revealed by US President Donald Trump in August, will take place on December 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

“It’s the biggest, probably the biggest event in sports, I guess,” said Trump, who made the announcement in an Oval Office event where he was joined by Vice President JD Vance and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Trump also did not rule out overseeing the draw himself.

When is the FIFA World Cup 2026 scheduled?

The tournament begins in Mexico City on June 11, and ends with the final in New Jersey on July 19.

When Jibrin Kolo Adamu talks about how the HumAngle Accountability Fellowship changed his life, his eyes light up with purpose. “The fellowship was impactful because I am currently working because of the skills I acquired from it,” he said. 

He added that “I learnt the art of human storytelling, and it helped me to win several grants and partnerships for my organisation. I now lead advocacy programs because of the HumAngle training.”

Jibrin is one of many young journalists and advocates from Borno State who have passed through the HumAngle Accountability Fellowship. The fellowship program was launched in 2022 with support from the MacArthur Foundation to promote transparency, accountability through storytelling, and community-driven advocacy initiatives. Over the past three years, five cohorts have been trained, with fellows drawn from the northern, central, and southern federal constituents of Borno state.

For many of them, the fellowship was a turning point.

Halima Bawah, a fellow from central Borno, said the training gave her the courage to start her own organisation. “I launched an advocacy group promoting renewable and sustainable climate action solutions. Now my company provides climate-smart solutions, recycling plastic waste, and offering consultations to other organisations,” she explained proudly.

Rukkaya Ahmed Alibe, who works with a radio station in Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno State, said the fellowship transformed her broadcasting career. “I have integrated human-centred storytelling into my radio programs. It has made my work more impactful and connected to the people. I now produce stories that give voice to local communities,” she said.

Another alumnus, Abubakar Mukhtar Abba, from central Borno, shared how the fellowship inspired his journalism journey. “I had no background in journalism, but the fellowship gave me everything in six months. I am now a freelance journalist reporting important stories about the humanitarian crisis in the region. My stories are driven by the question of accountability and how it affects the lives of ordinary people. All thanks to HumAngle,” he said.

The fellowship aims to build a new generation of journalists and advocates who use storytelling to demand accountability and amplify community voices in conflict-affected areas.

Speaking during an alumni roundtable session held on Oct. 11 in Maiduguri, Angela Umoru-David, HumAngle Foundation’s Director, said the engagement was an opportunity to see how far the fellows have come. “Engaging with the alumni was an opportunity to experience first-hand the impact the fellowship had on the participants. We have achieved exactly what we hoped for: a network of young people pushing locally-driven solutions and demanding accountability,” Angela said.

According to Angela, many alumni are now leading organisations, winning international fellowships, and pursuing advanced studies abroad. “We have an alumnus pursuing a PhD in security studies in China, another starting a waste management and environmental protection company, and many others representing their communities on global platforms,” she added.

The stories of progress from the fellows are not limited to Borno State alone. Across Adamawa and Yobe, the fellows have similar stories. During a similar roundtable held in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, in September, fellows said HumAngle had been a major influence on how their careers are blossoming currently, expressing their willingness for collaborations in the future.

“The support HumAngle gives us goes a long way,” Habila Albert, a member of the second cohort of the fellowship noted. Fellows from Damaturu in Yobe also highlighted stories of collaboration within each other.

Salma Jumah, Senior Programme Officer of the Foundation, noted that the fellowship’s success reflects the power of knowledge and collaboration. “The learning session with the Accountability Fellows has shown us that they have built a strong network and a remarkable trail of impact. Hearing from participants across all cohorts, we’ve seen significant accomplishments and stories of change that speak to the strength of this community,” Salma said.

From classrooms to radio stations, and from local advocacy groups to international platforms, the fellows of the HumAngle Accountability Fellowship continue to inspire change and promote accountability and transparency in both private and public sectors across northeastern Nigeria.

It was a sombre Thursday afternoon in Alesi, a community in Ikom Local Government Area (LGA) of Cross River State, in South South Nigeria. Inside the village head’s palace, men and women gathered in silence, their faces drawn with grief. Some stared blankly ahead; others fought back tears.

“We have lost another son. Our hearts are heavy, our eyes are bleeding. Our people are continuously being killed as a result of boundary disputes, and we are increasingly being forced to take up arms,” Nzan Osim, a community leader, addressed the mourners. 

A day earlier, Fidelis Akan, a cocoa farmer from Alesi, was beheaded on his farm, close to the boundary with Ochon, a neighbouring community in Obubra LGA. His elder brother, Lawrence Akan, said Fidelis had gone to the farm with his daughter that morning to harvest cocoa when they heard gunshots. 

“As they came out to see what was happening, a group of boys, allegedly from Ochon, caught them. When they found out that he was from Alesi, they beheaded him,” he narrated. Fidelis’ daughter escaped and raised the alarm. His body was later recovered and buried the same day, leaving behind a wife and six children. 

In the aftermath, angry residents allegedly set fire to a truck loaded with cocoa, believing it belonged to an Ochon farmer. 

A long battle over land

Since 2022, Alesi and Ochon have become flashpoints for deadly clashes, rooted in a long-running boundary dispute and the struggle for farmland to cultivate cocoa, one of Cross River’s most valuable crops. 

Yet, for decades, both communities coexisted peacefully, trading and even intermarrying across the boundary without violence. Many locals believe the recent tensions are being driven by increased competition for farmland and the growing economic value of cocoa.

The disputed land falls within the Ukpon River Forest Reserve, a protected area established by the state government in 1930 to preserve forest resources and biodiversity. Both communities continue to claim ownership of the area, with residents of Alesi accusing their Ochon counterparts of trespassing and attempting to seize land around Adibongha, the nearest clan to the boundary. 

The tension has often turned violent. In July, several houses were burnt and many families were displaced after an attack on Adibongha, according to Kelvin Eyam, a resident. 

“We have documents to prove our claim, but the Obubra people don’t want us at the boundary. They want to seize the entire land. The boundary is clearly marked at the centre of the river. There’s even a document that shows this, but attempts have been made to wipe it out,” said Nzan, a community leader from Alesi.

The traditional ruler of Obubra, Robert Mbinna, disagrees and insists it is Alesi that has been trespassing and illegally occupying their land. “There is a court order to that effect,” he said, adding that his own people have also lost lives in the crisis.

While both sides referred to documents supporting their claims, they did not present any to HumAngle for verification.

Beyond the legal arguments, residents say the human toll continues to rise. “A lot of people have been maimed, kidnapped and not seen till today. We dread to see one another and no longer enter the same vehicle with those from Obubra,” Nsan added. 

Aside from the lives lost, the protracted crisis between these communities is also impacting the livelihoods of residents. Farmers say vast farmlands have been abandoned for fear of attacks, while others have watched their cocoa trees destroyed in the clashes.

Daniel Eguma, a cocoa farmer from Ukanga in Ikom, is one of them. Just a day before Akan’s brutal murder, he escaped from Okokori, a community near the boundary where he would always pass the night after working on his farmland. 

“I slept at a primary school field and made arrangements with a driver who took me away at 3 a.m. after I heard of an impending attack. I left behind my six hectares of cocoa farmland and a motorcycle,” he told HumAngle. 

Daniel was already planning to harvest his cocoa in a week, but he cannot go back to his farm again. Usually, when criminals notice that farmers have abandoned their farms, they go in and steal. He said he could not even begin to estimate the value of what he has lost — but after years of labour and investment, it is substantial.

‘The Prevent Council’

As violence persisted despite repeated police deployments, civil society actors began searching for ways to prevent further bloodshed.

Nine months after at least eight people were killed and about 2000 displaced following a clash between the communities in March 2022,  the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), a non-profit organisation, launched the Prevent Council initiative. The project aimed to strengthen community peacebuilding structures by engaging traditional rulers as positive influencers and conflict mediators in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, and Delta states.

PIND says it currently has 10,113 peace actors in its network, who have intervened in over 2000 conflicts since 2013.

In Cross River, at least 25 traditional rulers and community leaders in five LGAs, including Ikom and Obubra, were trained and made peace ambassadors. PIND’s Executive Director, Tunji Idowu, said that the initiative recognised the critical role that traditional rulers play in maintaining peace and security within their communities. 

“The central goal of the Prevent Council is to promote and sustain social cohesion and peaceful coexistence in society with no one left behind. It emphasises that sustainable peace must involve multilateral engagements with traditional institutions as critical positive influencers and conflict mediators in their respective states and communities,” Tunji explained.

Participants received training on early warning and response, conflict mapping, mediation, and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). 

Between 2023 and 2024, PIND peace ambassadors intervened when clashes erupted between Alesi and Ochon. Using their training manuals, they engaged both sides to de-escalate tensions.

“We went into the communities where we spoke with elders and youths about the need to embrace peace,” said Agbor Clement, a participant from Ikom LGA. 

However, since the return of the violence this year, both Agbor and Mbinna, a participant from Obubra LGA, admit that their effort have not tackled the root causes. Agbor noted that Ikom also shares boundaries with Boki and Etung local government areas; however, there have been no reported boundary disputes, as the borders are properly demarcated. 

Local government officials agree. According to Daniel Eyam, a Special Adviser on Political and Executive Matters to the Ikom LGA chairperson, although PIND’s activities are well-intentioned, the system itself prevents peace from taking root. 

“In communities, when there is a land dispute, you go to the elders because they are the custodians of facts that pertain to the disputed area, and when they speak the truth, matters are resolved. Sadly, many of them have refused to do that,” he said. 

Daniel stressed that beyond offering training, PIND should push relevant agencies to speak the truth and take action. 

Another challenge facing PIND’s Prevent Council is a lack of resources to enable peace ambassadors to respond immediately during conflict situations.

“We were supposed to meet with stakeholders after the latest crisis, but we are handicapped because our work usually ends after training,” said Victor Okim, a PIND ambassador in Obubra. “We cannot go into the communities to drill down on what we have learned because we don’t have the resources. There is no continuous monitoring and evaluation of Prevent Council activities.”

“If we have the support that we need, we can do more because we are part of them, and they trust us so much to listen when we speak,” he added. 

Nkongha Daniel, the PIND Coordinator for Ikom, said women are often the biggest losers in crises because they lose their husbands and children. She suggested the foundation invest more in training women on how to respond in times of crisis.

PIND did not respond to interview requests, so it remains unclear whether the organisation is aware of the renewed violence or has taken steps to address these challenges. However, in its Niger Delta Weekly Conflict Update for March 2022, it recommended stronger collaboration between stakeholders and the state government to tackle the root causes of land conflicts and redress historical grievances.

Government efforts fall short

On July 30, the Cross River State Government ordered the immediate suspension of all farming activities on the disputed land, saying it was part of its efforts to bring peace to the area until proper boundary demarcation was carried out.

Community leaders and stakeholders of the two warring communities met in Calabar, the state capital, with the Deputy Governor, Peter Odey, and other government officials, including Anthony Owan-Enoh, who is overseeing an eight-person Peace Committee that was inaugurated to identify the root causes of the conflict and recommend a sustainable resolution framework. 

During the meeting, community leaders were instructed to submit all relevant documents relating to the crisis on or before Aug. 1. HumAngle confirmed that the papers were submitted, and a follow-up review meeting was slated for Aug. 13 to assess compliance, monitor the committee’s progress, and tackle emerging issues.

However, several community leaders noted that no meaningful progress has been made. 

“They gave us two weeks to stay off our lands, saying they were coming to carry out boundary demarcation. But after the visit, nothing happened. We have not been told whether we can return to our farms,” said Kelvin Eyam, a community leader from Alesi, lamenting that the government appears indifferent as violence continues. 

Nzan claimed that on Sept. 4, the Secretary to the State Government asked both parties to provide surveyors for an urgent meeting with the state’s Surveyor General. However, when he called to find out the outcome of the meeting the next day, he was informed that it didn’t hold because the surveyor from Obubra could not come. 

“This is what has been happening, and the government continues to keep calm, give us excuses and watch lives get lost,” he lamented. 

Neji Abang, a member of the Peace Resolution Committee for the Ikom-Obubra communal conflict, said that the committee visited both communities shortly after its inauguration to conduct fact-finding. According to him, the state’s Surveyor-General was invited and subsequently deployed a technical team to the disputed boundary. 

“We had a meeting where they presented their findings, and the chairman of the committee had invited 10 representatives from each of the communities to the meeting,” he said. 

But the presentation was rejected by the Alesi delegation, who argued that the demarcation was different from the original boundary record in their possession. They claimed the survey relied on a previous court judgment that had awarded the disputed area to Ochon and therefore demanded a fresh exercise.

Neji also confirmed Nzan’s earlier account that Obubra failed to bring its own surveyor, despite a directive from the committee chairperson instructing both communities to provide independent surveyors to work alongside the state’s team at the disputed site on  Sept. 3.

When asked why the state government had not formally demarcated the boundary despite having records of all boundaries in the state, Abang said, “That is what we will eventually do if it addresses the crisis.” 

What’s the way out?

As government interventions stall, community members and peace ambassadors are proposing alternative paths toward a lasting solution.

Members of the PIND Prevent Council noted that it is also important to look into training community members on livelihoods and alternative means of survival because the conflicts are often rooted in economic struggle.

“Young people can be empowered through skills acquisition programs and grants so they can look away from cocoa, which is a major reason why there is a struggle for land,” Nkongha explained. “Many of the youth are jobless and turn to hard drugs, hence they become willing tools for conflict.”

She explained that Ikom and Obubra, for instance, are big producers of garri, plantain, palm oil, yams, and groundnuts. 

“We can establish industries that process these crops where young people can be employed to work and earn for themselves,” she noted.

For Agbor, another way out of the conflict will be for the government to take over the disputed area and set aside days when farmers on each side can go and harvest their crops, accompanied by security operatives. 

Emmanuel Ossai, a peace and conflict expert who has researched violence in the region, said that interventions, like that of PIND, need to consider widening existing partnerships by involving more strategically placed youth, traditional, religious, and women leaders across the communities in conflict management training regularly.  

“There might be several possible reasons for the violence that are not under PIND’s direct control, but expanding partnerships and training more local leaders in conflict management would be helpful,” he suggested. 

Emmanuel added that regular follow-ups are necessary after training to assess whether community leaders are applying the conflict management skills they acquired to achieve greater impact.

This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The cold bites harder at night. Nathaniel Bitrus* feels it on his face as the motorcycle roars along the dirt path to Sunawara, a small community in the Toungo area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria. A chainsaw sits carefully on his lap, and with two other men, he disappears into the forest.

