Nigeria

More than 360 people abducted by Boko Haram have been rescued in northeastern Nigeria. Former captives recount months of hardship, while families of those still missing say they are running out of answers for children waiting for their parents to return.

For two weeks, the fate of Major General Rabe Abubakar (rtd) had become a barometer for testing whether Nigerian authorities could secure the release of a high-ranking military officer from the hands of terrorists operating in the northwestern region.

The answer came on Saturday, June 13, in a press statement by Nasiru Muazu, Katsina’s Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs. The retired general could not be rescued, the Katsina government itself said. Rabe, who served as the Director of Defence Information at Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters between 2015 and 2017, died while in detention at the hands of the terrorists who abducted him. 

Rabe was abducted alongside his wife, Hajia Amina, on May 30. A native of Batsari from Katsina State, he was kidnapped on the Matazu–Sayaya road, a road that has now become one of the most volatile in the North West. 

“It is with profound sadness that we confirm the General’s death while in bandits’ captivity. Despite the relentless and concerted efforts of the State Government and various Security Agencies to secure his safe release, the situation ended in this tragedy. The deceased Retired General died a natural death from complications of diabetes and hypertension,” Nasiru said in the statement.

The abduction of the general had exposed how deeply terrorism has eaten into the fabric of Nigeria, especially the North West, where criminals have turned into full-time armed gangs that engage in kidnapping, pillaging, and other forms of terrorism. 

For over a decade, Katsina and other states in the region have faced incessant attacks from these terrorists, forcing local authorities to consider a “reconciliation” with the armed groups to restore peace. Some local government areas in Katsina, such as Jibia, Batsari, Kurfi, Safana, Danmusa, Matazu, Musawa, Kankara, Faskari, Malumfashi, and Bakori, have agreed to establish peace accords with terrorists in their areas. 

However, while some of these areas have seen relative calm, the situation in Matazu, Bakori, Musawa, Kankia, and Malumfashi has only deteriorated. The Marabar Musawa – Musawa – Matazu – Kafin Soli road (where the General was abducted) became volatile after the peace deal broke. 

Even before May 30, there were several cases of abduction on the road as well as attacks on communities and towns in the area. HumAngle reports that Muhammadu Fulani, the terrorists’ leader in the Matazu – Musawa area, is accusing the state government of arresting three of his men and seizing his livestock. 

Ambush on a wedding road 

Rabe was travelling with his driver and wife to Katsina for a wedding ceremony when the terrorists emerged near a village called Zakin Baure, blocked the road, and opened fire on his vehicle, a red coloured Peugeot 406 car, according to media reports. That forced the vehicle to a halt, enabling the terrorists to abduct him and his wife and push them into a nearby forest. His driver, however, escaped with gunshot injuries and was later admitted to a hospital. 

They were heading toward Katsina city for a family wedding through the perilous corridor, Marabar Musawa–Musawa–Matazu–Kafin Soli, which sits at the fault line of a regional peace architecture that has become increasingly fragile.

Abduction timeline 

June 6: The terrorists released a video clip of the couple begging for the government to rescue them. The wife, who spoke, asked the government to facilitate the release of some three terrorists arrested by security agents in exchange for the couple’s freedom. 

June 8: The terror group leader, Muhammadu Fulani, said he would not release the wife of the General, Amina, as promised, after the government dispatched security agents to the area to fight him. 

June 11: A video clip of the General, his wife and four others went viral on social media. HumAngle checks revealed that the other four persons in the video were members of the All Progressive Congress (APC) from Danja Local Government Area of the state who were abducted last month on the same road. 

June 12: A special prayer session was organised at the Sa’ad Bin Abi Waqqas Mosque in Barhim Estate, Katsina city, at 5 p.m.. Several relatives and friends of the Major General attended the prayer session, where the Imam called on the government to ensure the safe return of Rabe, his wife, and all abducted victims.

June 13 (morning): A WhatsApp message began circulating, especially in Katsina. The message said the General had died Friday night, June 12. “Innalillaihi wa ina ilaihil rajiun. This is to announce on a sad note. The death of General Rabe Abubakar last night at the hands of the bandits.” A HumAngle reporter also received a message from a retired civil servant asking for confirmation. 

June 13 (afternoon): The Katsina State government, through the Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs, confirmed the General’s death, saying that he died “a natural death from complications of diabetes and hypertension”. 

A symbol, and a warning

General Rabe’s death has reverberated through Nigeria’s security establishment and social media platforms precisely because of who he was: a man who had once stood before cameras explaining the state’s fight against terrorism. It also brings renewed attention to Nigeria’s growing terrorism and persistent security challenges facing several northern states despite ongoing military operations against the armed groups. 

Dikko Umaru Radda, the Katsina State governor, called the episode a “dark moment,” saying it highlighted the urgent need for a stronger, more coordinated security response, while pledging that those responsible would be pursued.

For residents of Katsina’s volatile corridors, Rabe’s death is a confirmation of what many have long understood: on the state’s insecure roads, rank, fame, and a lifetime of service offer no immunity at all.

His wife’s status was not addressed in Saturday’s statement, and her deceased husband was buried according to Islamic rites, but sources told HumAngle she was released alongside her husband’s remains.

As a pariah child in search of Islamic knowledge, Goni Abubakar has no clue what it means to hold a gun and pull the trigger. He is just an almajiri who runs errands for his cleric master in Bama, a town in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. He learns to recite Quran verses by heart; he is one of the brightest pupils under the cleric’s tutelage. In the beginning, the messages are clear: have faith in Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Day of Judgement. Every pupil carries these heavy words around and keenly believes in them. They say the Quranic verses that match those words by heart: “O you who have believed, fear Allah and believe in His Messenger; He will [then] give you a double portion of His mercy and make for you a light by which you will walk and forgive you; and Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”

The preaching is pious until peril pierces the heart of the preacher. 

The teacher sells groceries, and Goni doubles as his shop assistant. Detached from his parents as a child, he was now a teen, tending only to the bidding of his mentor. Dozens of children are on this path to seek knowledge, but Goni is the teacher’s delight: fierce, smart, and completely loyal. Their earliest form of education is the Tsangaya, a traditional Quranic education in northern Nigeria, and most of them have not attended any formal secular school before they are thrown under the control of a man they all call “mallam”. The morning and evening classes are held in the shade of a tree and are led by the teacher, who preaches to them the ways of Islam.

Kids like Goni know what it means to grow up in a local community. A child can sing through the neighbourhood, begging anyone there for food and water. Local farmers prosper in peace after months of tilling and cultivating the land. People sleep at night without fear of being raided by assailants or militants. Fear and terror consumed the town when Boko Haram’s strange ideologies spread like wildfire into the communities. Goni’s teacher is among the first to embrace the ideologies propagated by Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. As his preaching changed, his way of life changed too, beaming terror and extremism infused into the hearts of children under his mentorship.

In 2009, when Boko Haram went underground before re-emerging in 2010, Goni was already a 12-year-old. Too young and naive to ask questions, he and dozens of children followed their tutor to join the insurgent group that would later destabilise Nigeria. Now, in the northeastern region, the Boko Haram insurgency has uprooted over three million people and killed over 350,000, with government authorities failing to rein in the deadly scourge. Armed violence has spread beyond the region’s borders into parts of the northwestern and north-central regions.

Goni would become a grown man, swallowing the rulings of terrorists until he could no longer bear them. He now seeks redemption and reintegration through the state-backed deradicalisation programme. While it appears he has left a life of violence and attacks for good, it’s not that simple. For him and many other men in his shoes, post-Boko Haram life presents some puzzles that test the true efficacy of the deradicalisation scheme.

Are the terrorist deserters genuinely seeking redemption or only trying to survive? For months – between November 2025 and May 2026 – HumAngle probed the complexities of the former insurgents’ lives, documenting their journeys from the past to the present, their struggles to become civilians again, their secret frontline deals with the military, and the fragile peace their reintegration poses to the civilian population.

Snaring the cat

When Goni joined Boko Haram as a teen, his master’s preachings had switched from admonishing children under his watch to have strong faith in their religion to brainwashing them into a life of violence. They embraced it, truly believing that spilling the blood of people who don’t believe in their ideology was the clearest pathway to paradise. Elsewhere in Borno, in the Malam Fatori area, Ali Bukhar also listened to the sermons of Boko Haram’s jihadists. Those sermons summoned the beast in him and took away the best of his humanity. He joined them convinced that true salvation was immersed in the ideology of killing and maiming.

“In the preachings, they’d emphasise that if you died in the cause, you are a martyr. That you are going to paradise straight,” Ali recalls. He joined as an adult in 2014 during the peak of the Boko Haram emergence. About five months after joining the group, he was asked to attend training. His handlers took him to a riverine area and gave him a gun. “They have a specific instructor whose job is solely to train new intakes. You’d train for about four to five months. After the training, they’d return you to the Markaz [Arabic word for headquarters or centre]. And when it is time to go out for a fight, they’d give you guns.”

Suleiman Mohammad tells a slightly different story. He joined Boko Haram in 2013, during the first Baga attack. The militants and the military had been locked in a fierce battle that cost hundreds of civilians their lives and thousands their homes. A retaliatory raid after a military base was attacked in Baga took a bloody turn for mostly civilians, brewing a trust deficit in the operational methods of Nigerian forces in their fight against terrorism. The insurgent group took advantage of the situation to recruit young people into its unholy ways. Suleiman was among hundreds of people brought into the system after the Baga bloody saga and the uprising that followed. He was a herder in Malam Fatori and had grown up through the local Tsangaya education system.

“So after the Baga attack, I was contacted by the fighters who turned out to be from my village,” Suleiman reminisces. “We studied together when we attended Tsangaya and Islamiyya a long time ago. They told me how the other brothers were with them. They told me stories of how they recite the Quran collectively and also wage ‘holy war’ together. Then they invited me to join them. So, we made an appointment to meet at Mairari.”

A week later, the terrorists came as agreed and met with Suleiman’s father in his home. 

“Your son is joining us in the cause of Allah. He’d work for Allah,” the terrorists say. 

“Allah’s cause?” the father wonders. “Jihad is mandatory for all muslims. And since he has agreed to go with you, I have no objections.” 

The terrorists had come with guns and machetes, Suleiman notes, suggesting that his father was made to agree under duress. “That was how I joined them. We had carried out several attacks ever since. From Mairari, Tungushe, and others. In fact, we held Mairari – under Magumeri – captive for quite some time before it was recaptured by the military.”

People joined the Boko Haram insurgency for different reasons. For Goni and his cohorts, it was a case of misguided faith rooted in brainwashing and psychological manipulation. The story is different for many others. The fire of the burning insurgency started from the charismatic oratory and radical sermons by the founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, between 2002 and 2009. Since at least 2021, HumAngle has interviewed dozens of defectors who revealed why they joined the deadly group before surrendering to a deradicalisation scheme organised by the government. Mohammed took advantage of the dysfunctions within the Nigerian state to campaign against a secular system of governance and, by extension, democracy.

Testimonies from defectors and custodians of Boko Haram’s history reveal that the post-2009 state repression, especially the actual brutality of the Nigerian military and police against civilians, and the uprising that trailed it, were among the factors that drove young people into insurgency. At the time, “Tura Takai Bango” was the mantra for the agitation, literally meaning “they had been pushed to the wall”. The era and the ugly events that unfolded encapsulate the desperation that leads civilians to affiliate with insurgents. When the state’s counter-insurgency tactics involve collective punishment, the civilian population often finds itself caught in a “double jeopardy” where both the state and the insurgents are viewed as existential threats. 

Isa Alamndiri, one of the victims of the state repression, told HumAngle how he witnessed the summary execution of young people in 2016, in the Marte Local Government Area (LGA), on the grounds that they were shielding terrorists. “They came and gathered all of us in the village. They then separated the elderly and killed all the youths. They shot over 30 youths that day. Their reason was that we were harbouring Boko Haram in our midst,” Isa says. 

Another witness of what many believe pushed youths in the state to the wall, Musa Kurama, recalls that the Nigerian military invaded his village in Meleri, also in Marte, to burn his house, among many others, to the ground, saying that the entire community was a hideout for terrorists. The cycle of violence forced young adults and naive teenagers to take the insurgents’ offer of “protection”, which was a predatory alternative to state-sponsored destruction.