Nathaniel has spent nearly half of his 45 years taking this three-hour trip. It has helped feed his family, but it has also taken lives and stripped the forest bare. Once, he says, the forests were so dense that the sun barely touched the ground at noon. Now, there are clearings everywhere. Loggers like him have carved paths through the vast Gashaka-Gumti National Park, cutting less lucrative trees to reach the prize – rosewood.

The forest is patrolled, Nathaniel says, checkpoints mounted along the main routes. But with a government permit and the usual bribe, he says, a passage can be bought. 

The men prefer the cheaper way, the secret trails that slip past the eyes of rangers and guards, the paths only loggers know. One such road is called Yaro Me Ka Dauko, a Hausa phrase meaning, “Boy, what are you carrying?” It is the road of the daring. Nathaniel takes it again in silence tonight. He does not have a choice.

When farming is no longer enough 

Nathaniel was a farmer first, or at least he tried to be. He grew maize on a small plot outside Toungo, enough to feed his wife and children. But then the seasons turned. The rains came late or did not come at all, and so the harvests shrank.

In 2001, some men from Lagos, South West Nigeria, came asking for people who could supply rosewood. They showed pictures of the trees they wanted. The locals knew exactly where to find them. Nathaniel was in his twenties then, strong enough to swing an axe all night, and the pay was good – ₦1,000 (about $10 then) per tree log. It was enough to buy food, pay school fees, and buy fertilisers and insecticides, he recalls. 

He signed up.

Soon, there were chainsaws, trucks, and high-paying middlemen. They cut faster and worked into the nights.

David Isaac*, another Toungo farmer-turned-logger, tells us he has been at it for 15 years. “I cut trees to feed my family,” he says. “Farming does not pay anymore. This one does.”

In Baruwa, a forest community tucked in the Mambilla Plateau in the Gashaka Local Government Area of neighbouring Taraba State, George Johnson* has been logging for three decades. He first came to Gembu, a cold town on the plateau, to work on people’s farms. But farming paid too little. 

“Things were expensive,” he says. Logging was better. Sometimes he harvests eucalyptus for local farmers. Other times, when dealers call, he travels three hours to Baruwa to log rosewood.

“The work is dangerous,” Nathaniel says.

They spend days deep in the forest, cutting trees. At night, they sleep with one eye open in makeshift tents. Wild animals prowl close. 

“Sometimes people die or get injured,” says David. “Trees fall on people.”

It happened to him once. He lived. Others were not so lucky.

Rosewood is heavy. When a tree falls, the men loop chains around the trunk and drag it out of the forest until it reaches the dirt road, where trucks wait to transport the logs to a depot outside Sunawara. But as more people died, they pooled money for a crane.

“We did not choose this job,” Nathaniel says softly. “We went to school. But there is no work. If I had a choice, I would not do this.”

Road to China

The real money is not in Toungo or Gashaka or the Mambilla Plateau.

It is in the hands of dealers, foreign buyers, and complicit officials who turn forests into fortunes.

When a dealer receives a consignment request, he calls loggers like Nathaniel.

“We have dedicated loggers, the ones we contact anytime there is demand,” says Charles Ekene*, a Gembu-based dealer. The buyers rarely visit, he says. “They communicate over the phone.”

The dealer commissions the loggers, supplies chainsaws and trucks, sets the prices, pays the transporters, and handles all the paperwork.

Loggers like Nathaniel have their own tools and work independently. “We meet with loggers at a place called ‘Kan Cross, where we negotiate prices,” says  Aliyu Muhammad, a 20-year-old Toungo-based motorcyclist. A trip into the forest costs about ₦4,000 ($2.68), he explains. 

Inside the forest, the loggers cut the trees, paint their initials onto the stumps to mark ownership, and drag the trunks to the roadside. From there, trucks carry them to depots beyond Sunawara.

“They pay about ₦20,000 [$13.40] per log,” Nathaniel says. 

The logs are measured with tape, he adds. 

“And since we do not have access to the buyers in Lagos, we accept whatever the dealers pay us,” says David. 

George says he gets ₦40,000 ($26.81) no matter the size of the log. This is where the real profit begins.

“A truck could fetch ₦3 million [about $2,100] or more on a good day,” Charles says.

From Taraba and Adamawa, the trucks head southward. “From Baruwa, we drive to Jalingo,” Hamma Yusuf*, a 38-year-old truck driver, tells us. And from Jalingo, they reach Lagos, passing through Abuja. 

“It is close to the water,” he says vaguely of the final location. “There are a lot of containers there.”

Logs from Sunawara follow a similar path, passing through Yola, the Adamawa State capital, then Abuja. “Other drivers head first to Kano,” David explains. “A few take the hilly roads through Gembu before reaching Baissa in Taraba.”

Hamma has been transporting timber since 2010. It is mostly intrastate – moving logs from Baruwa and Nguroje, another logging hotspot in Taraba, to a major depot in Baissa, a town in the Kurmi Local Government Area. Occasionally, he makes the longer trip to Lagos.

Hamma works under someone else. They handle the paperwork and negotiate with the dealers, he explains. He carries the documents only to present at checkpoints. 

“Most of the money goes to the owner,” he says. 

Like with the loggers, truck owners decide the pay. Hamma says he earns what could sustain him and his family.

A 2022 Arise News investigation confirmed what Hamma and David describe: rosewood from the region pass through Shagamu, Ogun State, before reaching Apapa Port in Lagos, where cargo ships carry it to China. Our GIS analysis corroborates this route.

Between 2014 and 2017, an average of 40 shipping containers – about 5,600 logs, or 2,800 trees – left Nigeria for China every single day, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In 2016 alone, the EIA reported, more than 1.4 million rosewood logs worth $300 million were smuggled into China, despite the species being listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a classification requiring strict permitting and oversight.

Today, the financial losses remain unquantified. Neither the National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime (2022–2026) nor Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) performance reports estimate how much Nigeria loses annually to timber trafficking. 

In search of clarity, we filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Federal Ministry of Finance and the NCS, asking for revenue-loss data. Neither agency had responded at press time.

China’s official 2025 import figures are also unavailable. However, Statista reports that in 2023, China imported $17.1 billion worth of wood products, second only to the United States. Meanwhile, the Enhancing Africa’s Transnational Organised Crime (ENACT) 2017 report estimates that Africa loses about $17 billion annually to timber smuggling.

Much of this demand traces back to China’s enduring cultural fascination with rosewood, known as hongmu. Once reserved for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, rosewood furniture became a coveted status symbol, admired for its deep hues, durability, and capacity for intricate carving. That appetite lives on. 

But China’s own forests could not sustain this demand. Large scale logging was banned decades ago. The hunger simply shifted elsewhere. First to Southeast Asia, and more recently to Africa, which now supplies the lion’s share. A 2022 Forest Trends report shows that by 2020, 83 per cent of China’s wood imports came from Africa, while shipments from Southeast Asia declined. CITES data adds that over 41 per cent of China’s rosewood log imports from range states – more than 2.2 million cubic meters worth about $1.037 billion – came from Africa. The scale of demand is staggering: Forest Trends noted that between 2000 and 2015, China’s rosewood imports surged by 1,250 per cent, with the value nearly doubling in a single year between 2013 and 2014, reaching $2.6 billion.

Laws exist, only on paper

Nigeria’s laws against illegal logging look formidable on paper. The Endangered Species Act (1985, revised 2016), the Nigerian Customs Act (2023) prohibiting the export of endangered timber, the pending Endangered Species Conservation and Protection Bill (2024), and multiple state laws ban or criminalise rosewood trafficking. Yet in 2022, CITES issued a rare Article XIII intervention, citing “persistent governance failures” and warning of possible trade sanctions if enforcement did not improve.

State-level bans tell the same story of power without teeth. Taraba State outlawed rosewood logging in 2023. Yet, George insists he pays ₦10,000 ($6.70) each to both local and state governments for annual permits. When asked for proof, he claimed he left the permit at home and promised to send a photo later – a promise he never kept.

Our attempts to verify his claim led nowhere. Officials at the Taraba State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change declined to comment. The ministry’s director of planning, research, and statistics, Fidelis Nashuka, told us, “We have a department of forestry which has no more details on this.”

That same year, Adamawa State governor Ahmadu Fintiri announced a tree-felling ban but framed it as a measure against burning trees “in the name of charcoal,” without naming specific species. Loggers say the ban changed nothing. 

“We obtain permits from the local government,” David says. 

A permit used to cost ₦30,000 ($20.11), he adds, but now goes for ₦50,000 ($34). Nathaniel agrees. “Officials could even issue them at ₦70,000 [$47],” he says, “because the business became competitive.”

When asked to produce these permits, none of the loggers could. They claim carrying the documents is risky, so they leave them at home unless heading deep into the forest. HumAngle wrote to the Adamawa State Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to verify these claims. However, we got no response. 

On paper, Nigeria has the laws to end this trade. In reality, enforcement bends under corruption.

“We pay money at every security check point for us to be allowed to pass,” David claims.

The problem runs far deeper than local bribes. In 2017, the EIA revealed that Nigerian officials retrospectively issued about 4,000 CITES permits for rosewood logs seized in China, allegedly after payments of over a million dollars to senior officials, with the involvement of the Chinese consulate. Former Environment Minister Amina Mohammed reportedly signed the documents in her final days in office before becoming UN Deputy Secretary-General.

And this is not just a West African story. In 2021, a Kenyan court ordered the country’s Revenue Authority to return $13 million worth of confiscated rosewood to alleged traffickers. The timber had been seized at the Port of Mombasa while in transit from Madagascar through Zanzibar to Hong Kong

A 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies argued that illegal African rosewood trafficking thrives on corruption, weak enforcement, and legal loopholes across Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, with China’s demand as the engine driving it all. The report shows how high-level officials, court decisions, and lax port regulations across East and Southern Africa have turned enforcement into theatre, allowing traffickers to sidestep both domestic laws and CITES restrictions.

The Nigeria-Cameroon border tells the same story. Porous and poorly monitored, it serves as both source and smuggling corridor. Once, Nathaniel crossed the border into Cameroon. The locals there, he recalls, are not as deeply involved as those in Nigeria. The trees felled in Cameroon find their way into Nigeria, he explains.

A 2022 investigation traced the journey of logs from the forests of northern Cameroon through Taraba and Adamawa, showing how the wood, cleared to look Nigerian, made its way to export points. Forest Trends’ Illegal Deforestation and Associated Trade database confirms Nigeria’s role as both a major source and transit country.

People were caught along the way, Nathaniel says. “Our people were beaten, locked up. Some died in prison. At one point, we had to run to save our lives. Our equipment was even set on fire after clashes with security officials in Cameroon.”

There is some success. Occasionally, government officials seize illegal timber, arrest a handful of loggers and dealers, or burn trucks on the spot.

In Taraba, officials insist the 2023 logging ban is being enforced. 

“There are mobile courts, attached with a task force, that go round penalising illegal loggers,” says Fidelis. “They are stationed on major roads. Once the task force apprehends timber poachers, the mobile court immediately fines.”

Penalties, however, rarely go beyond fines. “No jail terms at the moment,” Fidelis admits. “We are still working on the law to include that. There have been arrests, almost every day. But I cannot mention the scale of these arrests, as I am not part of the team.”

Yet on our reporting trip, we saw no sign of these mobile courts or task forces. Only the usual immigration, military, and police checkpoints lined the roads.

At the federal level, the Nigeria Customs Service touts large-scale seizures across ports, border posts, and inland commands. Its 2024 performance report claims that from January to June 2024, the agency made 2,442 seizures with a Duty Paid Value of ₦25.5 billion ($17 million), 203 per cent higher than the same period in 2023.

The National Park Service (NPS) also points to progress. In an April interview with HumAngle, Surveyor-General Ibrahim Musa Goni said the NPS was working with agencies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency, the NCS, and others to curb trafficking in wildlife species and plants.

At the end of 2023, Goni said, the NPS made 646 arrests across all national parks, with Gashaka-Gumti recording the highest number, a sign of persistent clashes between park rangers and illegal loggers, poachers, and other intruders in the reserve’s forests and buffer zones.

Regionally, Nigeria is working with the African Protected Area Directors (APAD), ECOWAS, and other regional blocs in East and Central Africa, Goni says. “We take our issues to the European Union and other regional bodies. This way, we get to reach the governments of various countries.”

Yet the logging continues.

The human and ecological toll

The scars are everywhere.

“Before, this place was covered with trees,” says Mary, a 45-year-old farmer in Sunawara, pointing to the bare stretch where stumps now stand like broken teeth. We flew a drone over the hills above Toungo. We could see the empty patches where forests once stood like walls.

Gathering firewood has become a daily struggle. “We have to walk a long distance now just to find enough for cooking,” Mary says.

But the loss is deeper than firewood.

“Rosewood belongs to the Fabaceae family,” explains Ridwan Jaafar, an ecosystem ecologist from the Mambilla Plateau and lead strategist for the Nigerian Montane Forest Project. “This group of species fixes atmospheric nitrogen and enriches the soil. When the trees are gone, that function disappears too.”

Farmers feel the loss directly. “It hardly rains anymore,” says Juris Saiwa, a 68-year-old farmer in Sunawara. “Maybe it is because of cutting down trees,” he adds, convinced that history links deforestation with drought.

Yields have shrunk. “We could cultivate even without fertiliser before,” says Jauro, the Sunawara village head. 

Mary agrees: “Now our crops do not grow well. The land does not produce the way it used to.”

Dr Hamman Kamale, a geologist at the University of Maiduguri in Borno State, confirms what the farmers sense. “Deforestation degrades soil fertility. Organic matter declines, soils compact, and land degradation spreads,” he says. HumAngle reported in July that farmers in Taraba complained of dry spells withering their crops.

The damage spirals outward. Ridwan explains that trees play a key role in carbon storage. “Forests act as terrestrial carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and locking it in biomass and soil,” he says. Remove the trees, and you release carbon while erasing that storage capacity.

The dangers multiply with floods and erosion. “Deforestation removes root reinforcement, increasing landslide risk, accelerates runoff, and triggers gully formation,” says Dr. Kamale. “Sediment loads rise in rivers, channels destabilise, groundwater recharge drops, and water quality declines.” 

In Adamawa, floods now come almost every year, destroying homes and displacing thousands.

The damage extends to wildlife.

“The animals we used to see, such as gorillas and monkeys, are gone,” says Jauro. “We don’t know if they left or died out.” 

Rosewood provides shelter for these animals, ecologist Ridwan says. “They are also a food source as their leaves are rich in nitrogen. Their disappearance means animals and birds migrate.”

Satellite analysis reveals what the farmers, scientists, and ecologists are saying. Our Landsat data analysis (USGS, 2023) shows a dramatic transformation of the Gashaka-Gumti National Park between 2010 and 2023. Bare land expanded by more than 1,800 km² between 2010 and 2015 alone, a fourteen-fold increase in just five years. Farmland and sparse vegetation actually shrank by nearly 80 km² during the same period, proving that this was no slow encroachment by farmers but a rapid, organised logging boom. By 2020, cleared land exceeded 2,050 km². Even after a slight recovery by 2023, dense forest cover stood at just 39.8 km², far below pre-boom levels, leaving the park deeply scarred.

Experts say the solutions must begin where the damage began. “Even some security agents don’t understand the environmental laws,” Ridwan laments. “The government must involve the communities, enlighten them on the risks, and provide sustainable alternatives like beekeeping or shea butter processing. These are more profitable and ecologically sound. But the key is community ownership.”

Dr. Kamale recommends protecting riparian zones and steep headwaters, restricting logging on fragile soils, building erosion control structures like check dams, reforesting degraded slopes with native species, enforcing low-impact harvesting, and strengthening Nigeria–Cameroon cooperation on monitoring.

But money remains the missing piece. NPS boss Goni admits enforcement cannot rely on security agencies alone. “Half the success depends on local communities,” he says. “We have begun training people with new skills and giving starter packs for alternative livelihoods. It has reduced hunting and logging in some areas. But we need more resources to make this sustainable.”

The last ride

It is dawn. Nathaniel and his crew emerge from the forest, three men on a motorcycle, just as they had gone in. 

They will not make this trip again for months, Nathaniel says. The trees are thinning out. The dealers have moved south, to Cross River, where rosewood still grows in abundance. 

“The market is no longer like it used to be,” he tells us. “The people from Lagos don’t come anymore. The foreigners too, we don’t see them like before.”

He sits on the stump of a felled rosewood at the depot outside Sunawara, where he speaks to us.

The air here is damp and cold; fog drifts between the few remaining trees. We can feel the cold, despite putting on jackets. The temperature is below 19°C. A few birds call from somewhere deep inside the remaining trees in the forest, their songs thinner than was described before our trip.

Nathaniel looks towards the forest. He has made this journey hundreds of times, yet each one leaves him with a hollowness he cannot name. The money never lasts. The danger grows each season.

It is hard to picture the world Ridwan, the ecologist, dreams of, a world where bees hum between restored trees, where tourists come to see the wildlife instead of empty clearings. Harder still to imagine a government willing to stop the trade not only with arrests but with real work for men like Nathaniel.

A tricycle moves past, stacked with rosewood planks. It disappears down the road, leaving behind a ribbon of smoke and the smell of fuel hanging in the cold morning air.

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

Satellite image analysis and map illustrations were done by Mansir Muhammed. Imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro and the multi-decade Landsat archive of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), with official park boundaries obtained from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

This story was produced by HumAngle with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

HumAngle has just been announced winner of the Illicit Financial Flow category in the 2025 West Africa Media Excellence Conference Awards (WAMECA) for our investigation into The Internet Fundraising Marathon Behind IPOB’s Armed Struggle. Kunle Adebajo, HumAngle’s former Investigations Editor, who authored the story, also emerged as the West Africa Journalist of the Year. It is the second time in three years that a HumAngle journalist will receive the honour.

The announcement was made during an awards ceremony in Accra, Ghana, on Saturday evening, Oct. 11, with several journalists from across Africa in attendance.

WAMECA is an initiative of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and is currently in its eighth edition. The award has been described as West Africa’s biggest and most prestigious journalism award.

Two of our reports had been shortlisted under the same category. The MFWA said it received a total of 793 entries from more than 600 media outlets across 15 West African countries, with 335 of those entries coming from Nigeria. The shortlist of 26 had come from these entries, with Nigerian media dominating the list, including TheCable, Premium Times, Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), Daily Trust, and the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR).

The other HumAngle report that was shortlisted was by Al’amin Umar, Climate Change Reporter. Al’amin’s work focuses on the complex intersections of environmental change, conflict, and sustainability efforts. He was a 2024 participant of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, as well as a 2025 grantee of the Earth Journalism Network’s Biodiversity Media Initiative.

His shortlisted report, ISWAP’s ‘Tax’ System is Bleeding Farmers Dry in Northeastern Nigeria, investigated how terrorists from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have been bleeding farmers dry in Borno, northeastern Nigeria, through an illegal taxation system. The report was done with support from the Pulitzer Centre. 

Kunle, whose report won the award, was HumAngle’s Investigations Editor until October 2024, and now sits on the Advisory Board. His work for HumAngle covered conflict alongside its many intricacies and fallouts. He also writes about disinformation, the environment, and human rights. He’s won many journalism awards, including the 2021 Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalism, the 2022 African Fact-checking Award, and the 2023 Michael Elliott Award for Excellence in African Storytelling.

The judges noted an improvement in the quality of entries received this year, as well as more diversity in the countries represented.

They said the winning story was “bold, data-driven, and unflinchingly relevant. The story by HumAngle in Nigeria stands out for its extraordinary synthesis of digital forensics, conflict analysis, and accountability reporting. Through meticulous open-source intelligence and cross-border research, the reporter traced how diaspora money or diaspora-led crowdfunding and cryptocurrency networks were financing violence in Nigeria’s South East… This investigation does more than say money is moving; it actually shows how it moves, who moves it, where it goes, and what it buys…”

HumAngle had won the environmental reporting category of the award in 2023 with our first interactive story, All Die Na Die: At The Heart Of Nigeria’s Soot Problem. Merging audio and visuals, the story showed the genesis and process of illegal oil bunkering in Rivers State, Nigeria, and the extent of the resultant soot problem in the state, showing its effects on water, the soil, and even air quality. The author of the investigation, HumAngle’s former Interactive Editor, Temitayo Akinyemi (FKA Muhammed Akinyemi), was also awarded Journalist of the Year. 

Commenting on HumAngle’s winning the award for the second time in three years, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Ahmad Salkida, said it was a testament to the commitment and excellence with which our journalists approach their profession. 

“Both Kunle and Al’amin continue to personify the excellence that HumAngle stands for and the conviction upon which the organisation is built,” he said. “The conviction that journalism is powerful enough to influence history and shape perception and understanding. HumAngle is proud to have won this award again and will continue to be dedicated to our mission. I am also hopeful that this recognition will translate to even more impact, policy change, and wider understanding of terror financing and the magnitude of the insecurity issues in Nigeria’s South East.”

Accepting the award, Kunle said he was deeply honoured. “I stood on this stage in 2019 to receive a similar award,” he reminisced.”Between then and now, I think my craft has improved significantly… I want to thank the MFWA for their consistent support, for not just awarding journalists, but also making us feel special. I wish you more resources and willpower to continue to do this.” 

In May, floods swept through Mokwa, a community in Niger State, North Central Nigeria, killing over 160 people — the deadliest single flood incident in the country this year. Entire families were wiped out as homes, schools, and farmlands vanished under torrents of muddy water. More than 3000 people were displaced, according to local authorities. 

The tragedy was soon mirrored elsewhere. From Niger to Yobe, Adamawa, Rivers, and Lagos states, floods destroyed livelihoods and exposed the same recurring pattern: heavy rains, clogged drains, failed infrastructure, and official neglect.

Warning ignored

The devastation had been predicted. 

In February, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), in its 2025 Seasonal Climate Prediction (SCP), warned that rainfall would arrive early in parts of the south and late in the north, disrupting the usual rhythm of the wet season. The forecast, designed to guide preparedness across sectors, again proved accurate but was largely ignored. 

By August, over 272,000 people across 25 states had been affected, and at least 230 lives, according to data from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). 

The SCP projected early rainfall across Anambra, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, and Rivers states, while Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau, and Taraba were expected to experience a delayed onset. Other states were expected to follow typical seasonal patterns.

It also warned of an early end to the rainy season in parts of Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Plateau, Yobe, Zamfara, and the FCT, while Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Delta, Enugu, and Lagos would experience prolonged rains.

While unveiling the SCP, Festus Keyamo, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, emphasised that climate forecasts were essential for strategic planning across sectors such as agriculture, health, marine operations, and disaster management.

Yet, three months later, the warning materialised — from the urban corridors of Abuja to the rural heartlands of Niger and Yobe.

Flooding in Nigeria, often seasonal, is tied to the torrential rains that sweep across the country from April to October. However, the scale and intensity of this year’s events, particularly the human cost, have reignited the need for conversations about climate change.

Epicentres of the 2025 floods

Niger State remains the hardest hit, but other states have also experienced catastrophic losses.

In May, Okrika, a coastal town in Rivers State, was hit by torrential rains that triggered floods and landslides, killing at least 25 people. The Niger Delta’s low-lying terrain and poor drainage make it particularly susceptible to such disasters. 

Up North in Yobe State, widespread flooding across the Potiskum and Nangere LGAs between June and August killed seven people and displaced over 6,687 residents, with more than 11,000 people affected. Farmlands were submerged, deepening food insecurity in a region already burdened by poverty and insurgency.

Flash floods also tore through Adamawa State, submerging at least 13 communities across Yola South and Yola North, displacing thousands and claiming several lives. In some parts of Adamawa, HumAngle found affected residents living in roadside shelters and makeshift camps, highlighting the scale of devastation and the urgent need for coordinated relief.

More recently, some neighbourhoods in Lagos were submerged for days following heavy rainfall. Gridlocked traffic, overflowing drains, and submerged homes became a familiar sight. The floods, which affected about 57,000 residents, underscored how unchecked urbanisation and poor planning continue to heighten risk.

Behind every data showing the scale of damage caused by flooding is a story of loss. Across the country, thousands now live in temporary shelters, vulnerable to disease and malnutrition, while the destruction of farmlands threatens food supply.

Major setbacks

Abbas Idris, president of the Risk Managers Society of Nigeria, told HumAngle that the recurrence of flood disasters reflects systemic negligence and poor governance.

“In Nigeria, we do not value life, which is why we keep allowing floods and other disasters to repeat themselves,” he said. “If we have a flood this year, and we know the cause, it shouldn’t happen again next year for the same reason.”

Abbas, a risk management consultant, said government response remains reactive rather than preventive. “Instead of activating proactive measures, authorities prefer distributing relief materials to victims after a disaster,” he said, adding that even these short-term interventions often fail to reach victims.

He pointed to poor drainage infrastructure as a critical factor in the country’s flood vulnerability: “In many cities and towns, drainage systems are either poorly designed, insufficient for the volume of water during peak rains, or completely absent.”

“Even where drains exist,” he said, “they are frequently blocked by solid waste due to inadequate waste management and public awareness. This leads to water pooling on roads and in residential areas, turning streets into rivers during heavy downpours and increasing the risk of loss of lives and property damage.”

Abbas also blamed uncontrolled urbanisation. Buildings are routinely erected in flood-prone zones, wetlands, riverbanks, and low-lying areas without proper environmental assessments or adherence to zoning regulations, he said. 

“If reckless urbanisation is the cause, then urban and regional planners and any relevant authorities must take responsibility for approving such construction.” 

In rural areas, deforestation and logging worsen the problem by stripping away vegetation that naturally absorbs rainfall. The result is faster runoff, soil erosion, and flash floods that devastate communities.

Without a shift toward proactive planning, environmental enforcement, and investment in resilient infrastructure, Abbas warned, Nigeria will remain at the mercy of climate-induced disasters.

De-escalating future risks

Experts have long warned that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events across West Africa. Rising temperatures bring heavier rainfall, while poor land use and deforestation worsen runoff and erosion. 

Nigeria already has early warning systems through NiMET and the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency, which issue rainfall and flood forecasts to all levels of government. But, as Abbas warns, “Any early warning without early action is tantamount to inviting flooding to happen in the country.” 

“The only way out is adaptation,” he said. “But awareness remains low, even within government. We need proper education and sensitisation on climate change right from the grassroots. If we allow the climate impacts on the environment, then we are finished.”

What if you woke up one day and discovered your monthly income had shrunk to a tenth of what it used to be? That nightmare became the reality of Ibrahim Abdullahi, a phone repairer and PoS handler in Arewa Market, Abuja, North Central Nigeria. One minute, he had a booming recharge card-selling business; the next, his profit dwindled to a fraction of what it once was.

Ibrahim’s financial decline had nothing to do with his efficiency or work ethic. The market itself changed with the adoption of the virtual top-up (VTU) service between 2011 and 2013, enabling people to purchase data and airtime digitally via USSD, mobile banking applications, ATMs, and the web. Leading telcos such as MTN and Airtel first introduced the service. 

VTU quickly became mainstream, and by 2021, Ibrahim’s business had collapsed. 

“I used to sell about ₦100,000 worth of recharge cards in a day, but when people stopped buying paper recharge cards, I wasn’t able to sell up to ₦10,000 daily,” he recounted with eyes fixed on the phone he was repairing, as if any glance away might cost his income. 

But for people like Ibrahim, whose livelihood depended on the physical scratch cards, the change was devastating. Soon, as expected, the once-lucrative trade vanished, leaving sellers with lost profits even as they scrambled for alternatives. Three years ago, Ibrahim closed shop.

Across Nigeria, entire lines of work are being erased by new technologies, echoing a global trend.

The casualties 

Scratch-card sellers are not alone.

Wuraola Adebisi* used to be a call centre agent in the ‘90s. With low mobile-phone penetration, people depended on her service for communication and were charged per second. In 1999, she gained admission and left for tertiary education, hoping to return to the business afterwards.

However, even before she got her diploma, mobile telephony was introduced in 2001, ending the monopoly of Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, which was the sole provider of the common wired telephony, but also keeping call centre agents like Wuraola out of business. 

“The call centre business left by itself because people now had phones in their hands,” she said.

These changes, while detrimental to those who lose, are a natural part of the way the world evolves. A survey conducted by HumAngle in Nigeria also shows this trend: 15 per cent of respondents attributed their job loss to the advent of technologies such as artificial intelligence and banking digitisation.

Globally, this is not unusual. The World Economic Forum projects that 92 million jobs will vanish worldwide by 2030 as innovation reshapes economies. But it also projects 170 million new roles, highlighting that while some professions fade, others emerge.

“While tech evolution may render some jobs obsolete, it also unlocks new opportunities in emerging fields like digital entrepreneurship, virtual assistance, cybersecurity, data analysis, amongst others,” Ponfa Miri, Team Lead of Langtang Innovation Hub, a non-profit tech skills training institute based in rural Plateau State, told HumAngle. 

This balance between loss and opportunity is already visible in Nigeria.