Boko Haram also targeted schools for attacks, deliberately conducting mass kidnappings such as in Chibok and Dapchi to enforce their radical ideology by making secular educational institutions unsafe. This insurgent tactic strategically provides a supply of young captives who were groomed as fighters or forced into “marriages” that facilitate the group’s long-term sustainability. The state’s failure to secure these environments has led to the closure of over 600 schools in the region, creating a lost generation of children who are more susceptible to recruitment because of the absence of alternative futures.

Jihad: ‘Pathway to paradise’

Goni has grown up knowing nothing but violence and bloodshed, and now claims he’s out of the messy circle. He smiles as he speaks, but when he remembers how he joined other terrorists to pillage villages, uproot people from their homes, farmlands, and abduct scores, he furrows his brow. 

“Before we go out, we would prepare. They’d mobilise 100 to 200 fighters, give them arms, and say, ‘We are going out to wage a holy war’.  Then we would charge into military barracks,” he tells HumAngle curtly. “I believe we were deceived by our masters because they don’t practice what they preach and twist religious verses to suit their evil acts and intentions.”

Regardless of how and why they joined, newly recruited insurgents are made to believe that killing and spilling the blood of anyone not following their templates of violence has only one name: jihad. Most defectors we spoke to corroborated this during separate interviews in 2025 and later in 2026.

Experts and scholars in political science, human rights, and peace and conflict studies argue that Boko Haram weaponised the concept of jihad to manipulate its followers into believing keenly in killing and destroying those who disagree with their ideology. In the 2021 issue of the Al-Hikmah Journal on Social Sciences and Education, for example, Issa Muhammad-Jamiu, a researcher at Kogi State University in North Central Nigeria, notes that Boko Haram’s ideology contradicts Islamic injunctions. The most disturbing aspect, he states, is the condemnation of any scholarly verdict that falls short of their view. 

“How could they attribute Islam to the prohibition of Western education, which has become a necessity, if not compulsory, to Muslims in the contemporary world? Do they mean that they are more knowledgeable and more committed to Islam than those Companions and Tabi’un who studied foreign cultures and sciences for the interest of Muslim communities?” Issa ponders.

Two sides of the coin

As Goni speaks, his lips look pale and peeling. He’s been battling typhoid and malaria and is still receiving treatment. He carries a gentle demeanour that betrays the terror he had perpetrated, and wears a blank face wrinkled with emotionlessness. For him, peace is a no-brainer when violence is pervasive.

He quips, throwing on a long, tedious smile when asked what he thinks of the concept of peace. “Peace tastes good,” he says. “Living peacefully among loved ones is greater than any other thing. I was in Njimia before leaving. I had worked in several places, including Gazuwa, my birthplace. What made me leave was recent developments. The conflict between the factions and the injustice. So, I took my weapon and left. I arrived at Konduga, where I was received. They then brought us to Bama and then to Hajj Camp.”

Goni believes that embracing peace simply means walking away from a life of pain, violence, and gnashing of teeth. Dwelling in the forest with terrorists means dining with the devil, he says. His moral postulation and spiritual freedom were destroyed in the terrorist camp. He had access to the Quran and understood its teachings, but every verse he read had to be interpreted in accordance with the sect’s teachings. He had no freedom of thought or understanding of whatever he read from the scripture. He had no meaningful life in the forest, he says, apart from destroying people’s lives.

He and many of the terrorist deserters we spoke to said they experienced pain in its most extreme form. Whenever they sustained gunshot wounds during field battles with the military, they returned to the forest almost dead. They were being treated by their locally-trained doctors, whom many of the ex-combatants described as quacks. Most times, they gave them dangerous, addictive opioids such as Tramadol and Refinol. They became addicted to these drugs to escape their daily ordeals, even after healing from the wounds. 

“They punished us for taking hard drugs they introduced to us in the first place,” Goni complains. “Sometimes a fighter could be killed just because he takes hard drugs. When they knew it was bad, why did they use it to treat us?”

Many terrorists decided to surrender to the military for different reasons. One major cause of mass defections from the terrorist camps was the sudden demise of Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram gang leader who took over the mantle of terror from Mohammed Yusuf. There had been cracks within the insurgent group, leading to the rise of the Islamic State for West African Province (ISWAP), which was formed as a rebel group against Shekau’s camp. Another thing that followed the death of Shekau in 2021 was disease and hunger outbreaks. 

The Nigerian military took advantage of Shekau’s death to launch several offensive attacks on the terrorist dens in northeastern Nigeria, destroying their logistics bases. That year, the military said it recorded thousands of defections from terrorists who surrendered to embrace peace. Once they submit themselves to the military after years of committing criminal atrocities, they are subjected to deradicalisation through the Borno Model.

HumAngle interviewed several Boko Haram deserters to examine their understanding of peace after committing grave crimes against the human population in the region. Many of them curiously oversimplified the concept, reducing it to simply switching sides and moving from deadly armed violence to living an average civilian life.

“From my understanding, peace is us leaving the group,” Ali simply says and goes ahead to recount how he joined other fighters to enslave girls for sex after kidnapping them from their homes, schools, and farms. He had been through hell as a former Boko Haram member, and now seeks solace in embracing peace by surrendering to the military. He had been imprisoned by his superiors in the terror camp and asked to surrender his arms, but he refused. “I buried it where they could not see it. I was locked up for three months. When they released me, I went and dug up my gun and left them,” he recalls.

For him and several defectors, returning to the civilian community is an exciting prospect. Despite the horror they inflicted on civilian communities as terrorists, they consider living with ordinary locals again, especially close to their families, as a peaceful reconciliation of their horrible past. “We were ignorant when we did those things in the past. But now we know better,” one of them, Abubakar Saleh, says. He was a Boko Haram commander who led dozens of fighters to dislodge communities, rape women and girls and subjugate civilian communities under terrorist control.

He has now returned to Maiduguri with his family. His wife had just given birth when we spoke to him, and he has settled well into the civilian community. To him, peace is relief from the pain that comes with being a terrorist leader. Although he enjoyed authority as a commanding fighter, his life in the forest was miserable, as he was always on the move to evade military operations and surveillance.

“Life here is better,” he affirms. “It is more comfortable and peaceful. In the forest, there is no rest. You’d hunt daily like a lion. Always changing locations. But here, no attacks.”

For civilian casualties of the terror perpetrated by many of these terrorist deserters, however, peace doesn’t come easily. For years, victims of insurgency in the northeastern region have longed for peace and reparations. Thousands of displaced people not only lost their homes, but also lost hope in ever rebuilding their lives or returning to their settlements. In parts of Borno, especially at the Shuwari displacement site, displaced people feed on the leftovers from former terrorists undergoing the government’s deradicalisation programme, a situation that has created an atmosphere of distrust and inequalities. When the Borno State government began a resettlement scheme for displaced people, they were promised protection and stipends to rebuild their lives. Many of them ended up being re-displaced by terrorists and would not get the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

Ensuring peace and justice in the North East is far more complicated than many terrorist deserters have assumed, says Ndubuisi Ani, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Security Studies. The transitional justice expert told HumAngle that the defectors’ curious understanding of peace undermines the pains and level of destruction civilians have witnessed at the hands of terrorists. He argues that peace and justice cannot be achieved in tackling violent extremism unless there’s inclusivity, good governance, and stability.

“The state must understand that there are basic needs to be responded to (on the side of victims),” Ndubuisi explains. “A lot of communities need a lot of social contracts on the ground.”

The security expert further explains that any transitional justice scheme by the government must be victim-centred. He advised that the state must go back to its original duty of protecting citizens and ensuring peace and tranquillity in society.

“You’ve not psychologically prepared actors. How do you let the victims understand?” he asked, stating that the government can’t successfully reintegrate terrorist deserters back into society without proper public engagement. “The intent is good, but the approach is the problem.”

Seeking peace and redemption

Like many terrorist deserters, Goni accepts that he has lived a complicated life of violence and horror. This is not the time for regret, he says. It’s a moment to seek forgiveness, to retrace his steps, and perhaps to wash the blood from his own hands. When he arrived at the Hajj Camp in Maiduguri after surrendering to the military and going through the process of deradicalisation, he struggled with the guilt of the atrocities he had committed, and, to prove to the military that he had backed off from a life of bloodshed, he agreed to work in the field with soldiers fighting terrorists. He’s not alone in this. Several former combatants we spoke to said they decided to work as auxiliary operatives to fight alongside the military against Boko Haram, the same sect they once belonged to. Several other defectors noted that when they chose to work with the military – as a way to seek redemption – they were handed rifles, loaded onto the backs of patrol trucks, and sent directly into the marshes and forests they had recently fled.

Asked whether they were coerced into joining the military, Goni laughed before saying the escapade was never mandatory. 

“It is a choice,” he replies. “I may decide not to work with them again.”

It is a hard nut to crack, but the terrorist deserters say the military operatives have learned to work and walk with them.

“They arm us and take us with them. If, for instance, a Commanding Officer is going out for an operation, he’d request a certain amount of “repentants” from the Hajj Camp officials. And the officials would assign like 50 or 100 persons to him, depending on the scale of the operation,” Goni says.

By fighting the same people who recruited him into the monolithic Boko Haram camp as a teen, Goni says, he has freed himself from a lifetime of guilt. During his time with the killers, he recalls asking many of the fighters if they loved what they were doing. Those fighters feel trapped, he says; they’re homesick, but even their families have rejected them. Now that he has freed himself from the shackles of terrorism, he says he begs God for forgiveness. But while he seeks forgiveness for the atrocities he has committed, he would use every knowledge he has about the group to fight them back. That’s his way of seeking redemption.

“They give us food and allowances, and we give them intelligence. We show them the hideouts. Because we know the terrain better than they do. We know their fighting styles,” Goni brags, smiling and looking directly at the reporter. “We know their escape routes. Isn’t this helpful enough? Also, we lead the way. They’d follow behind. We charge in.”

Redemption through revenge

Ali’s life after Boko Haram is even more thrilling: he seeks redemption through revenge. He had fallen for peer pressure to join one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in existence, and his life had since remained terrifying. For years, he was a cog in the Boko Haram machine, serving with vim and vigour. He learned to repair military vehicles in the forest and became renowned as the sect’s mechanic. He would repair heavy military patrol vehicles seized by the insurgents or those stuck in the mud within the forest during ambushes.

Despite his servitude for Boko Haram’s cause, he says, his entire life with the terror group was a lie. He grew to realise that behind the Boko Haram ideology was a hail of deceit and human manipulation. Bamboozled with distorted interpretations of verses from the Quran, Ali recounts how he had joined hundreds of other fighters to trigger plague, tears, and horror in civilian communities in the name of holy war.

“The practice violates the preachings. My biggest reason was that the practice was not what the Prophet truly teaches,” he claims. “The commanders would usually stay behind, leaving a comfortable life, while the foot soldiers are left starving and fighting day and night.”

For Ali, the deal breaker with Boko Haram was during a chaotic raid in the Tungushe town of Borno. He had come under a heavy burst of military gunfire, which tore through his arm, shattering the bone. He had expected that the sect’s medical team would give him some extra care due to his critical condition, but they treated him like disposable property. 

“I was so humiliated by the sect’s medical team, as treatments were handled haphazardly,” he laments. “If it were the commanders, they would treat them swiftly with maximum care. But for fighters, there is usually no medical attention.”

For two straight years, he nursed the pain alone and grew bitter resentment for the sect and its ideologies. He realised he was nothing but a tool for achieving the commanders’ personal hunches and interests. One night, he slipped away, through the scrublands, trudging northward until he found himself around the military garrison in Monguno, where he fell flat on the ground and surrendered.

“After surrendering in Monguno, they took us to Hajj Camp in Maiduguri,” Ali tells HumAngle. “Days later, they brought forward an opportunity where you could help in the fight. You may decide to follow the military during attacks or provide them with intelligence. Whatever you think you can do. So, I said I want to fight. I have a friend who also fights alongside the soldiers. I chose to fight because I have realised that we were deceived by the group.”

Repentance or survival?

Unlike Ali and Goni, repentance has an entirely different meaning for Suleiman: it is an illusion or a political statement made by people in government. Calling him a “repentant Boko Haram” is an insult, he says. To him, that word is a subtle qualifier for a coward. With a cold voice and a sour look, he describes how he worked with ground troops to attack Timbuktu, Sambisa, and other terrorist hideouts.

His case is more of just switching sides than actual repentance. He dreads the term “repentant Boko Haram” and doesn’t hide it. As a terrorist, he lived for violence, pillaging villages and destroying people’s lives and properties. Following the rise of Abu Mushab al-Barnawi, a factional leader of the Boko Haram sect, Suleiman came under his command, joining over 100 fighters under his control. He had fought fiercely against the Nigerian military on many occasions, and he was feared for his precise brutality amid battles.

His cruelty had no bounds, as he had fought against top Nigerian military leaders, as he states, like Captain Bala, Manga, and Abu Ali, leaving scars on the town that are still visible today. He had also raided beyond Nigeria, maiming locals in the Niger Republic, especially in Diffa, Maine-Soroa, and Chabbal.

When factional infighting turned truly brutal, Suleiman chose to be on the safer side. Exhausted by the tireless internal slaughter, he left and surrendered to the military. Now, he does almost the same thing on the other side. The activity is the same, he notes, only the targets are different. 

“I am not comfortable with that name [repentant]. I don’t like it,” Suleiman says. He would frown and then laugh during the interview to convey the complexity of the terror drowning him. “In the forest, I followed someone’s commands. Here too, I am commanded and still branded repentant?”

He wears a worn Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) uniform during the interview with HumAngle, bragging about following soldiers to the battlefield against terrorists in Geidam, Marte, Kala-Bridge and Malam Fatori. Despite his defiance, however, he seems to have taken bullets for the military during counterterrorism raids in northeastern Nigeria. His four fingers are chopped off, and there are scars all over his body. It was during a joint offensive with Chadian forces in northern Monguno. An artillery explosion had torn through the military ranks and killed several soldiers and terrorist deserters fighting by their side. He would follow the forces into the fortified hideouts of Timbuktu and Sambisa, giving on-the-ground intel to navigate the terrain.

“I got this arm scar, and my fingers were chopped off while digging out a planted landmine about five months ago,” he says of another military raid he participated in. “The explosion killed two other ex-combatants and nine soldiers. When the engineer scouted and identified a planted bomb, he refused to dig it out. None of the soldiers did. So they asked me to do it. One of the wires sparked. Then it exploded. It also affected my leg.”

The deradicalisation scheme

The term “repentance”, which Suleiman and several other defectors loathe, is one of the modus operandi of the Operation Safe Corridor, a military-led deradicalisation and reintegration programme across northeastern states. Established in 2016, the programme has witnessed both criticism and appraisal from experts and affected citizens. The quest for transitional justice, following the mass atrocities committed by Boko Haram against the people and the government of Nigeria, pushed authorities to come up with peacebuilding efforts.

The federal government had introduced the judicial approach of mass trials of Boko Haram figures captured on the battlefield, but systemic failures of the legal system derailed the processes. With a conviction rate of less than 10 per cent after conducting mass trials of thousands of fighters between 2017 and 2020, public distrust in the judicial system grew rapidly. These efforts also faced hurdles due to limited resources and circumstantial evidence, as well as a massive backlog of approximately 10,000 suspected fighters awaiting trial. 

Following deficiencies in the judicial and military mechanisms, the government provided non-judicial options, such as the Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC) and, later, the Borno Model, a scheme designed to handle the mass defections of thousands of insurgents.

HumAngle reviewed at least two research studies that confirm our on-the-ground reporting on the deficiencies and the public misgivings against the counterinsurgency initiative. The independent studies, one led by Idayat Hassan, then of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), and the other by Hassan-Taiwo Adebayo of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), noted a systemic imbalance that seemed to favour the rehabilitation of perpetrators over the survival and justice of their victims. The disparity in the attention given to terrorist deserters also fueled widespread community resentment and birthed a narrative that terrorists are being pampered at the expense of their targets. The security and transitional justice experts also assert that a flawed public appeal and information management have sparked outrage and a trust deficit on the government’s side.

One concern Taiwo’s research raised is the persistent challenges in providing sufficient economic support to Boko Haram deserters once they leave the camps. Several defectors HumAngle interviewed raised the same concern. Although they vowed to live civilian lives again, they claimed their lives in the forest were more prosperous, and they’re now facing economic hurdles after defecting. The former insurgents, now working as assets to the military, also complained of constant failed promises. When they’re called upon for operations against the terrorists, the military would pledge mouth-watering financial gains only to offer them an amount far less than what they had promised.

“Then they’d say they’ll pay us each ₦1 million or ₦1.5 million for every crucial piece of information and operation. But after a successful mission, they’d go back on their words and pay ₦100,000 or below. Whereas we have families to cater for. Wives, children, and parents,” Suleiman recounts, a claim substantiated by other former combatants we interviewed.

Wayward ways

As many defectors struggle to settle into communities, civilians also struggle to embrace them. The reason is not far-fetched: the villagers have grown resentful of former Boko Haram members who have raided their settlements, stripping them of their homes and stable lives, only to come and live next door. The moment they leave the rehabilitation camps, they escape the military’s watchful eyes. Many times, this escape means defectors choose what they do with their lives, including displaying violent tendencies against civilians. The villagers call them “repentants”, but insist their ways are wayward.

Locals, including displaced people, say so-called repentant terrorists re-terrorise them, making them relive the terror they had inflicted on them. During separate interviews, civilian villagers accused security agents of shielding defectors when they commit offences against the people. They say this has triggered a climate of silence within the Maiduguri metropolis, where everyone is scared of speaking ill of a former Boko Haram fighter, even when they’re guilty of wrongdoing. When HumAngle visited the Bama displacement camp in 2025, for instance, we saw dozens of defectors moving around aimlessly with guns and other weapons. Camp officials claimed the armed defectors were protecting displaced persons, but when we requested to speak with them, they denied us access. Displaced persons also refrained from discussing their situation, fearing persecution.

In Shuwari, a peri-urban area just outside Maiduguri town in Borno, a few locals agreed to talk to HumAngle on the condition that their identities would be concealed. Villagers say these defectors incite violence, rob civilians, and harass women. When they complain or try to fight back, they brag about having ruled the forest for years and having the power to do whatever they want within the civilian communities. Displaced people also live side by side at the Shuwari IDP camp with men they believe are responsible for their displacement. Living with them at the camp comes with fear and mistrust, IDPs say.

When Salihu Garba briefly returned to Bama, following the Borno state resettlement programme, threats from former Boko Haram fighters forced him back to the Shuwari IDP camp, he says. While some defectors seem to be living without fighting their neighbours, others, especially those working as assets for the military, move around brandishing rifles, spurring terror, and instilling fear among locals. Simple communal disputes often degenerate into violence. Salihu tells HumAngle that, two months ago, a quarrel spiralled into stabbing a villager. A former insurgent had stepped on bricks laid by a villager to build part of his compound, and that escalated into an exchange of blows and domestic weapons. Both the civilian and the defector were arrested, but the latter returned the next day to stab the former, who was later rushed to the hospital to fight for his life.

Rural criminality also adds to the tension that comes with forcibly reintegrating terrorists into civilian communities, locals say. One repentant terrorist was recently arrested for theft after breaking into shops and stealing six bags of beans. Before being sent to the police cell and later prison, he threatened the shop owner: “I will return and kill you after serving my term.”

For Isah Kamsulum, another resident of Shuwari, the fear is deeply personal. In 2015, he witnessed a man named Ba’ana slaughter fifteen people in Bama. Years later, Ba’ana resurfaced as a repentant, working with soldiers in the community. Isah’s nephew confronted him, enraged that someone who had killed his sibling now lived comfortably among them. Ba’ana killed the nephew. He was arrested, held briefly, then released. Today, he fights alongside the military in Gamboru. Residents say they were never consulted before repentants were resettled among them. “We just saw them,” he complains. “The government brought them out of the forest and kept us here, too. We are all under their control.”

Ibrahim Adam of the Zajeri community in the state says he had an even more concerning experience. Over a year ago, about ten former insurgents got an apartment for themselves within the community. They were at first unarmed, but some of their friends, who worked as auxiliary fighters with the military and were armed, would frequently come visiting them daily. Their presence, especially in large numbers, unsettled the villagers. The former insurgents started asking young women to marry them. One divorcee selling food by the roadside was told she must marry one of them. Scared to the bone, the woman abandoned her trade and fled the area.

Villagers say they have grown alarmed living with the repentants, with Ibrahim recounting that they have witnessed about 30 of them crammed in an apartment, talking recklessly and loudly about their past and bragging about their atrocities before surrendering to the army. The community demanded their eviction, but the landlord refused because he’s afraid. While older repentants in the community maintain some decorum, the younger ones, accompanied by armed companions, remain a source of fear.

For Goni, Ali, and several terrorist deserters HumAngle interviewed, relapsing into terror is not an option. They also said they’re not among the young repentants instilling fears into the civilian community. They say they’ve chosen the path of peace and would never return to a life of violence.

The last time Abdullahi Alabi heard from his friend, Oluwafemi Adeyemo, it was a voice note. “I dey Terminus… I sey make I update you,” his friend said in Nigerian Pidgin. He was restocking his foodstuffs at the market, but he never came back.

Abdullahi and Oluwafemi had been friends and coursemates since they came on campus. “We became brothers, I knew his family, he knew mine,” Abdullahi said.

Two days before that, on March 29, terrorists had opened fire on residents and passersby at Angwan Rukuba, a busy roadside community in Jos, Plateau State, North Central Nigeria, killing at least 30 people. The Plateau State government immediately clamped a 48-hour curfew on Jos North, the kind of precaution the city has learned, through painful experience, to take, given how quickly such attacks can tip into ethno-religious reprisal violence.

When the curfew lifted on April 1, Oluwafemi, a final-year Quantity Survey student at the University of Jos (UNIJOS), had just received his upkeep allowance from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). He headed to Terminus Market that morning, a 15-minute tricycle ride from where he and Abdullahi lived, to buy foodstuffs.

What made Abdullahi check his phone that morning was hearing that something was happening around Terminus. He wanted to know if his friends were alright. That was when he saw the voice note.

“I actually did not take it that seriously,” he said. But as the updates on social media got worse, he started calling. Oluwafemi’s number was not going through. He and other friends kept trying.

By evening, Oluwafemi had not returned and was still unreachable. Abdullahi called the family, who said he had not been in touch with them either. “I took permission from the family to file a missing person report, and we also made a post on social media,” he said.

Then another of Oluwafemi’s friends reached out. She sent Abdullahi a screenshot of her last chat with him. He had told her there was a fight at Terminus, that he had escaped, and that he had made it to Bauchi Road, near the university’s Main Campus. After that, nothing.

The next day, Abdullahi and other friends went from one police station to another. On the third day, they started checking mortuaries. That afternoon, a call came asking them to come to the Jos University Teaching Hospital to identify a body.

“When we got there, it was his body,” Abdullahi said, with a sigh. “He was attacked at Bauchi Junction. According to the autopsy, he sustained a gunshot wound to his back and was macheted as well.” He added that they were told that the police officers who brought his corpse to the hospital had intervened. The identities of the perpetrators remain unknown.

Oluwafemi was one of at least eight people killed in reprisal attacks that swept through Jos on 1 April, after the night of terror at Angwan Rukuba took on an ethno-religious colouration.

“Femi was ready to make a change in the world,” Abdullahi said. “A few days before his death, he sent a voice note in a group lamenting about how Nigeria is bad and what he thinks needs to be done to fix the challenges.” He never got the chance.

In that same voice note, obtained by HumAngle, Oluwafemi turned his frustration toward the government’s response to the recurring violence. Precautions like curfews, he said, were not enough. “What has curfew done?” he asked. “Make we speak up, abi na until dem kill everybody finish.”

Oluwafemi is not the first UNIJOS student the city has claimed. With over 40,000 students – according to its website – living and studying in Jos’s most volatile neighbourhoods, the university community has, for more than two decades, been one of the most consistent casualties of the city’s recurring violence. And with no meaningful change in how students are protected, many fear it is only a matter of time before the next name is added to the list.