When scratch-card sellers lost their jobs, business people across the country found alternatives via other digital-enabled businesses like PoS operations, where agents sell cash to consumers. There are about 1,600 PoS operators per square kilometre in the country, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“I switched to the PoS and phone repair business because it was digital,” said Ibrahim. 

Yet, it was not simply a random switch. For phone repairs, particularly with the rising diversity of smartphones, he needed to learn new skills. The HumAngle survey found that 79.3 per cent of respondents are learning at least one digital skill, with 33.3 per cent doing so solely to adapt. 

The challenge, then, is not only about jobs disappearing, but about who has the skills and access to compete for the new ones.

Inside the digital divide

This rapid adaptation has its limits. As of May, internet penetration reached 48 per cent, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission. However, this still leaves a majority without essential connectivity, which UNICEF identifies as the first step towards acquiring digital skills. In conflict-hit communities like Birnin Gwari in the country’s North West, telecom shutdowns have lasted for over three years. 

Not only are several left without internet, but many who have access to it complain that poor national connectivity hinders their ability to carry out their jobs properly. 

Telecom operators argue that the interruption or slow speed is sometimes caused by power shortages or vandalism of infrastructure by armed groups, locals, or construction companies. For everyday Nigerians, however, these explanations do little to ease the frustration. The impact is felt most by small operators who depend on steady connectivity to survive.

Blessing Adejoke*, another who shifted from scratch-card sales to PoS, said: “People don’t like it when they’re looking for money, and it takes a long time for the PoS machine to connect. It’s not always a big problem, but earlier this year I nearly lost a full day of making money because my machine refused to go online.”

Connectivity and power shortages weigh heavily on operators like Blessing and on millions trying to learn or work digitally. With over 89 million Nigerians living below the poverty line, opportunities in the digital economy remain largely out of reach for the poor and displaced, HumAngle’s survey found.

The consequences are visible in the unemployment rate. A Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) Group study showed joblessness climbed to 5.3 per cent in early 2024, marking the third consecutive quarter increase. Young people, entering the tech-driven job market for the first time, account for 8 per cent of that rise.

With such situations, privilege often determines access. 

Haruna Bello*, a recent graduate, credits her private-university education and paid digital skills training for securing an internship that pays more than the minimum wage. 

“Before I applied for the role, my mum paid for a private course to help me boost my CV. I don’t remember how much it cost, but it was over ₦60,000,” she said. 

Haruna believes that her lucrative role could only be obtained through private-funded efforts and expenses, two things many Nigerians can’t afford due to the growing poverty rate. The result is a massive employment disparity between the rich and the poor, where a larger percentage of Nigerians remain unemployed, hired in low-income positions, or running small-scale businesses. 

To reduce these notable issues, the government has set out to introduce programmes that may lessen the digital gap, but these have yet to be far-reaching.

Government’s shallow fixes

In 2023, Nigeria’s minister for communication, innovation, and digital economy, Bosun Tijani, launched the 3 Million Technical Talents (3MTT) Fellowship to equip 3 million Nigerians with tech talents within four years. The programme, which has held two cohorts, has trained about 117,000 people. In isolation, the number may seem grand, but in reality, it barely scratches the surface of the estimated 100 million Nigerians who are digitally illiterate. 

Authorities at the sub-national level have also attempted to bridge the gap. For instance, the Plateau State Government in 2019 launched Code Plateau, a programme similar to 3MTT, over 1000 young people were trained, but the initiative abruptly closed after a political transition.

With progress so limited and the rise of more advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, optimism quickly gives way to doubt. 

“Who Nigeria help?” Wurola laughed when asked about government aid. Our survey respondents feel the same way: 40 per cent said they need government support to compete in today’s job market. 

However, some experts say the government cannot do it alone. Non-profit and private initiatives, especially those at the grassroots, remain vital to Nigeria’s digital transition.

“By working together, we can bridge the divide and create a more inclusive future, empowering individuals to thrive in the new economy,” said Ponfa, whose organisation has trained hundreds of rural women and young people in digital literacy and entrepreneurship.

Whether or not those programmes are created or enhanced, one thing is certain: the labour ecosystem is ever-changing, and many will have to find ways to adjust to it if they hope to stay afloat. As Wurola puts it, “This is the tech age. We had the Stone Age, we had the Iron Age. So, this is the age of tech, you can’t beat it. This is where we find ourselves, whether good or bad.”

*Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect the identities of sources. 

Amid ongoing terrorist activities by Boko Haram in northern Cameroon, particularly in the Far North, contraband trade with Nigeria and neighbouring countries has resulted in a significant increase in Cameroon’s deficit, reaching 50.7 billion FCFA (around US$89.8 million).

A report from Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics (NIS) regarding informal transborder trade for 2024 indicates that this deficit is increasing compared to last year’s numbers, which reached 44.6 billion FCFA (approximately US$79 million). This deficit was noted in 2023 following the record high of 71.8 billion FCFA (around US$79 million) in 2022. 

The deficit, which is in Cameroon’s disfavour, is principally due to the heavy weight of informal purchases from Nigeria, a neighbouring country with a commercial deficit of 111,73 billion FCFA in 2024 after the 2022 peak of 168.04 billion FCFA.

“The structural disequilibrium of the informal commercial balance with Nigeria can be explained by two closely linked factors namely, the extensive land border with this neighbouring country (Nigeria) doubled with the permeability of the border and the dynamism of the Nigerian economy accentuated by the drop in the exchange rate of its currency, the naira, as well as the competitivity of its offer in the hydrocarbons sector,” the NIS noted.

The NIS added that informal importations from neighbouring countries, including Nigeria, which shares a common border of 1,500 kilometres with Cameroon from north to south, have two principal entry points: the Far North and the North within the northerly part of Cameroon and the Southwest in the southern part.

The majority of imported goods primarily pass through the Far North region, accounting for 49.4 per cent of imports in 2024, followed by the North region at 20.8 per cent. This trend is largely influenced by contraband networks dealing in fuel, livestock, and manufactured products. According to NIS, fuel and lubricants make up the largest share of these imports at 22.1 per cent, with live animals following at 14.6 per cent.

Over 70 per cent of smuggling activities between Cameroon and its neighbouring countries, especially Nigeria, occur in the Far North and North regions. This continues despite the insecurity caused by Boko Haram militants operating in the Far North of Cameroon.

On the contrary, the influx of transit through the Southwest Region has dropped (-38.7 per cent), due to the Anglophone crisis, according to the report. The Adamawa (-17.5 per cent) and the East (-3.3 per cent) have also seen their imports contrast due to security and logistical difficulties (degraded roads and armed groups).

Since 2016, separatist activities have disturbed the Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon, which have boundaries with Nigeria. These activities are slowing down economic activity. These same activities are parallel to exactions by armed groups from the Central African Republic, which endanger the corridors of the East and Adamawa regions of Cameroon.

We want to tell a single story but follow three separate crises. 

One began deep in Cross River National Park, where a reporter HumAngle worked with walked into the reserve and found neat rows of cocoa where there should have been rainforest in Nigeria’s South South. Another began hundreds of kilometres in the country’s North East, where families in Yusufari, Yobe State, were leaving their homes because sand had overtaken them. The last came from a file we had kept alive for years — the Great Green Wall, Africa’s 8,000-kilometre chain of trees planted to hold the desert back.

With rising interest in Nigeria’s environmental and climate crisis, HumAngle has drawn from its pioneering experience using geospatial investigative techniques to strengthen its reporting and also provide insights to other reporters who want to make sense of the data they gather. These tools and techniques became central to uncovering evidence from the aforementioned stories.

At first, they felt unrelated. One was about farms, another about migration, the third about a wall of trees. But as the maps were laid out, aligned on the satellite imagery, and compared with the testimonies of locals and experts in the field, the three began to move as one. Forests are collapsing in the south, deserts are pressing from the north, and the only defence is a broken wall.

Righteous deforestation

The first set of coordinates dropped us in the dense green. From above, the forest around Ekong/Oban town in Cross River State looked alive and whole. But zooming closer, the stylish spiral shapes of the tree canopies looked different from the bushy, round type of the natural rainforest tree crowns. Natural forest crowns scatter randomly, and the spirals reveal human hands. Cocoa.

“There are a lot of farms in the area, though, which have also sprung up in the same time period,” said Olatunji Olaigbe, the investigative reporter on the ground. “One thing we heard happens is that virgin forest is logged, and then the cocoa farmers plant on it after a while and claim farms have always been there.” 

Olatunji’s GPS confirmed it. He had stood among young cocoa trees where laws say there should be natural rainforest. In fact, he had walked more than one farm, and locals told him there were many like the ones he had seen. To verify, we scanned further and identified two large sites having these same tree crowns as the place where he was.

The first was within walking distance. It covers over 3,000 hectares, with scattered individual patches spreading loosely through the forest. The hypothesis was that they had no formal system of land allocation due to their unstructured organisation. Like a traditional tenure system, where the lands have no visual demarcating boundaries. Likely by villagers from the neighbouring communities. They may endure inherent land crises and disputes. If they did, it may not be apparent from a satellite perspective as the crops spread freely and uninterrupted over the National Reserve.

The second site, a few kilometres south of this site, looked more structured. Covering about 4000 hectares, it was orderly: consistent crops, obvious boundary markers. We suspected that this site may belong to a major entity invested in cocoa farming or a group of individuals and/or entities in agreement. Each owns one or multiple lands, perhaps allocated by an authority. 

We then measured how much forest had been lost. By overlaying the Hansen Global Forest Change data on two decades of Landsat imagery, the picture sharpened into a time-lapse of collapse. Between 2010 and 2015, degraded forests were thinned and gave way to deforested land. Stable forest shrank by more than two-thirds. By 2023, what remained of the true natural forest was buried in cultivation and cleared lands.

From above, the canopy still looked thick. But its function was gone. Rainforest exchanged for cocoa no longer serves the same way. 

We held on to the impression as we travelled through the country’s North. If Cross River had an abundance of crops at the expense of natural forest, Yusufari was stripped bare of both.

Across dying sands

In Yobe State, reporters spent some weeks travelling across villages surrounded by dunes, such as Yusufari and other villages and towns towards the Nigeria-Niger Republic border, including Bultu Briya, Zakkari, Tulo-Tulo, and Bula-Tura. 

When the photos got to the newsroom, the story was immediately obvious. Settlements, where locals were facing severe water shortages, sat on a bright sandy floor. In some communities, children walked kilometres to fetch water, and in some communities, residents packed up and migrated across the border.

We turned to satellite sensors to understand what was happening beneath the sandy surface. Data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission (2002 – 2017), which tracks the Earth’s shifting gravity to measure underground water storage, showed an odd pattern. Across much of the Sahel, from Zinder to northern Borno, Diffa-Yusufari region, and Southern Yobe, groundwater supplies had ticked upward. But Yusufari itself was an outlier: a flat line. No rise, no fall. A dead pulse for two decades.

The land was no better. ESA’s WorldCover maps showed degrading lands with surface water and arable land shrinking. Which is ironic because the land use satellite data we looked at shows that more than 12 per cent of Yobe’s territory is committed to cropland use, which is far higher than neighbouring Borno or Diffa. They were essentially farmers in a dying land unfit for farming. And so many of them decided to escape the advancing deserts. 

Another tool, NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard Terra and Aqua satellites, helped us track changes in vegetation over the past two decades. The sensor’s record of greenness showed that villagers travelling into villages in the Niger Republic and Chad were not escaping the arid zone. Instead, the sand was on their heels, following them across the border. 

Holding on to that impression, we examined these environmental crises at both ends of the country. The crises looked different, but the outcome was similar: green was disappearing, whether through natural and man-made exploitation. 

In the South, the forest is being consumed under cultivation. Meanwhile, in the North, the soil was consumed until cultivation was impossible. Faced with crises like these, the question is always: what solutions exist?

One answer has been environmental laws that protect forest reserves meant to safeguard natural habitat, but as we have observed in Cross River, these laws are often ignored, with little or no deterrence against exploitation. Another idea was daring to match global-scale desertification with afforestation, hence the idea of the Green Wall. 

Launched in 2007, the Great Green Wall promised an 8,000-kilometre shield of vegetation across Africa’s midsection, as wide as a city. A living barrier meant to stop the desert from devouring soil and lives. But, nearly two decades later, what has actually grown is far more complicated.

The broken wall

Reporters who travelled across communities along the Wall’s route in the West African Sahel sent back coordinates that were less precise than in Cross River and Yobe states. Insecurity made movement almost impossible. Many sections of the Green Wall corridor remain under the control of violent non-state armed groups, with villages emptied by displacement.

So we turned to geospatial tools to fill in the gaps, and there was an unexpected paradox. Across the Wall, trees were thriving in those places people had abandoned, but dying in many of the places where people remained or fled to. 

To measure this, we cut the corridor into grids — manageable 18-by-18-kilometre boxes spanning thirty localities along the Great Green Wall, from Nigeria, Niger, into Burkina Faso, and beyond. We counted trees in 2007, then again in 2025, using high-resolution mosaics and classification models.

The aggregate number went up. From 3.1 million trees in 2007 to 3.9 million by 2025, a 26 per cent increase. But the growth was concentrated in deserted places.

Across communities in Isa, a local government area in Sokoto State, northwestern Nigeria, insurgency drove villagers away. With grazing and tree-felling halted, and seedlings planted years earlier left undisturbed, tree cover rebounded dramatically — from about 60,000 to nearly 300,000. Dense weeds may have contributed too.

A similar situation unfolded in Burkina Faso’s Djibo, where abandonment allowed trees to flourish. However, in Karma, Niger, tree cover collapsed by more than half.

These contrasting shifts underline the uneven fortunes of the Great Green Wall. Participating countries often report progress; for instance, some media reports say land and vegetation in Senegal and Ethiopia were restored, while Nigeria has claimed five million hectares of reclamation. Yet in rural economies like Yusufari in Yobe or Isa in Sokoto, realities on the ground tell a harsher story. Reporters found Green Wall sites littered with dead seedlings, left untended.

“When I went to Yusufari, I saw that the materials were there, as well as the seedlings, but nobody was taking care of the plants. You just see them dead as you pass by,” Mallam Usman, an environmental journalist, recounted. 

Since the 2010s, violent groups across Nigeria’s North West and the Sahel have threatened the Green Wall efforts, especially in villages abandoned by locals. Based on satellite observations, the Wall grew more in places where people could not stay. 

The legacy effect

To understand this, we probed further using open-source records of past Green Wall and related projects. A “legacy effect” became clear: seedlings sown years earlier, before villages were abandoned, had matured into trees. Our analysis identified at least eight initiatives across Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso that may have laid this foundation. 