Caught in harm’s way

To understand why Oluwafemi’s death is not an isolated tragedy, it helps to know the city he was living in. To outsiders, the speed with which violence can spread across Jos often appears bewildering. Yet the city has endured recurring cycles of conflict for more than two decades, fuelled by a complex mix of ethno-religious tensions, disputes over indigene-settler identities, political representation, land ownership, and access to resources. While many incidents are framed as clashes between Christians and Muslims, residents and researchers have long argued that the roots of the conflict run deeper than religion alone.

“…as is often the case with identity conflicts in Africa, these are socially constructed stereotypes that are manipulated to trigger and drive violence in Jos,” said Prof. Chris Kwaja, a Researcher at the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies at the University of Jos, Nigeria, who also serves as the Plateau State’s Special Envoy on Peace and Security. 

“The ethnic or religious dimensions of the conflict have subsequently been misconstrued as the primary driver of violence when, in fact, disenfranchisement, inequality, and other practical fears are the real root causes. Capitalising on such conditions, many political rivals have instrumentalised the ethnic and religious diversity of Jos to manipulate and mobilise support. Each outbreak of violence worsens suspicions and renders communal reconciliation more difficult, deepening the cycle and further incentivising polarisation,” he noted. 

Over the years, many neighbourhoods have become identified with particular ethnic and religious communities, creating a city that is deeply polarised along social and geographic lines. Areas such as Angwan Rukuba, Terminus, Bauchi Road, and other mixed communities often function as fault lines where residents from different backgrounds live, trade, commute, and study side by side. When violence breaks out, fear, rumours, and reprisals can quickly travel beyond the immediate scene of an attack, drawing in people who had no connection to the original incident.

For students of the UNIJOS whose campuses, hostels, and daily routines are woven into these communities, that vulnerability is particularly acute. A journey to class, the market, or a friend’s place can suddenly become dangerous when the city descends into unrest.

Jos North is where most of the university’s campuses sit, including the Township Campus, Bauchi Road Campus, Naraguta Campus, the Jos University Teaching Hospital, staff quarters, and other facilities. Student hostels, both university-owned and private, are scattered all across the area. Angwan Rukuba, where the March 29 attack happened, is one of the neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of students. Meanwhile, Terminus Market, which borders it, has long been an epicentre of violence in the city.

Several residents and students who spoke to HumAngle said the university community is always caught in the middle when violence breaks out, which is hardly surprising, given how deeply the campuses and student hostels are woven into those areas.

Although no comprehensive data exists on the total number of students killed across incidents, HumAngle’s research — drawing on interviews with students and staff, as well as archival news reports — indicates that at least five students have died in every major episode of violence, and often significantly more.

In 2018, Shedrach ‘Kums’ Fenan, a 300-level Law student, was shot and killed by a stray military bullet near the Students’ Village Hostel during a similar crisis. That same year, the bodies of several students were found floating in nearby rivers. 

Plangna’an Daor, who studied law at UNIJOS and now works as team lead of the post-conflict rehabilitation and recovery desk at the Plateau Peacebuilding Agency, knew Kums personally. 

“I still remember how we were all glued to social media, checking on friends in different parts of Jos, asking questions and trying to understand what was happening,” she told HumAngle. “Imagine finding out that the student was someone you knew personally, someone with immense potential.” As an executive leader of the National Association of Plateau State Students at the time, she travelled with other students for the burial. “It was a stark reminder that students are not merely observers of conflict; they can become direct victims of it,” she said.

Aondona Kwaghaondo, a medical student at the university, almost lost his life when a mob attacked him in August 2021, along the Bauchi Road near the Naraguta Hostels, which sits between major university communities. “It was a very traumatising experience; till this day I am a bit triggered by similar sights and sounds,” he said. Aondona survived, but he sustained several injuries from the attack. 

During one of the crises, while she was a student, Plangna’an lived off campus near Dariye Park, barely 100 metres away from the main gate of the Naraguta Campus. “I remember the tension of that period vividly,” she said. “We could hear gunshots at night and constantly monitored developments around us.” 

The fear was not abstract. During that same period, Plangna’an narrated that a young man attempting to reach Bauchi Road Junction was stabbed after ignoring a neighbour’s warning and was brought to her compound, where a medical student provided first aid before he could be taken to the hospital. “The atmosphere was one of constant fear and uncertainty,” Plangna’an recalled. Her roommates told her, “This is not the time to sleep in a nightie. Wear trousers. Wear something that, if we have to wake up and run, you can simply get up and leave.”

She also highlights a dimension of the crisis that is easy to overlook: the particular vulnerability of students like Adeyemo, who are from outside Plateau State. “Those of us from Plateau State at least had some understanding of the context,” she said. “But imagine students who came from other states and had no understanding of the local dynamics. They arrived expecting a safe learning environment and suddenly found themselves navigating fear, insecurity, displacement, and uncertainty.” Many students, she notes, are simply unfamiliar with which areas are considered high-risk during periods of tension, and which routes should be avoided. 

Prof. Lazarus Maigoro, former chairperson of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) UNIJOS chapter, said the pattern has left the university community exasperated. “We have suffered untold damages in relation to loss of lives and property… each time there is a security breach in Jos, and as a union, we have tried to understand how the university community is always at the receiving end of each crisis in Jos,” he said. 

“In spite of all the provocations, we have continued to offer community service to all, irrespective of religion, culture and tribe; the university administration has, over the years, made overtures to host communities in terms of undergraduate admissions and staff employment, yet our students and staff are killed at the slightest provocation, however far the epicentre of the crisis from the institution.” 

Plangna’an, who now works on post-conflict recovery, points to structural factors that compound the danger. The communities surrounding the university include areas with high concentrations of informal settlements, illegal structures, motor parks, and markets. “Some of these spaces have become hideouts for criminals, street gangs, drug users, and other vulnerable groups susceptible to recruitment into violence and extremism,” she said. Students living off-campus must pass through these environments daily.

As Prof. Maigoro noted, the attacks not only threaten the security of life and property within the university community but also disrupt the academic calendar, causing students to spend more than the stipulated number of years to complete their programmes. “Some who were meant to spend four years will end up doing six, that is, if there are no labour union strikes,” said Liamhuan Akpenmo, a student of the university’s Faculty of Education. 

For instance, Adeyemo got admission in 2019, but by the time of his death, he had spent seven years on a five-year programme, his progress interrupted by the COVID-19 lockdown and the 2021 crisis that forced the university to close.

The evacuation

When the situation following the March 29 incident worsened, the university management rescheduled the semester examinations and placed academic and related activities on hold.  Prof. Ishaya Tanko, the vice-chancellor, also announced the evacuation of students from hostels, in collaboration with the Plateau State government.

In the days that followed, specifically from April 2, other state governments and private individuals began sending dozens of buses to evacuate students who were indigenes or residents of those states. More than 1600 students were reportedly evacuated by about seven state governments, including Benue, Delta, and Kaduna. Such arrangements are often collaborations with state student union groups and relevant state government ministries.

“It was all familiar,” said Liamhuan, a student who first experienced a similar evacuation in 2021. She and her younger sister, who is also a student, left for Benue; other students travelled as far as Lagos.

Then, even as the crisis was still unfolding, the university management announced that examinations would go ahead. “It was abrupt,” said Liamhuan. The city was not yet safe. A 6 p.m. curfew was still in effect. In one press statement issued around that time, the Student Union Government advised students to either split their journey into two legs or arrive early enough to beat the curfew. Social media was still full of missing-person posters.

“Let me state clearly that since the beginning of the crisis, no single breach of the peace was recorded on any of our campuses,” the Vice Chancellor said at a press briefing. But students like Oluwafemi, who died during the incident, were attacked in areas immediately surrounding the university, a distinction that offered little comfort to those who had lost someone.

For instance, in August 2021, at the peak of a similar crisis, a 100-level microbiology student of the university was murdered by a mob at a filling station, near Dariye Park – where Plangna’an lived – which is located adjacent to the university. 

HumAngle reached out to Emmanuel Madugu, the university’s Deputy Registrar for Information and Public Relations, for comment on how the university intends to prevent casualties among students and staff. Madugu acknowledged the request and indicated that he would respond after consulting the relevant units, but had not done so at the time of publication.

An alumnus of the university with knowledge of security matters, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there is only so much the institution can do. When students and staff are attacked outside the university environment, he noted, the university’s hands are largely tied. The responsibility, he argued, falls primarily on the state and federal governments to secure the city.

For Liamhuan, the management’s decision to continue with the session reflected a pattern she had seen before. “I prefer to leave because the school environment does not feel safe, and everywhere feels threatened. So, home is where I feel safe, and if anything happens to you, it is you and your family that will bear the burden.” She added that the situation is even more difficult for students like herself who live off campus, largely due to a lack of sufficient student hostels.

“Even those on campus are not protected,” Liamhuan added. She once lived in one of the student hostels at the Naraguta Campus before moving off campus. “Students are still attacked by mobs when they are close to the school facilities.” Aondona’s testimony confirms this. Additionally, a viral video during the recent incident showed a man who was attacked right at the entrance of the university’s Naraguta Campus, which houses the administrative building and most of the faculties and student residences.

Although armed security posts existed near university campuses around 2017 and 2018, HumAngle observed that most of those posts no longer exist, and security is now mostly provided by unarmed officers of the university’s Security Division. More recently, through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, a police station was constructed at the Naraguta Hostels Gate, along the Jos-Bauchi Road, but students say it is insufficient.

When HumAngle visited the campus in June, no police officers were seen on the grounds, but an unarmed Security Division security guard was at the gate.

For Abdullahi, authorities do not need to wait for violence to break out before they start mapping how to protect the students and the rest of the university community. “If there are checkpoints at flashpoints like Bauchi Road, when a crisis starts, there will be an immediate response, ensuring that killings are avoided,” he said, adding that surveillance cameras can also be installed.  

During a condolence visit to Plateau State after the March 29 attack, Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, disclosed that the Federal Government would deploy an artificial intelligence-enabled network of over 5,000 digital cameras to help law enforcement agencies combat insecurity in the state. At the time of this report, the project had yet to commence. 

The General Officer Commanding of the 3rd Division, Maxwell Khobe Cantonment, Major Gen. Eyitayo Oyinlola, visited the university during the recent incident “to assure the Vice Chancellor of the Division’s high priority of securing the University in the face of threats to the lives of its community”. But students who were on campus during the incident said little to no security was actually provided.

Younglan Taylong, the university’s Student Union Government president, did not respond to requests for comment. However, students who spoke to HumAngle, including Abdullahi, say the union was supportive during the crisis, providing information, aid, and evacuation support to students.

In the absence of protection, students have had to fend for themselves. Another student, a recent graduate who declined to give his name for fear, recalled that during tense periods, particularly in 2021, students would mobilise to act as a vigilante force around the hostels at night. 

“Sometimes, we will just carry kitchen knives, I do not even know what we were thinking,” he said.

What can be done?

For those who have spent years studying or working on the crisis, the frustrating reality is that the recommendations are not new. The Greater Jos Master Plan already includes provisions to relocate illegal motor parks, markets, and informal settlements away from critical public institutions, such as the university. Similar proposals have appeared repeatedly across various commissions of inquiry. “Many remain unimplemented,” Plangna’an said. “There is a need for greater political will to translate these recommendations into reality.”

Among the measures she and others who spoke to HumAngle advocated for are: the establishment of a Mobile Police barracks or dedicated security formation near the university; the construction of additional student hostels to reduce the number of students living off-campus; the strengthening and securing of perimeter fencing at the Permanent Site to control access and deter encroachment; and the provision of secure shuttle bus services for students living off-campus. “While no transport system is completely immune to attack, organised transportation would significantly reduce students’ exposure to risk,” she added. 

The post-conflict rehabilitation and recovery expert also calls for dualising major roads around the university and constructing an interchange at the Bauchi Road junction — a congested gateway into the state that regularly creates both mobility and security problems. Beyond infrastructure, she argues for sustained investment in peacebuilding programmes that directly involve students, university staff, and surrounding communities, including support for those living with the psychological aftermath of violence. “There are many students who continue to live with trauma from experiences they have had as victims or witnesses of violence,” she said. “These experiences can affect academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being.”

Plangna’an insists the approach must shift from reactive to preventive. “Every time violence occurs, similar recommendations are made, yet implementation remains weak,” she said. “Early warning without early response has limited value.” 

Until that changes, students and experts who spoke to HumAngle say that the university community will remain, as it has been for more than two decades, caught in the crossfire. 

Migrants say they are living in fear after a campaign group gave people living illegally in South Africa until June 30 to leave. Nigeria’s diplomatic mission in South Africa says many of those returning no longer feel safe to continue living or working in the country.

For the Islamic State (IS) and its West Africa Province (ISWAP), the third week of May 2026 began with a compound disaster and ended with a theology lesson. The group faced one of its most shocking moments, at least in West Africa or, more specifically, Nigeria. 

With its headquarters in Nigeria, ISWAP has been the most active wing of the Islamic State globally, claiming more attacks than any other IS province since its central operations in Iraq and Syria were largely overpowered. Following the call for its members to migrate to Africa, ISWAP has, in the past two years, temporarily overran Nigerian military installations, including at least one super camp. The group was enjoying relative success when a turning point came: one of its most important first-generation commanders was killed. 

The operation that killed Abu Bilal Al-Minuki between midnight and 4 a.m. on May 16 was described by the Nigerian military as “meticulously planned and highly complex”. It not only left the terrorist dead, but it also caused a crisis of morale that ISWAP’s propaganda machine would spend the following days trying to contain through a theological message. 

Ahmad Salkida, a leading conflict analyst who has been observing the situation since it emerged, described the killing of Al-Minuki as a “serious disruption” to the activities of ISWAP in the Lake Chad region.

Airstrikes and special forces raids followed. More people were killed, and confusion reportedly descended. The operations, according to some reports, may also have killed the likely successor to Al-Minuki, another terrorist commonly known as Ba Shuwa, opening a new and, perhaps, unplanned chapter in the insurgency.

By May 19, Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters reported that 175 ISWAP and Boko Haram militants had been killed since the joint offensive began. According to the report, at least 20 died in a single engagement. By the time Nigerian authorities stopped counting, the joint operation had become the most lethal week the group had faced in years.

The theology of a bloody week

Within that catastrophic week, the Islamic State released its Al-Naba newsletter with a pointed editorial. Although it did not mention Al-Minuki or the numerous fighters killed, the editorial retold a story of a battle that happened 14 centuries ago to boost the morale of a group in disarray.

Reports suggest there was internal suspicion, even before the death of Al-Minuki, that some fighters may have leaked information leading to his death, driven by internal discontent over the unequal treatment between foreign fighters who migrated to the ISWAP and the local fighters in Nigeria. However, the editorial tried to shift away from that and present the losses as a normal sacrifice. 

Everything in the editorial is deliberate. The piece opens on Talha ibn Ubaydullah, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Uhud. The selection is pointed in ways that any reader with a classical Islamic education would immediately recognise. 

Uhud was a near-disaster for early Muslims because of an internal division. It was a battle in which archers abandoned their positions, turning a momentary advantage into a rout that left dozens of companions dead and the Prophet himself wounded. 

What Islamic tradition preserved, and what the Al-Naba propaganda wanted to convey from that valley, however, was not only the memory of tactical failure but of individual men who placed their bodies between the Prophet and death – an important sacrifice for the existence of Islam. 

The editorial tells ISWAP fighters who have fallen into fear, confusion, or doubt after the loss of Al-Minuki and other fighters that a similar situation occurred during the Battle of Uhud. However, because the Prophet’s companions believed they were fighting for Islam, they did not see it as a problem.

In essence, the message is that they may ultimately be killed, suffer injuries, or even think they have already achieved victory and begin collecting spoils of war, only for circumstances to turn against them. Yet, regardless of whatever hardships or setbacks they face, they should not regard themselves as having lost, because they are fighting for their religion.

“Your role, O my mujahid brother, is to make your chest a sanctuary for the religion of Islam and guard it with your body,” the editorial reads. 

This is a recognisable pattern in IS editorial strategy. After senior commanders are killed, Al-Naba invokes early Islamic battles such as Badr, Uhud, and Khandaq as mirrors, casting present losses as the preconditions for eventual triumph. The rhetorical architecture is consistent and has appeared after every major command-level strike against the organisation. What changes each time is only the particular story pulled from the tradition.

In 2019, when Abubakar Al-Baghdadi, the former leader of Islamic State, died, Al-Naba compared the situation with that of early Muslims after the death of Prophet Muhammad, in which many of his companions fell into disbelief until they were calmed by the first caliph Abu Bakr As-Siddiq. Al-Naba issue 207 argued that if Islam could survive the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Islamic State could also survive the death of Al-Baghdadi. 

The choice of Talha in the recent issue of Al-Naba, specifically after the death of Al-Minuki, adds a layer to the editorial. Talha survived Uhud and fought many more campaigns. The editorial addresses not only those who died but also those who lived through the week. The message to fighters still alive in the Lake Chad Basin, still holding ground, is legible between every sentence. 

“It is the duty of my mujahid brother to walk those same paths in defence of the religion of Islam, its honour, and its sovereignty,” the editorial says. 

The crisis of succession 

The theology in the Al-Naba editorial could steady nerves or explain deaths. It could also transform defeat into sacrifice. However, it could not answer the practical question now hanging over the movement: who would lead after Al-Minuki?

For years, ISWAP’s resilience has rested on its ability to survive leadership decapitation. Commanders and factional leaders have died, been assassinated, or removed. Yet the organisation endured because a pool of experienced first-generation figures remained available to absorb the shock. However, this time may be different.

A HumAngle analysis observed that Al-Minuki’s most likely successor was Ba Shuwa. However, he too may have been killed in the subsequent strikes; if confirmed, the movement would lose not only its most influential commander but also the man widely expected to replace him.

Al-Minuki belonged to a shrinking class of terrorists who entered the movement before the 2009 uprising transformed Boko Haram from a fringe extremist religious organisation into a regional insurgency. He embodied institutional memory, battlefield experience, and personal relationships that spanned multiple generations of fighters. 

Ba Shuwa, although younger in status within the movement, still belonged to that older ecosystem. Their simultaneous deaths would accelerate a transition that many inside ISWAP had anticipated but few expected to happen so suddenly. The names now circulating inside insurgent circles to replace Al-Minuki and Ba Shuwa show the scale of that transition.

Among the strongest contenders, as HumAngle gathered, is Abu Salem, a commander who grew up entirely within the insurgency’s wartime environment.  He reportedly combines military authority with religious credentials, a combination that carries considerable weight inside ISWAP’s hierarchy.

Another frequently mentioned figure is Bana Chingori, long regarded as a close associate of Ba Shuwa and an influential commander in his own right.

However, beneath the movement’s ideological claims lies a complex web of battalion loyalties, personal networks, ethnic affiliations, and historical rivalries. Fighters speak the language of the caliphate, but leadership legitimacy is often negotiated through social structures that long predate the insurgency itself. The question is not merely who is capable of leading, but who can command obedience across the various factions that make up the movement.

This is where the editorial in Al-Naba becomes more interesting. The Islamic State understands that leaders can be replaced. What is more difficult to replace is cohesion.

The editorial’s invocation of Uhud was not simply a sermon about perseverance. It was also an attempt to create continuity at a moment when continuity is under threat. By reminding fighters that early Muslims endured confusion after battlefield losses yet remained united, the editorial implicitly addresses the danger of fragmentation.

For nearly a decade, ISWAP distinguished itself from rival jihadist factions partly through its ability to maintain organisational discipline. While Boko Haram under Abubakar Shekau frequently splintered under pressure, ISWAP developed bureaucratic structures capable of surviving individual losses. The current transition will test those structures more severely than any succession crisis since the death of Abu Musab al-Barnawi and the removal of other senior figures from the Muhammad Yusuf generation. 

The paused migration 

Beyond the succession question lies another bigger development. ISWAP has announced that the flow of fighters migrating from Iraq and Syria to Nigeria has been effectively paused.

For years, the Islamic State’s call for migration to Africa was one of ISWAP’s most reliable sources of experienced foreign fighters. Foreign fighters who had trained and fought in the central theatre arrived in Lake Chad with tactical knowledge, ideological authority, and direct personal connections to IS central command. 

Al-Minuki himself was a product of that ecosystem. The suspension reflects the bigger issue that ISWAP is facing, in which local ISWAP members feel foreigners are given more priority in the insurgency, and they’re being relegated. This, according to some sources, was one of the reasons that opened a loophole that led to the intelligence leading to the killing of Al-Minuki. 

Al-Naba issue 550 addressed the question of migration indirectly. The editorial, titled “Africa Between Yesterday and Today”, spoke in the past tense about those who had already made the journey. “Those who came before you from Iraq walked this path,” the editorial told terrorists currently in Africa, “and they carried the weight of this religion on their shoulders.”

The joint US-Nigeria strike that killed Al-Minuki demonstrated a targeting capability that ISWAP had not previously faced at this intensity in the Lake Chad theatre. The use of American intelligence assets alongside Nigerian special forces created a surveillance environment that makes the movement of senior figures, especially those arriving from abroad,  significantly more dangerous than before. 

For IS central, sending experienced insurgents into a degraded environment risks losing irreplaceable assets to an adversary that has now demonstrated it can find and kill the most protected figures in the organisation. The pause in migration is both a strategic retreat and a rational response to changed targeting conditions.

The commanders now being discussed as replacements for Al-Minuki are men who grew up entirely inside the Nigerian insurgency. Whatever their capabilities, they appear to lack the cross-theatre experience and IS central relationships that figures as Al-Minuki carried. The migration pause has narrowed the field of who can credibly lead it.

Residents were thrown into despair after a terrorist leader, Jammo Smally, abducted 39 community leaders who had gone to discuss a peace deal with him. The dramatic incident occurred on Sunday, June 7, in the Maradun Local Government Area (LGA) of Zamfara State, North West Nigeria.

Jammo had been sending messages to the leaders in the Magamin Diddi community for over two months, calling for a meeting to discuss the terms of the peace deal as the rainy season approached. The terrorist leader, whose parents live in a hamlet not far from Magamin Diddi, had claimed he was tired of the hostility between his terror group and the community.

Following another invitation a few days after the Islamic Eid al-Kabir celebrations, the traditional and religious leaders decided to meet Jammo and his gang members in the forest. The two parties agreed to meet on Sunday to reach what the community leaders thought would be a peaceful solution to the recurrent attacks on their farms and homes.

“The first thing he asked when we reached there was the whereabouts of the three rifles the Askarawa took away from his boys two months ago,” Malam Aliyu, one of those who went to strike the deal, told HumAngle over the phone on  Monday. He had joined 46 other community leaders to strike the deal. “We were confused at first, because we were told that we would be discussing only a peace deal. We thought that he would ask us to give him money, but the first thing he asked was for his rifles.” 

“Askawara” is a local term for security volunteers of the state-backed Community Protection Guards (CPG) in Zamfara State. Local sources told HumAngle that towards the end of March, terrorists from the Jammo group had a gunfight with the CPG fighters and other vigilante group members, leading to the killing of two terrorists. Three rifles belonging to the terrorists were taken away by the CPG fighters. 

“We didn’t take his guns, but it’s obvious he has made up his mind,” Aliyu said. The terrorist leader released seven community leaders, instructing them to report back to the district head with his demands. He has one condition for the release of the 39 elders: either the rifles are returned, or an equivalent amount of money must be paid to him.

The terrorist leader also set ₦50 million for the peace deal. “He said if we’re still interested in negotiating with him, we should add ₦50 million to the rifles we’re returning. The money is for us to be able to live in peace, go to local markets, and go to our farms,” the community leader said.

Negotiations between terrorists and local communities aiming to establish peace are not uncommon in the ongoing crisis plaguing the northwestern region for over a decade. Typically, these discussions involve communities paying substantial sums to the terrorists under the guise of a peace agreement. However, such negotiations often yield little result, as terrorist attacks continue unabated even after agreements are reached, as seen in various regions of the state.