We observed the new greens, which are thinner trees with younger trunks and reach. It made sense that 10 to 18-year-old trees would grow within the period of our satellite measurements. 

However, for some of these places, like Isa, the growth of a few dense weeds in the abandoned areas was likely captured by the sensors despite their calibration for growing trees.

Table 1: Tree planting initiatives that may have been the legacies growing in deserted areas. 

Sources: Synthesis of OSINT research, human testimonies and land cover satellite data extraction.  Table: Mansir Muhammed/HumAngle 

Reporting the crisis 

But numbers and pixels tell only part of the story. Behind every satellite measurement lies a human landscape: communities displaced, farmers abandoning fields, and projects like the Great Green Wall that carry both promise and complication. Capturing this side is harder.

“Reaching the people at the centre of these crises is often difficult,” said Al’amin Umar, HumAngle’s climate reporter, whose work focuses on the human cost of climate change at the intersection of conflict and humanitarian crises.

Yet even as field reporting faces these limits, specialised sensors help trace what is otherwise hidden. We have tracked water stress, deforestation, and migration, with satellite technology detecting environmental markers that reveal unsettling conditions across these regions.

From South to North, the coordinates, the pixels, and testimonies say the same thing: the continent’s edges are eating toward the centre, and the centre — the very wall where we placed our hopes for resilience — is already too skewed to hold.

Field reporting: Ibrahim Adeyemi, Olatunji Olaigbe, Mallam Usman, Al’amin Umar, and Saduwo Banyawa. 

All code and data generated for these investigations are available in our open-source project repository.

VOV 129: The Dangers of Farming Amidst Insecurity | RSS.com

You used to spend long days on the farm, planting a variety of crops and bringing home a full harvest. Now, you work only a few hours under the watch of soldiers. You can’t go far from town, and you can’t plant tall crops anymore because they can conceal terrorists. 

So you plant only beans and groundnuts, but the yield is never enough. And each time you step onto the farm, you know you might hear gunshots, and you would have to run for your life.

Reported and scripted by Sabiqah Bello

Voice acting by Rukayya Saeed

Multimedia editor is Anthony Asemota

Executive producer is Ahmad Salkida

Abba Ali says he was there when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau blew himself up to avoid capture by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in May 2021. 

He survived, but his life changed forever. The road to that experience stretched back to 2015, when Boko Haram stormed his hometown of Bama and abducted him at the age of six.

That day, Abba and his four-year-old brother were taken to the forest by the terrorists. His younger brother succumbed to the harsh conditions in Sambisa Forest, the terror group’s enclave in Borno State, North East Nigeria, but Abba survived. 

In the forest, he lived among other children in a village called Njimiya and was later taken to Shekau’s enclave by one of his two elder brothers, who had joined Boko Haram two years before Bama fell. That brother also later died, leaving Abba in the custody of Shekau’s household and his other elder brother.

By then, he had turned ten and had started combat training at Bula Sa’Inna in Sambisa Forest, where the deceased Boko Haram leader lived and conducted his operations. For two years, he was drilled until he became a sniper. When the training ended, he was assigned to guard checkpoints around Shekau’s camp. 

Abba stayed at one of these posts for years, often seeing Shekau, who, though calm and playful with the boys, was ruthless when betrayed.

There, he repelled countless attacks and fought against splinter groups like ISWAP.

After Shekau’s death, ISWAP held him for two months, until his uncle, once the fourth in command under Shekau, saw a chance to escape. After three failed attempts, they succeeded. Together, they rode in the night, dodging rival factions until they reached the outskirts of Bama. Abba couldn’t recognise his hometown; his childhood memories were gone.

“I only knew it was Bama when I was told,” he said.

Now 19, Abba lives in Maiduguri with his mother and stepfamily, who continue to care for him. When he first returned, he surrendered to the authorities. He was held briefly for a day before being taken to an internally displaced persons’ camp at Government Day Senior Science Secondary School, Bama. There, he was given a food ration card and shelter until he reunited with his family. 

Unlike the others who surrendered at the same time, Abba was not enrolled in Operation Safe Corridor, the federal programme launched in 2016 to provide psychosocial support, vocational training, and business starter packs for the reintegration of surrendered terrorists. He did not disclose why he was excluded. 

Over 500,000 insurgents and their families have laid down their arms through the programme, while others have deliberately avoided it. Abba, however, did not evade but was excluded for reasons he did not disclose. 

“We were told there would be help, but nothing came. Sometimes I feel like going back to Sambisa,” he told HumAngle. “I only feel like going back when I am hungry. I wish I had something to do.” 

Fighting on the right side

While Abba battles hunger and memories of Sambisa, other surrendered insurgents, such as Musa Kura, have returned to the battlefield, but on the government’s side. 

He recalls how Boko Haram preached to him until their ideology seemed the only truth. At 18, in 2013, he followed willingly into the bush. But after Shekau died, Musa saw ISWAP as traitors, and the government’s amnesty offer felt like a lifeline. He fled with his wife and children and surrendered to the authorities. 

Musa passed through Operation Safe Corridor, and it was there, he says, that the military recruited him. He works as a civilian security guard in Konduga, but he is struggling. 

“The payment is poor. Our children are not in school, and what we are given is not enough to care for our families. The only reason we stay is because we swore not to go back to our old ways,” he told HumAngle. They are paid ₦30,000 per month. 

“I don’t know anything apart from fighting, so that is what I do,” he added. 

Others, however, have chosen to disappear from the battlefield entirely. Isa Gana, another former Boko Haram member, chose a different path. After surrendering, he was given ₦100,000 in “startup support”. However, people never quite trusted him in his community. 

Isa left Borno for Lagos, where he now works menial jobs. For him, anonymity is better than suspicion, and poverty in a city far from the battlefield feels safer than returning to violence.

“It is better this way,” he said. “I don’t want to fight for Boko Haram, and I don’t want to fight for the government.”

Yet, for some, even leaving the battlefield behind does not bring peace. Twenty-four-year-old Bakura Abba, who also surrendered after Shekau’s death and underwent the Operation Safe Corridor programme, said: “Survival in this new life is almost impossible. We have no housing, and we are jobless.”

Bakura was 17 when he was captured while working on the farm. Faced with the threat of execution, he chose to join Boko Haram and was trained as a fighter. 

The frustration voiced by all those who spoke to HumAngle highlights a larger problem in Nigeria’s reintegration programme. Ahmad Salkida, the CEO of HumAngle and a security expert who has spent decades researching and reporting on the Boko Haram insurgency, said the sustainability of the reintegration programme rests on credibility. 

The managers, he stressed, must be able to keep their promises to beneficiaries while also designing a framework that ensures the safety of the communities where defectors will eventually be resettled. According to him, the only way to achieve this is through a robust deradicalisation process, something that is currently missing. 

“If a person is used to violence for over a decade and he is back in society, and is not engaged in other forms of livelihood or any skills, the likelihood of them going back, or even committing crimes in the community, is very high,” Salkida warned. 

He added that the government’s best chance of success is to establish trust by handing the process to an independent civil society group, interfaith organisations, and mental health professionals, with communities fully involved, rather than leaving it in the hands of the Nigerian Army. 

So far, however, there has been little meaningful support for communities most devastated by the insurgency, while considerable resources have gone instead to the perpetrators. This imbalance, Salkida warns, fuels the perception that deradicalisation is a reward for violent crimes — a perception that must change if trust is to be built between defectors, communities, and the government.

Official claims of success stand in sharp contrast to the lived reality. The deradicalisation programme suffers from a shortage of specialised trainers, poor physical infrastructure, and a lack of effective systems to monitor participants after reintegration. 

The credibility gap is most visible in the mismatch between promises and delivery. Earlier in 2025, Borno State alone allocated ₦7.46 billion for the reintegration of surrendered combatants, one of its largest capital projects. But, as beneficiaries reveal, this investment is only heavy on paper, not in impact.

When Mukhtar Dahiru saw a TikTok video promising he could make money on WhatsApp, he clicked without hesitation. Within days, after he shared a one-time password with the “recruiters”, his WhatsApp account was hijacked, his cryptocurrency wallets drained. He later realised the “opportunity” had been a scam.

“The road is tricky, and this time I fell for it,” he said.

Behind his loss lies a wider scam network preying on thousands. For several Hausa-speaking social media users across northern Nigeria, the promise of making money has become a lure into a sprawling fraud that turns ordinary people into unwitting accomplices and casualties.

On TikTok, the promise appears in dozens of videos, usually featuring a speaker in Hausa urging viewers to join a WhatsApp group to start earning. “Click on the link below to learn how to make money,” one of the videos says.  “I’ve made a large amount on WhatsApp, and so can you.”

HumAngle’s month-long monitoring revealed that many of these accounts belonged to real users, while others used deepfakes or manipulated videos. Nearly all featured genuine human faces to strengthen credibility and lure victims.

What makes the scheme particularly effective is TikTok’s algorithmic boost. The clips are upbeat, under a minute, tagged with captions like “samu kudi ta WhatsApp” (“earn money on WhatsApp”), and often promoted through paid sponsorships. This visibility pushes them into thousands of feeds, magnifying their reach. 

As of January 2025, TikTok had an estimated 37.4 million users in Nigeria. Meanwhile, WhatsApp remains the country’s most widely used messaging app, with over 51 million active users — about one in four mobile lines nationwide. Together, these figures show how even a small fraction of TikTok’s audience clicking through can funnel hundreds of thousands of people into WhatsApp scam networks.

The funnel of fraud

Once viewers click the link from the videos, they are funnelled to hastily built websites or directly into WhatsApp groups, which present themselves as “training hubs” offering “tasks” or “affiliate opportunities”.

One WhatsApp group, named Daily Updates, had more than 400 members when archived by HumAngle. These groups act as the glue of the operation; hundreds of recruits are placed into shared chat rooms, where the scam is scaled and coordinated.

Inside these rooms, the onboarding phase is simple: surrender your credentials in exchange for small, regular payouts. This is where the exploitation sets in. LetShare.ng, a central website in the network, even promises ₦2460 instantly through QR codes that secretly grant scammers control of users’ WhatsApp accounts.

LetShare.ng was registered in December 2024, according to WhoIs.com, a website that documents who owns and registers a website. The registrant details are hidden, typical of scam operations. Several other related websites were created within weeks of each other and masked by privacy-protected registrars, giving the network a veneer of legitimacy through glossy logos and testimonials.

The glue holding this ecosystem together is referrals. On the LetShare site, recruits are promised ₦300 for every person they bring in. One man told HumAngle he had earned over ₦30,000 this way, meaning he had introduced more than 100 people. 

This referral model fuels relentless promotion on TikTok, as each recruit scrambles to register others under their name. “Everyone is looking for someone to register through them,” he explained. 

‘It looked like a real job’

The abstract funnel becomes devastatingly real in people’s lives.

This was how Aminu Usman nearly lost money. He told HumAngle that someone posing as his friend asked him for ₦5000, promising a quick repayment. Suspicious, Aminu called his friend, who denied sending the message. His friend later admitted he had been hacked after joining a so-called digital hustle group.

Others were less fortunate. One young man, who declined to give his name, told HumAngle that he had handed over his WhatsApp credentials after being promised steady commissions. “It looked like a real job,” he said. “They paid me ₦12,000 the first week after I gave them access to my WhatsApp account.”

However, within a short period, his WhatsApp number was suspended. He later learned it had been used to spread fraudulent offers to strangers, mostly among his contacts and which forced him to make a disclaimer.

For recruits like these, the cycle almost always ends the same way: suspension, blacklisted numbers, and reputations in tatters, while the operators move swiftly to fresh victims. The people caught in this web are sometimes referred to as “mules.”

“The motivation is always greediness,” Mahmud Labaran Galadanci, a cybersecurity expert, told HumAngle. “In reality, the people who join such schemes end up becoming victims through phishing attacks and leverage scams.”

The Hausa connection

What makes this operation distinctive is its local tailoring. Hausa is one of Africa’s most widely spoken languages, with more than 60 million speakers across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and beyond. On platforms like TikTok, it bridges anglophone and francophone audiences, giving scammers both reach and trust.

HumAngle found dozens of Hausa-language TikTok videos promising ways to “make money on WhatsApp.” Some had racked up thousands of views, with comments reinforcing the illusion of legitimacy.

By using Hausa and familiar slang, operators project trust and cultural proximity. Viewers see themselves reflected on screen, searching for opportunity in a region where unemployment is high and digital literacy is low.

“It is not just about language,” said Mahmud. “It is about trust. These messages are crafted to convince people to click and join the long trail of the scheme.”

However, it is not happening only in Nigeria’s North. Similar schemes are targeting social media users in the country’s South and around the world, where authorities describe them as “task scams” — small paid actions that lure people into larger fraud.

Globally, platforms are struggling to respond. Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, periodically reports banning millions of accounts linked to scams. 

TikTok, meanwhile, insists it is stepping up enforcement. Announcing new safety guidelines that came into effect on Sept. 13, Sandeep Grover, the company’s Global Head of Trust and Safety, said: “Over 85 per cent of the content removed for violating our Community Guidelines is identified and taken down by automation, and 99 per cent of that content we remove before anybody reports it to us.”

“We want to make sure that our community is able to safeguard against such scams,” Grover added. In August 2024, the company also launched a Sub-Saharan Africa Safety Advisory Council.

Yet, HumAngle found that TikTok had accepted sponsored promotions for scam videos of this kind, despite policies that claim to prohibit it.

Back in Northern Nigeria, the consequences are particularly severe. Weak digital literacy and high unemployment make communities vulnerable, while the absence of Hausa-language moderation on TikTok has allowed scammers, like jihadists before them, to exploit the platform unchecked.

Beyond the Numbers: Inside Nigeria’s Insecurity Tr | RSS.com

On The Crisis Room, we’re following insecurity trends across Nigeria.

Every week at HumAngle, we track the state of insecurity across Nigeria: the attacks, abductions, armed clashes, displacements, and the lives caught in between.

All of it feeds into the HumAngle Insecurity Tracker, a data-driven project documenting trends, patterns, and stories behind the numbers.

Today, we ask: What does an insecurity tracker reveal about the state of a country? What do these numbers say about security policies, responses, and the future of communities at risk? Our guests are two journalists who live at the intersection of data, storytelling, and accountability: Adejumo Kabir and Abdussamad Yusuf.

Hosts: Salma and Salim

Guests: Adejumo Kabir and Abdussamad Yusuf

Audio producer: Anthony Asemota

Executive producer: Ahmad Salkida

Yusuf Abdullahi stood beside the only well left in his town, its rim ringed with rust and water tinted a cloudy brown. For decades, the people of Bultu Briya, a village in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State, had pulled their lives from this liquid in the ground, whether drinking, cooking, or watering their animals. But now, he said, the well has turned against them.