The Zamfara State government has consistently maintained its stance against negotiating with terrorists. Yazid Abubakar, the Zamfara State Police spokesperson, stated that they have initiated a rescue operation to free the captured individuals. 

“Upon receipt of the report, the Zamfara State Police Command immediately initiated efforts to trace the victims’ whereabouts and secure their safe rescue. Operational assets have been deployed, and security operatives are working on available intelligence to locate the abducted persons,” Yazid Abubakar said in a statement on Monday.

Nigerian troops say they have rescued 360 people abducted during a deadly terrorist attack on Ngoshe, a resettled community in Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, more than three months after terrorists overran the town, killing residents and forcing thousands to flee.

Solomon Ali Talake, a primary school teacher and survivor of the March 3 attack, said community members had received information about the rescue.

“I was told they have been rescued,” Solomon told HumAngle on Sunday. “Families have been informed, but they have not allowed us to see them yet. They said they are assessing them and will release them to their families afterwards.”

The March 3 attack on Ngoshe was one of the deadliest assaults on a resettled community in southern Borno in recent months. Residents said the attackers first struck a military formation in the town before moving into the community. Homes were set ablaze, civilians were killed, and hundreds of residents were reportedly abducted.

Solomon survived by hiding in a tree throughout the night while the attack unfolded beneath him. From his hiding place, he watched as gunmen moved through the community, burning houses and pursuing fleeing residents.

The attack displaced thousands of people, many of whom fled to Pulka, a neighbouring community about 12 kilometres away. Others sought refuge in Maiduguri, Cameroon, and other locations. The exact number of people killed or abducted remains disputed. While some media reports estimated that about 100 people were killed and more than 300 abducted, residents told HumAngle that the scale of the attack made precise figures difficult to establish. Victims were later buried in a mass grave, according to survivors.

Among those abducted were two of Solomon’s nephews, aged 14 and 11. On Sunday, he said he had not yet been able to confirm whether they were among those rescued.

Asabe Ali Talake, Solomon’s sister and the children’s mother, also said she had received reports of the rescue but remained uncertain about the fate of her children.

Asabe said she was still waiting for confirmation from authorities. Relatives of the freed victims say communication with them remains restricted while security agencies conduct assessments.

Military authorities typically screen and profile people freed from insurgent-controlled territories before reuniting them with their families. The process is intended to establish identities, assess physical and psychological conditions, and determine whether further investigation or rehabilitation may be required.

This comes amid a broader wave of insecurity affecting communities across Borno State. In recent months, terrorists have launched repeated attacks on military formations, reconstruction projects, and resettled communities, raising concerns about the sustainability of government resettlement efforts in conflict-affected areas.

Part of a broader rescue effort

A politician from Gwoza, who spoke to HumAngle on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and who was involved in advocacy efforts for the victims’ release, claimed a ransom was demanded for the release of the victims. HumAngle could not independently verify the claim, and the military has not publicly indicated that any negotiations took place. 

This development is the latest in a series of operations by troops of Operation Hadin Kai targeting terrorist enclaves in the Mandara Mountains and surrounding areas.

Three days earlier, troops rescued a woman and her infant child after killing several terrorists. On May 1, troops rescued six abductees during an operation around the Mandara Mountains. Six more victims were rescued on May 14. In April, 12 victims, including men, women, and children, escaped during a military operation targeting a terrorist camp.

The latest operation, however, represents the largest reported release linked to the March 3 attack on Ngoshe, offering renewed hope to families who have spent months waiting for news of their relatives.

While military authorities described the operation as a rescue, questions remain about how the victims regained their freedom.

In the previous episode of Vestiges of Violence, we told the story of Bintu Suleiman, whose daughters and grandchildren were abducted during the attack on Ngoshe, northeastern Nigeria, on March 3, 2026. She was still waiting for news, still hoping for their return.

Now, we have some updates.

In this episode, her 16-year-old daughter, Aisha Muhammad Shuaibu, has escaped captivity after spending a period of two months and two weeks with the terrorists. She returned home carrying her four-year-old nephew on her back.

She shared with HumAngle what happened to her in captivity and how she escaped.

Reported by Sabiqah Bello

Voice acting by Rukayya Saeed and Khadijat Isah Baka

Multimedia editor is Anthony Asemota

Executive producer is Ahmad Salkida

Across northeastern Nigeria, former Boko Haram insurgents now move with Nigerian troops into forests they once controlled. They identify footpaths that insurgents use after attacks, point out where improvised explosive devices are most likely buried beneath soft sand roads, and decode habits, voices, and movement patterns invisible to the average soldier. They explain how camps are structured during the rainy season and identify commanders at a distance. Some of these ex-insurgents die in combat fighting the same insurgency they once served.

One of the first such defectors was Abubakar Umar from Bama in Borno State. Soldiers called him Small and say he was presumably in his mid-20s when he died in 2023. Before then, he had fought on the frontlines of multiple operations across Sambisa, Timbuktu, and the Lake Chad basin.

Before surrendering, Small spent years in the insurgency as a Naqeeb, a low-ranking fighter, enabling him to know the terrain intimately. By the time he defected to the Nigerian Army, he already knew which routes disappeared under floodwater during the rains, where insurgents buried weapons before abandoning camps, and how insurgents escaped after raids. He understood the logic behind ambushes because he had once planned and carried out attacks against the same army he would later fight beside.

Others followed a similar path. Among them was Zakariyya from Pulka in Gwoza, another ex-insurgent who later supported military operations across Borno and Yobe. He died in late 2025.

At first, many soldiers distrusted them, especially as some of them had lost close friends and colleagues to Boko Haram attacks. For them, accepting a former insurgent carrying a rifle beside them was never easy. Operation after operation changed the relationship, however. According to military sources familiar with the missions, Small and Zakariyya repeatedly identified patterns that helped troops avoid deadly traps and ambushes. With time, commanders began listening whenever they spoke.

Then came a particular operation deep inside Sambisa in 2023. Small moved ahead of the troops in a way one soldier later described to HumAngle as “fearless, almost reckless,” as though death no longer frightened him, having already crossed too many moral boundaries to fear its arrival. He never returned.

The soldiers who survived that operation spoke about him afterwards with the kind of tone usually reserved for men buried in decorated military uniforms. 

There are many stories like this now scattered across the northeastern region–former insurgents fighting alongside the state. 

From the islands and marshes of Lake Chad to the forests of Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi, and the roads stretching toward Kwara, Nigeria is confronting a conflict system that has changed shape. In response, security forces are increasingly turning toward defectors.

The unseen war

For years, the Nigerian state has made progress against the Boko Haram war. When villages like Bama and Gwoza fell to the terror group, the military reclaimed them very quickly. They have also killed commanders over time, while still exploring non-kinetic approaches that made it possible for insurgents to surrender. Through this approach, defections occurred at an unprecedented rate. 

Boko Haram fractured internally as ISWAP consolidated its presence in parts of the Lake Chad Basin. Many did not want to remain in the Lake Chad theatre, but they also did not trust a formal surrender to Nigerian authorities, so some of them moved to other parts of Nigeria.

HumAngle has tracked the movement of former Boko Haram elements to the North West region and parts of central Nigeria as far back as 2020. Some joined criminal armed groups, others became trainers, bomb makers, couriers, informants, guards, or logistics brokers. Others disappeared into cities following the death of Abubakar Shekau and clashes between factions within the group.

In Kano and several urban areas, defectors and affiliates blended into urban life. Some became labourers, mechanics, phone repairers, commercial drivers, or petty traders. Some drifted into robbery and informal criminal economies, while others married and completely concealed their past.

This creates a difficult security dilemma for many reasons. How does a state track men who have left the insurgency but not entered any formal process? How does it distinguish between a deserter seeking anonymity and one rebuilding operational networks elsewhere? How does it protect communities without criminalising everyone who once lived under insurgent rule?

Nigeria has not answered those questions through a coherent national framework. Instead, it improvises.

The intelligence war nobody sees

When HumAngle spoke with soldiers and intelligence officers who served in the North East, their language was different. They do not romanticise former Boko Haram insurgents nor do they describe them as heroes, but they call them assets.

Before defectors became operationally useful, troops often entered unfamiliar terrain with insufficient intelligence from local hunters, the civilian joint task force, and satellite imagery. Equipment like drones and maps was useful but had limitations, as it could not predict movement patterns or likely landmines. Former insurgents helped dismantle part of that advantage. According to several defectors interviewed for this report, many military successes now depend partly on information provided by them.

“Whenever soldiers go for operations,” one explained, “some of us move ahead because we know the roads, the bushes, and where bombs are planted. We tell them which road not to use.”

Another former insurgent described how they identified hidden weapon caches and camp positions.

“Some of us know where weapons were kept. So when operations happen, we guide soldiers directly to those places.”

They also described helping troops understand insurgent movement patterns after attacks.

“When fighters escape,” one said, “we know the routes they use because we ourselves used those routes before.” The source added, “We advised soldiers to evacuate the women and children left behind by fighters to Maiduguri, which encouraged a lot of the fighters to defect from the group easily at a later date.”

The moral fracture

For victims, however, these battlefield contributions rarely erase memory. A widow whose husband was executed does not easily accept that the man who once terrorised her community now works alongside soldiers. A farmer whose village was burned does not find emotional comfort in hearing that a former insurgent helped identify buried bombs. A displaced family living with hunger in an abandoned resettled community does not easily understand why former insurgents appear to receive rehabilitation support while survivors struggle alone.

That anger has become one of the deepest unresolved tensions inside Nigeria’s reintegration strategy. Many affected communities perceive former insurgents as receiving privileges unavailable to victims. Some surrendered members received food support, accommodation, vocational training, phones, stipends, or reintegration assistance. Meanwhile, many survivors still live with displacement, trauma, hunger, unemployment, grief, and insecurity.

One former insurgent described how resentment intensified after communities observed rehabilitated insurgents riding motorcycles, carrying weapons alongside soldiers, wearing jeans and clean clothes, and moving relatively freely.

“What happened was mostly hatred and resentment,” he said. “People saw the boys looking comfortable and became angry.”

Kabiru Adamu, the Managing Director of Beacon Consulting, comments on this imbalance. “When we look at this from a transitional justice perspective,” he said, “the current imbalance is a significant vulnerability.”

According to him, communities may interpret reintegration programmes as rewarding violence while neglecting victims.

“If the state appears to reward insurgency while neglecting victims, it breeds a deep sense of injustice. Unaddressed grievances are the primary fuel for cyclical violence.”

Former insurgents speak

The former insurgents interviewed by HumAngle described themselves not as forgiven men, but as useful men. “There are those who go to war,” one former fighter said, “And there are informants.” He explained that some maintain communication with active insurgents and relay intelligence to security agencies.

“If attacks are being planned, information is passed quickly to intelligence officers so security can be strengthened.”

Others described identifying civilians secretly supplying insurgents with food, fuel, or information. “There are people in town transporting petrol, food, and information,” one explained. “Those who surrendered know many of them because they worked together before.”

According to the former insurgents, these intelligence networks disrupted insurgent logistics and prevented attacks. Some defectors also described participating directly in combat operations.

“They gave some of us motorcycles and guns,” one said. “Sometimes, operations happen without soldiers even accompanying us.”

Another described units led by surrendered insurgents moving independently through forests to intercept attacks or recover weapons.

“Some commanders are given twenty or thirty motorcycles and sent to carry out patrols,” he said. “They stop attacks and return with captured weapons… Nearly 40 per cent of ground troops’ successes achieved in the past three years in this war come from the contribution of surrendered fighters.”

HumAngle cannot independently verify this claim. Still, several military and intelligence sources who spoke to HumAngle on the condition of anonymity admit that defectors remain useful in operations. What is less clear is whether relying on them will be safe or sustainable in the long run.

Security expert Kabiru Adamu described former insurgents as “force multipliers” rather than the decisive force behind military gains. According to him, conventional military operations, air power, and the Civilian Joint Task Force remain central to weakening insurgent networks.

“Ex-fighters provide precision,” he explained. However, he warned that the strategic dangers remain severe. “The risks include infiltration, double agents, human rights concerns, institutional degradation, and loss of civilian trust.”

The risk of dependence also concerns some analysts and security officials. If military units become too reliant on defectors for intelligence, what happens when defectors lie, or when personal grudges shape accusations, or when former insurgents return to active criminal networks or, as in some cases, return to Boko Haram carrying sensitive operational knowledge? What happens when military institutions fail to build independent intelligence systems because surrendered insurgents appear easier to use?

The northwestern region is quite different from the North East. Boko Haram and ISWAP emerged through ideological insurgency structures combining theology, coercion, governance, taxation, and violence. In contrast, the armed groups in the northwestern region emerged differently, engaging in criminal activities such as cattle rustling, communal conflict, illegal mining, vigilante reprisals, extortion, kidnapping, and governance collapse.

Yet over time, the distinction blurred. Armed groups across Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, and Kebbi increasingly adopted tactics associated with insurgent warfare: IEDs, ambushes, and rural territories being subject to armed taxation systems.

Abubakar Abdullahi, a journalist who has reported extensively from Zamfara, said Boko Haram-linked elements have become increasingly visible inside parts of the northwestern region.

“In areas such as Dutsin Maiqardaji mountain,” he said, “Boko Haram members have a heavy presence. Both Lakurawa and Boko Haram terrorists preach to residents they keep under siege in ungoverned spaces. Ongoing armed operations in the North East pave the way for fighters to find Zamfara as a haven,” he explained.

Therefore, the state’s decision to use surrendered insurgents in counterinsurgency operations across parts of the northwest follows a grim internal logic.

Trauma beneath the surface

The psychological burden of the insurgency now stretches across an entire generation. In Maiduguri, Monguno, Bama, Dikwa, Gwoza, Damboa, Pulka, Banki, and dozens of smaller communities scattered across Borno and the wider Lake Chad region, trauma shows up in ordinary routines. Some people report waking suddenly at night whenever motorcycles pass too quickly outside their compounds. Parents instinctively gather children indoors whenever rumours of attacks on nearby roads spread. Men who once farmed freely now calculate distance from military formations before deciding whether land is safe enough to cultivate.

For many survivors, peace itself feels temporary.

Kauna Malgwi, a clinical psychologist directly affected by the insurgency during its early years, described northeastern Nigeria as a society living in a prolonged psychological survival mode.

“Prolonged violence keeps societies in chronic hypervigilance,” she explained. “People shift from acute stress into collective survival mode. Nervous systems remain activated for years. Unresolved trauma normalises fear, weakens communities, and erodes cohesion. Ongoing violence keeps trauma active and prevents healing.”

The effects appear everywhere: overcrowded displacement settlements, classrooms where children struggle to concentrate because conflict has interrupted the normal architecture of childhood, families where fathers withdraw emotionally after years of violence, and young men who have grown up around guns, funerals, military convoys, and uncertainty.

“Children in chronic conflict develop emotional, learning, and behavioural problems that, if unaddressed, persist into adulthood and become the generational norm,” Malgwi warned

She listed the consequences as cycles of violence, emotional detachment, chronic anxiety, educational disruption, social mistrust, difficulty forming secure relationships, and increased vulnerability to recruitment by armed groups.

“If trauma among children is ignored,” she warned, “national stability itself is at risk. Peacebuilding that ignores collective healing produces fragile and temporary peace. When victims feel forgotten as ex-fighters are supported, trauma deepens and trust in institutions erodes. Forgiveness must not be forced. Communities require safety and acknowledgement before reconciliation.”

According to her, communities need public acknowledgement of suffering before reintegration can become emotionally sustainable.

“Victim-centred support systems are essential. Communities need visible justice, visible care, and transparent communication before trust can begin to recover.”

She also warned about the development of emotional desensitisation among conflict-affected populations.

“Without support, grief becomes anger or despair,” she explained. “Violence itself can become normalised.”

Many young people in northeastern Nigeria have never experienced sustained normalcy. They grew up hearing stories about massacres the way previous generations heard folktales. They learned directions through checkpoints and geography through displacement.

Kauna Malgwi believes recovery in such environments cannot depend solely on psychiatrists or formal hospitals because the scale of trauma is too large.

“Community healing includes training community health workers in psychosocial support, group therapy, trauma-informed schools, faith-based healing spaces, and safe storytelling forums,” she explained, stressing the importance of collectively restoring dignity. “The goal is not only treatment. The goal is restoring function, trust, and resilience across society.”

For many survivors, however, the war never became a discussion about tactical adaptation. It remained personal. A missing daughter. A burned house. A father was executed beside a road. A child was buried after an explosion and nights of screaming.

A life divided permanently into before and after.

The state’s impossible calculation

For Kabiru Adamu, the question is not whether the state should use former insurgents operationally. The deeper issue is whether Nigeria can do so without weakening its own legitimacy. He described the current approach as a fragile balancing act between military necessity, transitional justice, and social stability.

“The Nigerian military faces a highly asymmetric threat,” he said. “Using former fighters offers distinct immediate operational advantages because these individuals possess granular, real-time intelligence. They know Sambisa Forest, the Mandara Mountains, the Lake Chad islands, and the internal communication structures of factions like JAS and ISWAP.”

Still, he repeatedly returned to the dangers. “The strategic risks are severe and multifaceted.” The operational usefulness of former insurgents can serve as an excuse to abandon accountability. “There must be transparent triage,” he argued. “Low-level associates and coerced participants cannot be treated the same way as high-level perpetrators. Most residents of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe reject blanket amnesty for commanders associated with mass atrocities.”

For Adamu, reintegration without visible justice creates long-term instability.

“If communities feel abandoned by the state in favour of their attackers, it erodes the social contract. It opens the possibility of vigilantism or future militant mobilisation driven by resentment. Demobilisation is not simply a military process,” he said. “Reintegration is generational and should remain civilian-led.”

He pointed to global examples from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia as warnings.

“When stipends dry up without sustainable livelihoods, ex-combatants often return to criminal economies.”

According to him, Nigeria risks repeating similar mistakes unless rehabilitation becomes economically viable. “Cash support alone is not enough. Long-term reintegration requires market-driven livelihoods and ongoing monitoring.”

He also warned against grouping defectors into separate armed formations.

“Never create isolated paramilitary monopolies from ex-combatants,” he said. “If they are used operationally, strict oversight and accountability systems are essential.”

Perhaps most importantly, he insisted that reintegration cannot survive politically unless victims see equal investment in their own recovery.

“For every dollar spent on DDR,” he argued, “an equal or greater amount should be visibly invested in victims and receiving communities.”

Without that balance, he believes the state risks winning short-term tactical gains while deepening long-term social fractures.

The soldiers and the boys

One of the strangest transformations inside this war is the relationship between soldiers and former insurgents. Many soldiers lost friends to insurgent attacks, some carry visible scars, and others carry memories they rarely discuss. Meanwhile, former insurgents themselves live in a state of permanent ambiguity. They are neither fully accepted civilians nor recognised soldiers. They exist inside a grey zone.

According to the former insurgents HumAngle spoke to, several surrendered members deployed to Zamfara and other northwestern states were killed during operations against armed groups.

“In this war,” one said, “many of those helping the government have lost their lives. Some died fighting people they once called brothers.”

A Nigerian soldier told HumAngle he never imagined he would one day fight alongside former Boko Haram members.

“I thought the only relationship I would ever have with these bastards was to kill them or be killed,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he’s not permitted to speak to journalists on this matter

Now deployed with some of the defectors against their former comrades, the soldier said the experience has reshaped parts of his perception over time. Some of the former insurgents have proven useful in combat operations, particularly because of their familiarity with insurgent tactics and terrain.

“They have been very helpful since we started working with them. They are constantly watched and supervised, but the contributions of some of them have been priceless,” said the staff sergeant.

What a serious framework would require

Nigeria does not need to pretend former insurgents are useless. Evidence from the field suggests they have helped disrupt attacks, expose explosives, identify camps, trace logistics, and support military operations. At the same time, experts say the state cannot continue to manage reintegration through improvisation and silence. A credible framework would require clear categories that separate coerced associates from high-level perpetrators. It would require transparent accountability systems. Victims would receive compensation, trauma support, livelihood recovery, education, and public acknowledgement.

The northwest would be treated as its own conflict system requiring tailored responses rather than simple transplantation of northeastern models.

Repentant volunteers

The former insurgents interviewed for this report did not seem to want public sympathy. Most acknowledged that many Nigerians would always see them as part of the violence they once took part in. Yet, beneath their answers was a recurring theme. They insisted they no longer recognised the movement they had joined years earlier.

Abu Muhsin, now 38, said he entered Boko Haram as a teenager after preachers repeatedly visited his village.

“I joined them when I was around 16 years old,” he said. “They used to come and preach in our village, near Damasak. I got convinced, and I joined them.”

Over time, he rose within the movement and eventually became a Naqeeb, a field commander operating around the Lake Chad region. But years inside the insurgency changed his view of the organisation.

“We saw that the group was not following the rules of Islam,” he said. “They kill people and loot their properties. We started communicating with those who surrendered before us. They directed us and later escaped from the bush with some of our families.”

After surrendering, Abu Muhsin said he volunteered to support military operations because former insurgents understood terrain and insurgent movement patterns better than most troops.

“No one forced us to volunteer,” he said. “We just felt we should assist the military since we know the bush better than they do.”

For that assistance, he said, volunteers receive irregular payments. “They give us some allowance. They pay us ₦100,000, sometimes ₦50,000 or ₦30,000.”

Another former insurgent, Ibn Mus’ab, traced his recruitment to family influence. “My cousins were already members and used to visit us,” said the 35-year-old former fighter from Wulgo in Gamboru Ngala. “They used to preach their doctrines to us. Later, they convinced me, and I followed them to the bush.” That was in 2014. 

Inside the insurgency, Ibn Mus’ab became Amirul’Uddah, responsible for weapons management. Like several defectors interviewed for this report, he framed his disillusionment in religious terms.

“I left them because some of their activities are becoming un-Islamic,” he said. “They kill people unnecessarily. They kill someone for taking drugs, which is not so in Sharia.”

His departure from Boko Haram was shaped partly by internal persecution. He said he was accused of an offence and that members of the group declared him wanted. “I escaped to Giedam, not even knowing that the military was accepting people who surrendered,” he recalled. “I was later told I could submit myself, and I surrendered to them.”

He escaped alone, and his family joined him later. Asked why he now assists the military against former comrades, he answered without hesitation.

“I decided to assist because those people are no longer following the Sharia accordingly. There are many of us who are ready to assist, and a lot are doing well.”

Like others, he described financial incentives as modest and inconsistent.

“The usual pay is ₦100,000, sometimes ₦50,000,” he said. “If they can pay more than this, many more would be willing to volunteer.”

Abu Faruq’s story begins differently. Unlike some defectors who joined as adults through ideological persuasion, he said he was absorbed into the movement as a child during Boko Haram’s expansion across Gwoza.

“They took me when I was a kid,” the 35-year-old said. “It was in Gwoza when they were preaching. I grew up in their place and got married.”

He said he became part of the Rijaal, the fighting cadre within the insurgency structure.

Years later, he concluded that the movement no longer reflected the religious principles it claimed to defend. “I left them because they were not practising what the Qur’an and Hadith say about Sharia,” he explained. “They kill innocent people, they loot and destroy people’s properties.”

According to him, communication with earlier defectors again played a critical role in encouraging surrender. “Some of our friends have earlier surrendered, and they told us how they were received warmly,” he said. “They directed us on the phone on how we could come out and meet the military.”

After leaving the bush, Abu Faruq eventually joined operations supporting Nigerian troops, including deployments far beyond the northeast. “Yes, I did,” he said when asked whether he travelled with soldiers to the northwest. “They selected some of us to assist them in Zamfara and Sokoto.”

According to him, defectors participated in operations across multiple villages affected by armed groups. “They first took us to Sokoto, and from there we went to many villages in both Sokoto and Zamfara for operations.”

He said he remained there for about two months. For that deployment, he received what he described as ranger allowances. ‘They pay us ₦100,000 per month as rangers.”