When the rains came last year, children who drank from the well fell sick with diarrhoea and clutched their stomachs in pain. The community had no choice but to abandon it forever. 

In Bultu Briya, desertification has seeped into the very veins of the villagers’ lives. Runoff washes through the encroaching sand each rainy season, leaching minerals like potassium into the water and leaving it contaminated, according to villagers, who claim it has made the water poisonous. More than 2,000 people once relied on this well, but many have already gone to nearby towns, across the border into the Niger Republic, and even as far as Libya, chasing survival in places where the sand has not yet stolen the water.

Behind Abdullahi, the desert stretched out in ridges of sand where millet fields once ripened and acacia trees once stood. The land that fed generations is now barren, and its people scattered. 

Bultu Briya was not always like this. Half a century ago, the Sahara Desert stopped far to the north, and life here followed the rhythm of the rains. In the 1980s, families could still fill their granaries with millet and sorghum. Children herded goats through pastures that turned green after the storms, and wells ran deep enough to sustain people and livestock.

That world has since vanished. 

Over the past four decades, the Sahara has expanded by nearly 10 per cent, pushing its southern edge steadily into the Sahel. In Nigeria alone, desertification currently threatens 11 of the country’s 36 states, with dunes advancing at an estimated 0.6 kilometres per year. In Yusufari, a local government area of Yobe State, satellite analysis shows that between 1984 and 2021, vegetation cover shrank by over 90 per cent, while surface water declined by more than 70 per cent.

Land cover change in Yusufari from 1984 to 2021

Graphics by HumAngle/CCIJ (2022), Data: Landsat Landcover analysis

By the early 2020s, the shifting dunes had crept so close to Bultu Briya that fields that were once heavy with grain were reduced to ridges of sand, and the acacia trees that anchored the soil were uprooted one by one.

The sand has already consumed neighbouring villages. In Tulo-Tulo and Bula-Tura, dunes pressed so close that families abandoned their homes. In Zakkari, a town 30 miles away, residents say they have not harvested a whole crop in more than seven years.

“When we were growing up, there was no desert here,” said Mohammed Bukar, 51, who has lived in Zakkari all his life. “As children, we cut grass for our livestock. Now farming is finished. Before, we filled a granary. Now we can’t even fill a sack.”

Scarcity of resources like food and water forced many of his neighbours to leave long ago. Some boarded buses bound for Lagos or Abuja, while others slipped quietly into the Niger Republic, hoping for better soil. Those who remain survive on what little their goats can graze. “We sell our animals just to eat,” Bukar said.

As armed conflict, extremist violence, rural terrorism, and economic despair uproot locals in the heart of the Sahel, a catastrophic climate collapse is accelerating transnational mobility. A HumAngle investigation, involving cross-border reporting and interviews with climate refugees in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic, reveals that the phenomenon driving families away from home is beyond just war, as climate crises toughen up. Matched with open-source analyses and satellite imagery investigation, the on-the-ground reporting shows how desert encroachments, poisoned or vanishing water resources, and extreme weather are making communities unlivable across the Sahel, sparking a refugee crisis driven by a hostile climate.  

The exodus

In many villages across northeastern Nigeria, the story is more chilling: As the desert advances, the farms collapse, the water dries up or becomes contaminated, and people leave. Some journeys are short. Families in Yobe, for instance, walk across the border into the Niger Republic, where relatives have settled in refugee-like encampments. Others are longer and more perilous. In Bultu Briya, 31-year-old Sani Bagira was preparing for his third attempt to reach Libya.

In his first attempt, he walked through Niger to Agadez and then paid smugglers for a ride north. It took him a week to reach Libya. He worked for two years as a farmhand, harvesting tomatoes and melons, before returning home with his savings. But the money was gone. His second journey lasted four years. He says he had no choice but to try again this time. But it was not rosy at their destination either.

“In Libya, they don’t love us,” he said. “They cheat us, they shoot us. You work three months and they throw you out without pay. But at least there, you can eat. Here, nothing.”

He rubbed his palms together, dry and cracked from years of farm work that no longer yields gain. “If we had food and water, we would never go,” he said, sitting on a low stool outside his mud-brick home, referring to his home town in Nigeria, “but here, we would die.” 

In 2022, the United Nations Refugee Agency predicted and warned that countries across the Sahelian states might face a new wave of conflict and mass displacements driven by rising temperatures, resource scarcity, and food insecurity. These predictions are turning into a dangerous reality as described, and the human toll is devastating, as many communities live in ruin or are devoid of human existence.

“Rising temperatures and extreme weather in the Sahel are worsening armed conflict, which is already destroying livelihoods, disrupting food security, and driving displacement,” said the global agency’s Special Advisor for Climate Action, Andrew Harper, in the report. “Only a massive boost in collective climate mitigation and adaptation can alleviate the current and future humanitarian consequences.” 

The report examined 10 Sahelian countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Senegal. It stated that unchecked climate emergencies like floods, droughts, and heatwaves will force more people to leave their homes for a saner world. 

HumAngle interviewed scores of locals trapped outside their homes, desperately searching for food and water sources, fertile lands and safer places to trade and thrive. While some showed interest in returning home to re-establish their lives, others said home was not a place to return to, as it reeks of ruins and devastation. 

Lukmon Akintola, the knowledge associate at the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, elaborated on the UN Refugee Agency’s predictions, stressing that transboundary climate migration is not the real problem but the lack of management on the part of authorities. The climate mobility expert believes that the best way to contain the climate-driven refugee crisis is to have conscious policies, such as planned relocation and climate adaptation schemes. He said that transboundary crises might emanate from these movements without conscious efforts. 

“Why are they moving? The lack of water? Build boreholes for them. Why do they want to move? There is desert encroachment. How can we build trees? But while we are trying to do that, do we have some sustainable solutions? Building trees is a nature-based solution,” he advised, noting that the government can adopt short-term solutions while planting trees for the long term.

“One way to manage people moving in and out is to help them adapt to their current location. Invest in adaptation strategies, starting from a blueprint or a policy, but also, like I said, engage with them. What do you want? Would you like to migrate? So I’m saying that even if they want to move, it will be because their agency decides to, and they are moving with the right knowledge.”

‘Without water, there’s no life’

Water is the difference between staying in one’s place and leaving in much of the Sahel; in Yobe State, it is the difference between life and death.

At the abandoned well in Bultu Briya, 45-year-old Yaana Mohammed pointed to the empty shaft. Built decades ago with World Bank funds, the well is now condemned. Villagers stopped using it after the water killed four animals: a ram, a cow, and two goats.

The well is located beside a potassium-contaminated pond, which leaves its water tinged with potassium. 

“It is not good to drink,” said Mohammed. “But that’s all we have.” He raised his voice, as if speaking to an unseen official. “We have called the government many times. They came, they assessed, but nothing happened. For the sake of Allah, give us a borehole. Without water, there is no life.”

Locals told HumAngle that they now trek five to seven kilometres in search of safer water. Some walk to Kuwaska and Bula Modu, nearby villages with solar-powered boreholes and hand pumps. Those with motorcycles, cows, or camels carry jerry cans. The rest go on foot, trudging under the sun with plastic containers balanced on their heads. 

“We are in dire need of this water,” Abdullahi said.

While Mohammed and hundreds of his fellow villagers struggle for water, billions of naira earmarked for environmental protection, including projects meant to halt desertification, continue to vanish without accountability.

At the centre of this story is the National Ecological Fund, established in 1981 as Nigeria’s flagship program to confront erosion, flooding and desert encroachment. It was meant to be a lifeline for communities like Bultu Briya, but it has become a cash cow for political elites over the decades. Billions flow into the fund each year. In 2023 alone, more than ₦8 billion (about $5 million) was directed to the three northeastern states most vulnerable to desertification: Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe. However, audits have repeatedly shown that the money rarely reaches the ground.

Yobe offers a unique case study. In 2020, state officials announced a three-million-tree planting scheme, budgeted at ₦3 billion ($2 million), to create green shelterbelts around towns like Bultu Briya and Zakkari. Such belts, if implemented, could have slowed the encroaching dunes.

While the plan looked ambitious, on the ground, there was nothing.

Villagers remember a brief appearance and launch of the project and a token distribution of seedlings to officials present for the launch. The government dubbed the place Dasuwa forest, giving hope to the community of a new expanse of forest area in the Lawan Kalam community in Yobe State. But most of the plants dried up during the dry season without water. 

When we visited what was supposed to be the Dusuwa Forest in August 2025, we confirmed that the project had effectively disappeared. Except for a handful of dried seedlings in sight, the supposed forest is without trees. 

“The government has a way of launching the project during the rainy season so that the seedlings can survive with human efforts. But as soon as it’s the dry season, nobody monitors the plants and they quickly dry up,” says Usman Adamu, a youth leader in Yobe state.

In Bultu Briya, where dunes have contaminated the water, villagers said the tree planting scheme never reached them. Yusuf, a community member, explained that while they heard of trees being planted in other villages, Bultu was left out entirely. 

Despite this, Yobe secured an even bigger climate project in 2024. The African Development Bank gave the state a $50 million loan to plant 40 million trees, more than ten times the scale of the failed scheme. The announcement infuriated communities that had never seen a grove since the first project.

“If they cannot plant three million trees, how will they plant forty million?” asked Adamu.

When asked about these failures, Yobe State’s Ministry of Environment insisted the government is taking steps to combat desert encroachment. Officials pointed to partnerships with the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, the UN Development Programme, and World Bank–backed initiatives like ACReSAL and the SOLID project. They also cited an advocacy tour to desert-prone LGAs and a tree-planting competition to reward residents who nurture seedlings.

However, the ministry did not address the central question of accountability, especially the one asking why the 2020 tree-planting project was left unmonitored, why the seedlings dried up, and who, if anyone, was held responsible.

On the question of water, the Ministry of Water Resources distanced itself from responsibility. “Only the Ministry cannot solve the issue,” a message forwarded to our reporter from a Ministry of Water Resources official read. “However, the local government council is responsible for solving the issue. As I am speaking to you now, no complaint from that village has reached us.”

But villagers say they have been calling for boreholes and clean water for years, and that officials came to “assess” the situation without bringing relief.

Speaking on the mishandling of climate financing in Yobe state, Lukmon of the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, a US-based organisation, found a gap in how the tree-planting schemes were funded. He noted that it is clear some funds channelled to tackle climate shocks in Yobe took the top-down approach, meaning that the funders only engaged the state actors and ignored affected locals.

“I would say the agency of local actors is vital to address climate mobility. You don’t just pass it from top to bottom. You need to work with people on the ground, a bottom-up approach. This is highly intersecting with existing challenges, and one of the ones that we have mentioned is that there is a big problem of ungoverned spaces, a big problem of poor socio-economic realities, and the climate change issue is just exacerbating these existing issues,” he stressed.

A sea of sand

The Yusufari local government is primarily arid, with agricultural activity limited to its southernmost regions. The predominant vegetation is Shrub/Scrub, a low-growing, woody plant community that includes grasses and herbs, adapted to the dry conditions. Trees are sparse, consisting of individual, drought-resistant desert species found in patches within the shrubland. Satellite analysis indicates vegetation covers less than 10 per cent of the land surface.

What villagers describe in Yusufari is visible from space. Satellite data shows that the northern part of Yobe has become one of the most fragile environments in the Sahel.

NASA’s GRACE satellites, which measure underground water, reveal that while some parts of the Sahel region have gained water in recent years, Yusufari has not. Its groundwater levels have stayed flat for two decades. That means wells are not being replenished the way they are in nearby areas.

On the surface, the story is the same. A land cover analysis by the European Space Agency shows that Yobe has about 12 per cent of its land dedicated to cropland, the highest share in the entire corridor. But satellite records reveal that Yobe, unlike its neighbours, is losing much of the farmland that sustains its people. 

Over the past 20 years, vegetation in Borno, Yobe’s neighbour to the east, has actually increased, and even Diffa and Zinder across the border in Niger have shown signs of improvement. Yobe, however, has gone in the opposite direction, with satellite data indicating a loss of nearly a quarter of its vegetation cover in just two decades. This makes the state especially vulnerable to desert-induced land degradation, since most of its population depends directly on farming for food and survival. 

“From above, the view is unmistakable,” said GIS analyst Mansir Muhammed, who led the study. “Yusufari is an island of villages in a sea of sand. In this kind of condition, environmental displacement is just inevitable.”

Pressure across borders

The effects of environmental collapse in areas like Bultu Briya and Yusufari are an exodus. But most are leaving the frying pan for the fire. 

Farmers in Adamawa’s Ganye town are now crossing into Cameroon, where they clash with local communities over land and water resources. In Yobe, villagers who flee into the Niger Republic face hostility from hosts who are also battered by drought. Migration flows in both directions. Cameroonians, fleeing their climate shocks, are moving into Nigeria’s Adamawa state. The influx has strained schools, markets, and water sources. The competition for resources is feeding suspicion between neighbours.

In Niger, desertification is close to a permanent threat, with over 50 per cent of the land showing signs of degradation, according to environmental assessments. A World Food Programme report noted that the country loses nearly 100,000 hectares of productive land to erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and frequent droughts and floods yearly. The human toll is that about 2.2 million people are acutely food insecure, while an estimated 1.5 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition and 400,000 more from severe malnutrition.

Cameroon, too, is feeling the pressure. Communities in the northern regions bordering Nigeria and the Sahel face declining rainfall and increasingly erratic seasons. Competition for water, pasture, and arable land is intensifying and leading to localised conflicts that echo across the porous national borders.

Satellite imagery shows that those who flee Yusufari into neighbouring areas of Chad and northern Cameroon are likely to meet with advancing aridity and competition for land. Data from the Living Atlas’s World Atlas of Desertification, analysed using United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) metrics, classifies the entire Yusufari belt, stretching across Nigeria into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, as an arid zone highly “susceptible to desertification.” In other words, migration along this corridor often leads people from one fragile landscape into another that is equally at risk.

Even where conditions look slightly better, the relief is often short-lived. Diffa and Zinder in Niger have shown some signs of greening and water recovery, but their soils remain fragile and dry. For instance, satellite imagery indicates that Diffa alone is nearly 80 per cent bare land. And the northern regions in Cameroon struggle with the same aridity as Niger. 

Hostile sky, horrible land

When Abubakar Mohammed of Borno state decided to move to Cameroon, the climate of drought and dune crises was at its peak. The season carried a smell of scorched earth, he said, but beyond that, repeated sounds of gunfire from Boko Haram terrorists were enough reason to leave. Mohammed had been a farmer in Borno all his life. But the rains grew erratic over the years, the lake receded, and the soil cracked under the sun’s relentless glare. Then came Boko Haram.

“They came at night,” Abubakar recalled, his voice low. “We heard the shouting, the shots. They burned the storehouse. We ran with nothing.” His family joined a stream of neighbours heading east, toward the border with Cameroon. The journey was long, the air thick with fear and the uncertainty ahead. The culprit for this mass exodus is a deadly combination of climate and conflict, two intertwined forces setting families apart and homes shattered in the northeastern region of Nigeria.

Abubakar’s forceful migration is a macrocosm of this deadly crisis, but he’s obviously not the only one moving with the violent climatic wind toward the Cameroon border. Farming was once stable back home, but that changed with a noticeable shift in the weather. “The water we had the previous year was not the same this year,” he lamented, pointing to a severe change in rainfall patterns. This water scarcity wasn’t just a natural phenomenon; it was exacerbated by massive tree felling, a direct contributor to desertification and drought. As the land dried up, the competition for water and viable grazing land turned deadly.

This is where the conflict began. The drying farmlands of the north pushed herdsmen south, forcing them to trespass on cultivated lands to feed their cattle. “They will come and put their cattle in people’s farms,” Abubakar said, describing a situation where dialogue was no longer an option. When farmers like him tried to protest, the response was swift and violent. “If we talk, they fight us. And some were killed as a result.” 

The conflict wasn’t a minor inconvenience; it was a full-blown crisis that cost Abubakar his two brothers and his elder brother. This brutal violence, coupled with a breakdown of law and order where “even soldiers know about the situation,” left him and his family with no hope for safety or justice. Their home was burned, and they were forced to flee for their lives. The six-day journey to Cameroon was a desperate escape from a land that no longer supported them.

For 25-year-old Christiana Yusuf, the decision to leave was not made in a single night of violence, but over years of watching the land betray her. In Adamawa State, her small plot had once yielded enough maize to feed her children and sell at the market. But the rains had shifted, arriving late and ending early. When they did come, they came in torrents, washing away seedlings in muddy floods.

“First the drought, then the floods,” she said. “We could not plant in time. We could not harvest enough. And then the fighters came.”

The Boko Haram fighters turned already fragile livelihoods into impossible ones. Markets closed. Roads became dangerous. Even tending to a field became a gamble with life. By the time Abubakar and Christiana reached the Cameroonian frontier, they were part of a much larger exodus. In the Far North Region of Cameroon, local authorities and aid agencies were already struggling to cope with the influx. Many new arrivals came from Nigeria’s Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, areas hit hardest by the twin crises of climate and conflict.

In Cameroonian villages like Fotokol and Kousseri, Nigerian families found shelter in makeshift camps or with host communities. But the welcome, though warm, was strained. “We share what we have,” said a Cameroonian farmer interviewed by aid workers, “but the land is not enough for all of us now.”

Now in a camp in Cameroon, Christiana still clings to her identity as a farmer, growing small patches of maize and onions. “My body is used to farming,” she said. Even in a new country, the scars of climate-induced conflict and loss of livelihood run deep. Abubakar learned to live in the camps with ration cards and water queues. Christiana tried to keep her children in school, but classrooms were overcrowded, with few teachers. The host communities, affected by erratic rains and climate disruptions, struggled to absorb the newcomers. Back home, competition for land, water, and grazing intensified. In some areas, especially in Yobe state, disputes between farmers and herders, fueled by climate-driven scarcity, erupted into violence, displacing even more people.

We spoke of scores of Nigerians who fled to Cameroon, especially in the Adamawa and Far North regions. All of them echoed one fact: The twin forces of climate and conflict driving them away from home persist. Although their host communities might be hostile to them, they said, going back home is never an option. For both Abubakar and Christiana, Cameroon was not an end, but a pause. They dream of returning to Nigeria, to a land that can once again sustain them. But they know that return is a dangerous fantasy without peace and a climate they can depend on.

“I want to go home,” Abubakar said, “but home must be safe. And the land must live again.”

Until then, they will remain among the thousands whose lives have been reshaped by the collision of two forces, one born of human conflict and the other of a changing planet. In the Lake Chad Basin, neither shows signs of relenting.

From frying pan to fire

Interestingly, the Niger Republic is both a transport hub and a destination for many migrants fleeing climate hostility in northeastern Nigeria. When most locals from Nigeria flee to Niger, they find the place not quite different; the climate shocks in the country terrify its citizens, just as in Yobe, Borno or Adamawa. While many have resorted to starting their lives all over again in Niger, others, like Sani, will only stop where the grass is greener. Sani would stay for a few months in Niger before finding his route to Libya, through Agadez. His reason? “Niger’s extreme weather is not any better.”

Many young Nigerian climate migrants have ventured into illegal gold mining in the Djado area of Nthe iger Republic. They would labour for days under the hellish weather before touching a gold cut. The terrain is hazardous, as terrorists exploit it, and host communities are not exactly welcoming. Water resources are the bone of contention, even on the Djado mining site. In rural communities, water is scarce, just as in villages in the Yusufari axis of Yobe state. This condition puts migrants in a tight situation, competing with local Nigeriens for limited resources. 

“We were working in atrocious conditions,” said Mahamadou Ibrahim, a local miner from the Maradi region, who claimed to have worked with dozens of Nigerian climate migrants on the Djado gold site. “I’ve never seen a site as difficult as Djado.” According to him, the main difficulty was the lack of water. Najib Harouna, another miner in Djado, described the situation to our correspondent: “First of all, you have no shelter. These are makeshift sheds, built with straw reinforced with plastic.  If it rains, all the rain pours down on you, and you can always hear gunfire in the vicinity. And then, there are the abuse and exploitation.

“Some well owners take people to drive them into the bush, do a week or two weeks digging, if you haven’t found anything, you can’t leave, unless you pay them what they spent on you.”

The gruelling conditions of working on the Djado mining site forced Sani to Libya, but when he got there, a more appalling situation brought him back to his home country. But there is more to the danger of moving to another man’s land in the name of climate hazards: continual communal clashes.

Locals in the Niger Republic told our correspondent that they often brawl with Nigerians seeking greener pastures over land and water resources. Ironically, Nigerian climate migrants are moving to communities in Niger facing similar issues to what pushed them beyond borders. What the locals told HumAngle matched a 2021 study by the International Organisation for Migration on how climate change is driving internal migration within towns in the Niger Republic and even beyond the country’s borders.

IOM’s investigators interviewed over 350 rural households in Niger and 147 internal climate migrants who had moved from different areas to Niamey. The study showed that rising temperatures (75.5 per cent), droughts (63.9 per cent), and strong winds (34.6 per cent) are the climatic drivers of forced displacements and migrations in the country.

“85 per cent of the population of Niger depends on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, environmental and climate shocks such as droughts, floods, wildfires, erratic rainfall, and desertification are intensifying and impacting the livelihoods of communities. This is causing a growing number of people to leave their homes,” said Barbara Rijks, IOM Chief of Mission in Niger.

Way forward through COP

Sahelian states have been spotlighted as hotspots for extreme climate crises. During COP29 in Baku, African leaders tried to negotiate immediate climate financing to contain the region’s hostile climate shocks and environmental setbacks. Although a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) was established to raise $300 billion annually by 2035, the conference failed to deliver effective mechanisms to support the Sahel in combating climate hostility.

According to UNHCR, over 129.9 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide, with the Sahel contributing significantly due to compounding climate shocks and governance failures. The report noted how weak institutions, corruption, and limited capacity to manage conflict have hindered effective climate response, exacerbating forced migration and instability. Climate analysts reviewing the outcome of COP29 have urged the summit to prioritise African-led resilience strategies and transboundary climate adaptation risks (TCARs). Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the analyst said the stakes for the Sahel are higher than ever, as African leaders call for binding standards for transparent governance and inclusive climate finance.

Climate mobility expert Lukmon said COP30 must confront the widening climate reality gap by scaling adaptation and financing resilience using a bottom-up approach. For the Sahel, the expert noted, this means investing in community-led solutions, strengthening governance frameworks, and ensuring that climate action translates into tangible protection for those most at risk.

“At the core of COP is the ability to discuss various aspects of climate change and forge partnerships. It is crucial to highlight that human mobility in the context of climate change is a growing reality, encompassing more than just forced displacement. Those of us working in this space prefer the term ‘mobility’over ‘migration’ to address related issues, including planned relocation,” he said.

Dorcas Ekupe and Amma Mousa contributed cross-border reporting/research. Mansir Muhammed analysed satellite images and illustrated maps. Satellite imagery was sourced from Google Earth Pro.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.

Ayala High basketball coach Sameer Bhatt, who also teaches AP Government, says of his senior point guard, Joshua Townsell, “He’s the epitome of what you want a student athlete to be.”

On Monday, Townsell and 10 other Southern Section athletes were honored at the 20th Dr. Jim Staunton Champions for Character Awards.

Besides being given a $1,000 scholarship, Townsell received a gift certificate for free Raising Cane’s chicken for a year. That’s what he was most bragging about.

His coach sent out an email to the entire Ayala faculty, saying, “While he may not seek the spotlight, the impact he has made on our basketball program, and the wider Bulldog community, is nothing short of remarkable.”

He has a 4.0 grade-point average and serves as a mentor to many of his teammates. He has volunteered to assist in water development projects in Nigeria and community service in Pomona. He’s also a star point guard who was first-team all-league as a junior.

Teammates will be congratulating him — and asking to accompany him when he goes for a chicken dinner.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

Auwalu Saidu remembers his elder brother, Babayo, with robes and horses. The kind worn and ridden by royalty in northeastern Nigeria. He remembers him through colours, too. Royal festivities in their hometown of Mubi, Adamawa State, are a spectacle of more colours than the rainbow, but Babayo’s signature colours were white and red. He wore the robe, called babban riga in Hausa, proudly. 

In 2005, he was conferred the title of Barade, which means the royal head of security and commander of horsemen.

Babayo had always been drawn to royalty and had worked with Sarkin Mubi, the King of Mubi, for a long time. As Barade, he led the king’s horse convoys, tied his turban, and fulfilled other royal obligations in the palace. It was his full-time job, and he took pride in it. He basked in the praises his brothers sang of him, known as kirari (praise chant). 

“Even when we did something to him or upset him, we’d do that kirari to diffuse the situation, and he’d laugh and forget about it,” Auwalu recounts.

Babayo also married into royalty. His wife is the daughter of the King of Mokolo, a town in Cameroon. After their wedding, she moved with him to Adamawa, where they lived for about 25 years and had four children together. It has been 11 years since he went missing, and she still waits for him. 

The last time Auwalu saw his brother was on a Wednesday morning in 2014. They were living together and had exchanged greetings before Auwalu left for the market that day. Later, word began to spread that terrorists were on the outskirts of the city, so he sold what he could, put the money together, and quickly came home to tell his family about the rumour. But they were not as alarmed as he was. Auwalu took his wife and children and left for Gela, a nearby community, leaving Babayo, who did not believe the news, and others behind. 

“After I left, I was told that he had been seen on a motorbike with one person in front of him and another behind,” Auwalu tells HumAngle. 

After a few days of not hearing from him, Auwalu started to look for his brother. He searched through the town they fled to, asked around, and tried to contact people who were with Babayo, but there was no luck. He also tried to call his phone, but the cellular network had been disrupted at the time.

Auwalu was then told to go to the highway, where corpses had been discarded and people were searching for their loved ones. He went there conflicted. On one hand, he desperately wanted to find his brother, and the pile of bodies carried a faint, bitterly ironic kind of hope. 

On the other hand, he dreaded the possibility that his brother lay among them. He did not want to see his body cast aside in an open field, nor imagine the state he might find it in. He knew the human body does not last long under the elements before worms and insects claim it, but nothing prepared him for the dreadful, inhumane condition of those corpses. He had seen bodies before, but always in their “fresh” state, when they were washed, shrouded, and prayed over, as is customary in Islamic burial rites. Within a day, the dead were laid to rest with dignity.

Yet as he scanned the lifeless faces in front of him, there was no room for wonder. Under a tree, he saw a body so swollen it looked ready to burst. It was not Babayo. None of the bodies were. But that single, bloated corpse seared itself into his memory and shook him to the core.

“That day I couldn’t eat,” Auwalu recounts. “Even when I was offered food, and it was right there in front of me, I couldn’t eat it. I was in so much shock. It wasn’t until the following day that I started slowly eating.”

As the years went by, Auwalu continued to search for his brother. Two years ago, a driver in his area, who regularly transports drinks between Mubi and Cameroon, claimed to have seen Babayo in Cameroon. Auwalu went there and scouted refugee camps, and asked around, but there was no trace of Babayo anywhere. The person who was “seen” was not him. Auwalu left Cameroon, realising that he had been misinformed about the whereabouts of his brother. 

About four years ago, Auwalu had launched yet another search for his brother when he came into contact with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had reached out about Babayo through its missing persons programme. He was then enrolled in the ICRC’s Accompaniment Programme, which he says has taught him patience and resilience. 

It has also provided support to his nephews, Babayo’s children, helping them cope with their grief. After his brother went missing and the war subsided, Auwalu took in two of them, Dahiru and Salisu, who have lived with him ever since.

Dahiru remembers his father with schoolbooks and a football. His father always asked about his studies, whether he had revised well, and whether he was keeping up. But the memory that lingers most is the day a fight over a ball led him to be beaten up by friends. His father consoled him and promised to buy him his own. He did, and it became one of the symbols of his father’s care. 

Now 17 years old and in SS2, he wants to be a businessman after graduating from secondary school, so he can earn enough money to take care of his mother and siblings. And while he dreams of the man he will become, he dreams of the return of his father, the man who took care of him so fondly when he was young.

“I feel in my heart that my father will come back,” Dahiru says. “I never think that he’s gone forever. I know that he’ll be back.”

His brother, Salisu, remembers his father with toys. Each time he passes a shop with shelves full of them, he thinks of the days his father would buy him one. At first, the memories came with worry and fear. The mere mention of his father’s name evoked such grief that he would be unable to study or play that day. But with time, he has turned that fear into prayer. And now, when he hears the name, he asks God to bring his father back in good health.

Salisu is 15 years old and in JS2. He is outspoken and full of energy, while Dahiru is more shy and measured in his speech. Like his brother, Salisu wants to become a businessman, so he can support those who have helped him, especially his uncle, Auwalu, who has been there for him in his father’s absence. “I want to make him happy,” Salisu says, “just like he’s made me happy.”

Both boys said the ICRC’s programme has given them tools to navigate their emotions. They have learned patience and obedience towards their caretakers and elders, the importance of upholding their morals, and the need to avoid harmful practices such as substance abuse. The programme also encouraged them to seek out trusted people when they feel overwhelmed, to practise breathing exercises when they are angry, and to retreat to quiet places, such as the shade of a tree, where they can calm their nerves.

The ICRC runs the Protection of Family Links, an initiative that helps families affected by war stay connected and supports them in discovering the fate of missing loved ones. It is under this that the Accompaniment Programme was launched in 2019 to support families of missing persons in the North East, while searches are ongoing. 

The programme runs in six-month cycles, offering psychosocial and economic support, along with regular updates on the search. So far, seven cycles have been completed, with the eighth currently underway. It has reached more than 700 beneficiaries. A dedicated Child Accompaniment Programme has also been introduced, with two cycles completed for 68 children aged 13–17.

Searches are conducted through various methods, including announcing names, active tracing, and photo tracing, which enable wider community involvement in identifying the missing. Through these combined efforts, the Accompaniment Programme continues to address both the emotional and practical challenges faced by families, while keeping the search for their loved ones active and visible.

Whenever Auwalu remembers his brother, worry overcomes him. But then, he says, he remembers his own mortality and surrenders it all to God.

In the years after Babayo’s disappearance, his children often asked where their father was. Auwalu would comfort them and tell them he would return. He has taken on the role of their father, caring for them as though they were his own. He does his best to fill the emptiness of their loss, to give them enough love and guidance that their pain is eased. Over time, Babayo’s sons have spoken of their father less and less. Auwalu hopes the boys will grow into responsible men, able to care for and raise families of their own. Seeing the boys calmer and less weighed down by grief has eased his own pain, too, even if it has not disappeared entirely.

“At one point, whenever something would happen, they would say, ‘If my father were here…’ But now, because we treat them well, they are happy, even as they still remember him and see his photos in our home,” Auwalu says. “If I were to speak to him, I would tell him: If you are still alive, please come back.” 

Auwalu says their mother has suffered greatly since her son’s disappearance. It has been tears and grief all these years, as he was very good to her when he was around. He provided for her and took care of all that concerned her. Since the day he went missing, she has persistently been in distress, and her health has faltered again and again. 

Babayo’s wife, Fatoumata, has waited for him for 11 years now. While some Islamic clerics ruled that she could remarry because of her husband’s prolonged disappearance, she refused. She continued to hope and believe that he would return. She was living in Cameroon with the other children. But recently, she has shown signs of being open to remarrying. Four days ago, she moved back to Mubi to stay with her uncle, who says he will arrange for her to get married.  

As for Auwalu, every time he receives news or follows a lead that ends in yet another disappointment, it chips away at his hope a little more. When he returned from Cameroon, for instance, he felt defeated and consumed by despair, and throughout his journey home, his thoughts were only of Babayo.

He has dreamt of his brother more times than he can count. Once, he dreamt that Babayo returned dressed in white. But in those dreams, he never spoke. And now, as the long years have gone by, even those dreams come to him less often. 

Boko Haram insurgents raided Wagga Mongoro, a rural community in Madagali Local Government Area (LGA), Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria, on Tuesday night, Sept. 23. They killed four residents, injured several others, and destroyed property, including a church, homes, and vehicles.

Cyrus Ezra, a resident, told HumAngle that several residents began fleeing when the terrorists invaded the community at about 11:40 p.m. “They killed David Mbicho, his son Daniel, Jude Jacob, and Omega Duda. They burnt churches, motorcycles, houses, and a car,” he said, adding that the local vigilante group tried to repel the attack but was outnumbered and outgunned. 

“The group was heavily armed, and there was no official security presence, so our vigilante group had to abandon the fight,” he explained. “So far, we don’t know the total number of injured persons apart from the deceased.”

Cyrus said security operatives arrived only the following morning, Sept. 24, after fleeing residents had begun returning to assess the damage. 

Residents told HumAngle that security operatives deployed to Madagali LGA are usually stationed in the town centre or in Nimankara, leaving villages like Wagga Mongoro vulnerable. 

This was not the first time the community had been targeted. Barely two months ago, in July, terrorists raided the community, burning houses and forcing residents to flee to Madagali town and other neighbouring communities. They returned weeks after calm was restored. Now, after the latest assault, residents are fleeing once again.

“Right now, people have packed their bags and are leaving for Yola, the Adamawa State capital, and other places to go and stay with their loved ones.  Nobody wants to stay behind to witness this kind of incident again,” Cyrus said. 

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, Boko Haram has displaced over 200,000 persons in Adamawa State so far, most of them from Michika and Madagali LGAs. 

“We are scared,” Cyrus said. “Our greatest need right now is security. Some of us don’t want to leave our homes.”

In December last year, Talle Bello* received his appointment letter to join Nigeria’s Federal Fire Service. Like many others, he saw it as a turning point, a chance to finally support his family with stability and contribute meaningfully to his country. 

But nearly ten months later, he has not received a single salary payment. 

Talle is yet to be enrolled on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the country’s central platform for paying federal workers, despite being among the first set of officers who reported in Abuja, North Central Nigeria, for training and documentation. When the IPPIS team arrived, they announced they could only handle a limited number of people each day.

More than 200 officers showed up for the first two days. Like many others, Talle waited patiently but was not captured. Then, the IPPIS team stopped showing up completely. 

Weeks later, he received a call from a friend notifying him that the IPPIS staff would be returning. He dropped everything and rushed to the command in Kubwa. But when he arrived, it was announced that only those on the “special list” of the service’s former Comptroller General, Abdulganiyu Jaji, would be enrolled.

Talle and other officers were not on this list. Since then, there has been no update. The existence of such lists in government workplaces reveals a grave loophole, one that blurs the line between formal professionalism and informal relationships, creating space for favouritism, especially against recruits like Talle who lack “connections”. 

Despite not being captured by IPPIS, he was posted to his duty station. He reports to work wearing the uniform, but he is not on the payroll. 

“We’ve been working without pay since December,” he told HumAngle. The exact number of affected officers remains unclear, as no official figures have been released. However, Talle said he knows of 15 other officers who have yet to receive their salaries.

IPPIS was launched in 2007 as part of efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s public finance system and plug loopholes left by the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS). It ensures salaries are processed directly into the bank accounts of enrolled employees.

Despite these intentions, labour unions such as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have consistently opposed the platform, arguing that it fails to accommodate the unique operational and administrative structures of institutions like Nigerian universities. An academic study underscores this rejection as a critical issue, pointing to the software’s inability to reflect the sector’s specific needs and complexities.

For Talle, the consequences are deeply personal. 

He is the eldest male in his family and the breadwinner. His two younger sisters, aged 21 and 23, are both in university — one studying nursing and the other law. Before his appointment, he supported them through the menial jobs, particularly bricklaying. It was hard but manageable. Now, with no income, it’s nearly impossible.

He told HumAngle that bricklaying usually paid him about ₦7,000 per day, from which he has to save, feed, and transport. But the jobs are now rare. 

“I often borrow money from my friends to send to my sisters,” he told HumAngle. “Sometimes, I go weeks without any work at my disposal.” 

From his old pictures on his battered Itel smartphone, Talle looks chubbier. But lately, the weight has melted off, not from gym routines or diet plans, but from the quiet erosion of stress and financial strain.

“I feel like giving up on everything sometimes because life has been unfair to me in the first place. I had to take on responsibilities at a very young age to care for my siblings. It is mentally and physically overwhelming,” he added.

Families bear the brunt

The toll is not only personal. The strain has fallen squarely on his family, who are now struggling to stay afloat. Zainab, Talle’s* sister, is in her second year at a federal university in northern Nigeria. 

Her academic journey has become a daily struggle. With her elder brother unpaid, she has had to navigate university life with little to no financial support.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m falling behind because everyone else is buying the latest study materials, but I just make do with whatever I can find,” she told HumAngle. 

Accommodation and feeding are also major concerns. She shares a cramped room off-campus with two other students, and meals are irregular when she can’t afford to buy food. “There are days I go to class without eating,” Zainab said. 

On some days, she skips lectures just to avoid the embarrassment of not having transport fare, which costs ₦600 daily. 

“I used to get money from my brother every week,” she said. “Now, I wait for his call, hoping he has found someone to lend him money.” 

Social pressures add another layer of difficulty. Zainab is aware of the risks young women could face when they lack financial stability. “There are people who would offer to help, but you know some will always come with conditions,” she said. “I try to stay focused, but it’s hard when you feel like you are constantly at the mercy of others.” 

Her brother’s inability to support her has left her vulnerable, and she worries about how long she can keep resisting. “I know my brother is trying,” she said. “He is doing everything he can. But I just wish the system would recognise that we’re not asking for favours, we’re asking for what’s due.”

For Talle, the burden weighs heavily. He often has to choose which sister gets support and which one waits. “They are both girls,” he said. “I worry about what could happen if they don’t have enough. When I got this job, I thought it would end my struggles, but things have only gotten worse.”

In Nigeria, poverty is a trap that deepens the discrimination and danger faced by women and girls. Struggling to survive, they are exposed to heightened risks of violence, abuse, and denied access to the very social safety nets that could lift them out. 

A pattern of delay

Talle’s experience, however, fits into a longer history of financial neglect within the Federal Fire Service. In October 2020, officers raised alarms over unpaid salaries and allowances. Many reported working for over two months without pay, despite being required to report daily and respond to emergencies.

The leadership attributed the delay to insufficient funds in its personnel cost head, stating that other ministries were also affected. However, staff disputed this, pointing out that sister agencies under the same Ministry of Interior, such as the Nigerian Correctional Service and Immigration Service, had received their payments.

More recently, the service announced it had offset salary arrears for 2,000 personnel, describing it as a fulfilment of a promise. Yet, for new officers like the ones in Kubwa, the wait continues.

Some officers who spoke to HumAngle attributed these issues to the tenure of Jaji, the immediate past head of the service. When he retired, some officers of the service publicly jeered him following news of his retirement and replacement. 

In a viral video, uniformed personnel were seen chanting “He don go,” “Barawo,” and “Oloshi”—Pidgin English, Hausa, and Yoruba slurs meaning “He’s gone”, “Thief”, and “Useless person”. The spectacle underscores deep-seated resentment within the ranks, possibly fuelled by controversies surrounding Jaji’s tenure, including alleged mismanagement and attempts to extend his stay beyond the statutory retirement age. 

These recurring delays, especially in the cases of these affected officers, suggest a systemic issue—one that leaves officers unpaid, unsupported, and struggling to care for their families. 

When contacted, Paul Abraham, the spokesperson of the service, told HumAngle that the authorities are aware of the concerns and the matter is under review. He, however, revealed that some of these officers could be in possession of fake appointment letters, thinking they have genuine cases to be looked into.

“Even though I am not sure of the cases of these persons [referring to Talle and the other officers], we could have people with fake appointment letters that cannot be captured for IPPIS, and we could have those who said they were posted, but we didn’t employ them,” Abraham said. 

However, Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator of the Human Rights Writers of Nigeria, countered this claim. He argued that, unless there is a systemic issue within the service, it is impossible for someone to not be genuinely employed and yet be officially posted for duties by the same government agency.

Emmanuel, while calling for a forensic investigation into the issue, emphasised that the service issuing appointment letters ought to have a mechanism to detect which ones are authentic or not. 

“You do not give people appointments, and in the middle of the job, you are coming out to say they have fake appointment letters,” he told HumAngle. “The government agency should be able to point out those who have fake letters and explain how they were unable to detect them. If they can’t, it means that there is a systemic problem that needs to be investigated forensically by the Department of State Security.”

Captured yet unpaid

Not every unpaid officer is awaiting capture on IPPIS, like Talle. Falmata David* was enlisted into the Federal Fire Service in February. She completed her documentation, got captured for IPPIS in Abuja, and submitted her file after thorough verification. 

By April, salary payments had begun for her batch, but not for her. Despite being officially recognised and posted to her duty station, she has also not received a single pay cheque.

“I cross-checked everything before submitting, and I did everything right,” she told HumAngle, adding that she knows ten others like her who are also affected. She is currently in debt for transportation and feeding, though she declined to go into specific figures.

“If I don’t take food to the office, I work on an empty stomach,” she said, adding that the office is far from where she lives. 

For now, Falmata’s motivation and commitment to duty are on a decline, as she now shows up inconsistently and performs her duties with less focus and urgency.

“Sometimes, I don’t even feel like reporting for duty,” she confessed. “The lack of payment has drained my morale.”

Falmata was inspired to join the service after witnessing a destructive fire incident in her community, driven by both passion and the hope of supporting her family.  “It’s sad that despite being regarded as an officer, I can’t support them,” she said, her voice laced with grief. “When my colleagues receive their salaries, I feel bad. It’s not jealousy—it just demoralises me.”

When Falmata informed the salary department about the lack of pay, she was assured that the issue would be rectified. It has been months since then, and nothing has changed. 

Deductions without pay

For Musa Koroka*, the signs of employment are all there—an appointment letter dated December, IPPIS capture completed in February, and even pension contribution alerts received on three separate occasions. Yet, he has not received a single salary payment. 

“Not even once,” he lamented. 

The contradiction is hard to ignore. His file is in order. He followed every step required to be recognised by the system. Still, his bank account remains empty.

Hakeem Ikumoguniyi, a banking expert with over two decades of experience in the country, told HumAngle that it is only possible to receive a pension deduction without salary if the individual is on suspension. Musa is not facing any disciplinary action; he continues to report punctually and has never missed a day of work.

“But if these officers are not on suspension and there are deductions without salaries, then there is an internal problem somewhere with the central payroll of the service,” Hakeem noted. 

When asked how long the review would take for the officers to start receiving their salaries and arrears, since the issue has lingered for almost a year now, the spokesperson of the Federal Fire Service said, “The issue is not within the control of the service to determine. The Office of the Accountant General [of the Federation] is involved, and the IPPIS office is equally involved, but we are working tirelessly to resolve the issues.” 

To survive, he takes on menial jobs like motorcycle taxi, popularly called ‘okada’, after his 48-hour shift, where he earns around ₦8000 to ₦10,000 daily.

“After my duty, I proceed to hustle to feed myself and help my family,” Musa said. 

He has accrued debts as well, though he declined to reveal the amounts. The passion that brought him into the service is still there, but the lack of pay has made it less exciting. 

“My morale is very low. If I tell you that I am happy, I am lying to you,” he added.

*Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect the identities of the officers who requested anonymity.