These stories show men trying to find a new place for themselves in a war that has already taken over much of their lives. But none of their reasons answers the deeper moral question about Nigeria’s use of former insurgents.

Sokoto, Nigeria – Each time her curious seven-year-old child returned home from school with homework, 28-year-old Habiba Abubakar knew it was time to take him to her neighbour, whom the child called “aunt”, even though they were not related by blood, who had been his saviour every time he wanted to stand in front of his class and receive a standing ovation.

But that changed in 2021, when Abubakar enrolled herself in the Women Centre for Continuing Education (WCCE) in Sokoto State, northwest Nigeria.

“I’ve always felt ashamed when Muhammad told me that they’ve been given another assignment,” she told Al Jazeera.

This frustration, coupled with her enthusiasm for learning English, pushed her to return to the classroom 13 years after she left.

Now, the mother of four said she helps all the children with their assignments.

The interruption in Abibaker’s studies is not uncommon across northern Nigeria, especially in rural communities, where girls are more likely to drop out of school due to cultural practices, such as early marriage, or poverty, which forces parents to make gender-biased decisions by enrolling male children over females.

UNICEF reported that more than half of the girls in the region are not attending school.

Jennifer Agbaji, a social accountability professional and the executive director at Basileia Vulnerable Persons Rights Initiative (BVPRI), a Nigerian nonprofit dedicated to advancing the rights of women, girls, and other vulnerable populations through education and leadership development, viewed the initiative as a positive and necessary intervention.

Nonetheless, she said second-chance education should not be limited to classroom-based learning alone.

“If access to education depends solely on physical attendance, many women who face mobility, childcare, economic, health, or security challenges may still be excluded.”

How the system works

WCCE, commissioned by the then-military governor of Sokoto State, Navy Captain Abdul Rasheed Adisa Raji, was founded in 1997 to provide adult education and vocational skills to women in the state.

Since then, Nuraddeen Ladan Dogon Daji, a physics teacher, told Al Jazeera that the centre has trained many students, some of whom now practise professions, such as teaching and nursing, helping to address the country’s shortage of skilled professionals.

Unlike other public schools, where pupils spend six years, the centre designed a three-year curriculum for its primary section, from adult one to three.

In the secondary sections, students spend three years each in the junior and senior levels.

In their final years, they also sit for the mandatory Junior Leaving School Certificate of Education (JLSCE) and Senior School Certificate of Education (SSCE) examinations.

To help these students realise their dreams, the centre also offers free education, benefitting from the state government’s effort to reduce the number of out-of-school children.

This has helped students like Abubakar, who, following her divorce, relied heavily on her father’s support to stay in school.

“We used to pay 5,000 naira ($3.5) per term, but were later told to stop because the state government has given us a chance to study for free,” Abubakar told Al Jazeera from her home in the Kofar Atiku neighbourhood.

But free tuition does not eliminate all costs. Students still have to pay for transport, books, and other daily expenses.

The challenges

According to Agbaji, beyond poverty and early marriage, there are several structural barriers, including restrictive gender norms that prioritise domestic responsibilities over education.

She said many women lose confidence after years away from formal education, and in some communities, education is still viewed as an investment for boys rather than a lifelong right for women.

In her opinion, these norms often combine to make re-entry into education difficult, even when opportunities exist. In her journey to becoming a nurse, Fatima Attahir, who left school after primary school 12 years ago, found it necessary to go back to the classroom and start afresh.

To support herself while studying, she helps with her family’s trading activities when she is not in class.

She said that although some of her friends already saw the decision as time-consuming, she is not satisfied with the system’s duration.

“I wish the primary section was also up to six years,” she said.

“Because to become a nurse, I need to have a solid background in the core subjects.” Some of the students Al Jazeera spoke to said their greatest challenge is juggling academic activities with household responsibilities.

Before her divorce, Abubakar said she would wake up earlier than usual to prepare breakfast, clean the house, and get herself and her children ready for school.

“When I finally set my foot in class, I was already tired, and as the lectures went on, I would start slumbering because I hadn’t had enough sleep.” She said the pressure became worse when her youngest child frequently fell ill, sometimes forcing her to leave class before lectures ended.

After her divorce, transport costs became another obstacle. “Since I was no longer married, my parents were the ones paying for the transport fares, but when they couldn’t, I would not go to school because I couldn’t afford it myself,” she said.

Later, her father gave her 10,000 naira to start making and selling local snacks and small chops.

The small business now helps her cover transport costs and other school-related expenses. Abubakar still credits the neighbour who used to help her son with homework before she returned to school.

When transport costs became difficult to afford after her divorce, her parents stepped in when they could, while her father later provided the capital that helped her start a small business and continue her studies.

Her experience is not unique.

Another student, Hafsat Aliyu, said she leaves her two-year-old child with her in-laws whenever she attends classes to avoid disrupting lessons.

Her husband pays for books and other occasional school needs, while she sells local pastries during break time at the centre to earn money for daily transport and personal expenses.

During examination periods, she studies late into the night after completing household chores and putting her children to bed.

“My husband does his best, but I thought it was time for me to get a source of income, too,” she said.

“Now, I pay for my transport and a few other daily needs.”

However, the physics teacher, Dogon Daji, said that in his seven years of teaching at the centre, a recurring challenge among students is the pace of learning.

“I’ve taught young people, and the level of their understanding is quite different,” he said.

But he added that there are still outstanding students among them; one recently won this year’s Usmanu Danfodio Week, an annual quiz competition organised for secondary school students in the state.

On the other hand, the vocational section of the centre, which was designed to equip students with practical skills such as tailoring and soap-making, now offers only tailoring.

Students are required to provide tools, such as scissors, including those whose interests may lie in other trades.

The way forward

Agbaji acknowledged that for Nigeria to bridge the gender disparity in education, the country must adopt a lifelong learning framework that recognises education as a continuous right and opportunity.

This requires increased investment in adult education, digital and remote learning platforms, community-based education, and flexible pathways for women who missed formal schooling, because the long-term consequences are significant.

She added that many women pursuing second-chance education continue to balance childcare, household responsibilities, and income-generating activities, often relying on family and community support networks to remain in school.

“Educational exclusion perpetuates poverty, limits economic opportunities, increases vulnerability to abuse and exploitation, and restricts women’s participation in governance and public service. It also affects future generations because children of educated mothers are generally more likely to enrol in and complete school,” Agbaji clarified.

Hours after residents went to bed on the morning of Wednesday, June 3, sounds of gunshots pierced through the air as terrorists circled an off-campus hostel housing some students of the Federal Polytechnic Kaura Namoda in Zamfara State, northwestern Nigeria. The hostel, located in the Low-cost area, is meters away from a military checkpoint, according to residents. 

Students at the polytechnic had increasingly been moving into off-campus housing to avoid being abducted from their school.

As fear of what might happen enveloped people, the terrorists compromised the gate of the hostel and took away eight students of the polytechnic. Even as they fled with the students, they continued to fire shots in the air.

“Two of the students, Favour and Joshua Sunday, escaped while being taken away by the terrorists,” a resident who simply gave his name as Musa told HumAngle. “My house is not far from Oga Bulu’s house, which shares a wall with the house the students live in. I heard the gunshots and heard when they were leaving with the students.”

Since 2015, terrorists have terrorised the sub-region. Their activities have led to the death of thousands of people and the displacement of over a million. Attacks on schools and students have been on the increase since 2020, when terrorists stormed Government Science Secondary, Kankara and abducted 300 pupils.

Zamfara, which is considered the hotbed of the crisis, has recorded several school abductions in Jangebe, where over 300 schoolgirls were abducted, in Federal University, Gusau, where 24 students were abducted, and at the College of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Bakura, where 15 students were abducted. 

Musa, the source, says Joshua Sunday told them six students (three men and three women) have been taken.

HumAngle reports that the Kaura Namoda area and other communities in Maradun and Bungudu fall under areas where the notorious terrorist leader, Bello Dan Sadiya, controls. 

An administrative staff member of the Polytechnic, who asked not to be named, told HumAngle over the phone that several staff members of the institution have relocated to Gusau, the state capital, for fear of being attacked. “Even me, I’ve relocated my family to Gusau. We have two staff, all senior lecturers, who are still with the bandits after they were abducted two months ago,” he said.

He said a ransom has been paid for the release of the lecturers, but the terrorists have continued to hold them.

Federal Polytechnic Kaura is located on the road to Shinkafi and Zurmi LGA, two areas in the northern part of Zamfara State that have witnessed repeated terrorist attacks.

The police public relations officer in the state, DSP Yazid Abubakar, confirmed the abduction and promised to release a statement, but has yet to do so.

Local authorities blame informants for the escalation of attacks in the town centre. The Chairman of the area, Mannir Haidara Kaura, told DW Hausa that the state government has taken measures to tackle the terrorists, but informants are sabotaging the efforts.

Teachers in north-eastern Nigeria held protests, demanding stronger protection for learning institutions.
The outcry comes after the abduction of dozens of school children in Borno State last month. Al Jazeera’s Felix Niwara explains.

Let us begin with what has been forgotten. 

There is a field, roughly 22 kilometres southwest of Sokoto, between the Dange Shuni and Bodinga local government areas in North West Nigeria, that carries no particular weight to the eye. Grass grows there. Wind moves through trees at predictable intervals. The surrounding bush is in full silence, neither mourning nor celebrating. Nothing marks what happened here, and that, of course, is precisely the point.

The place is called Satiru. Or was called Satiru. The grammar is slippery, because the British, when they finished with it in the spring of 1906, did not simply defeat it. They made sure to erase it – razing buildings, enslaving survivors, most of whom were women and children, and stripping the site with the cleansing method of an administration that understood that a crushed rebellion, left with a location, becomes a shrine. And shrines become consciousness and arguments. Better to leave nothing. Better to leave nowhere.

And then the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Attahiru II, the Muslim ruler (Sarkin Musulmi) whose fighters helped carry out the slaughter, reportedly pronounced a curse on anyone who would rebuild or farm on the ground. As the British Resident Burdon telegraphed proudly to High Commissioner Frederick Lugard: “All Sokoto went out yesterday to inspect [the] battlefield and raze Satiru to the ground. No wall or tree left standing.” The scholars Paul Lovejoy and J.S. Hogendorn, writing in the Journal of African History, note that “the deserted site of Satiru is on the edge of a forest reserve. It has not been inhabited since its destruction and the official curse.” More than a century later, that is still true.

This is what erasure looks like when it succeeds. For 120 years, the ruins of Satiru have remained untouched, a vanished town erased by British colonial forces after a 1906 uprising led by poor clerics, fugitive slaves, and peasants challenging both imperial taxation and the aristocratic order of the Sokoto Caliphate. 

But this story is not only about a massacre buried in colonial archives. It is about how modern Nigeria inherited the use of overwhelming force to suppress communities marked as threats. 

The thing Satiru was

Before it became a problem requiring artillery, Satiru was an answer to a different problem. To understand it, you need to understand the particular moral atmosphere of the Sokoto Caliphate in its late decline – the spiritual hangover, you might call it, of a revolution that had once been genuine.

Usman Dan Fodio launched his jihad in 1804 with an argument that was partly political and partly theological, but entirely serious: that the Hausa rulers of the time had corrupted Islam, that the ordinary people – the talakawa, the poor commoners – were being ground down by a system that dressed itself in religious language while behaving in wholly irreligious ways. Dan Fodio and his followers built the caliphate on the promise that this would change. That Islamic governance would be just. That scholars who held power would be answerable to something beyond their own appetites.

By the end of the nineteenth century, that promise had curdled into something its founders would not have recognised. The Fulani aristocracy that administered the caliphate had made a comfortable accommodation with power. Tribute collectors arrived in the villages. The talakawa paid. Palace scholars – the senior ulama (religious scholars), with their elaborate networks of family and commerce – found, in the more elastic corners of Islamic jurisprudence, reasons why this was all acceptable. The poor continued to be poor. The aristocracy continued to wear piety as a garment while extracting what they could.

The scholars of Satiru – humble men, as Lovejoy and Hogendorn describe them, “poor Muslim scholars engaged in farming and teaching,” with origins far outside the Fulani elite – found different reasons. Malam Siba, who founded the Satiru settlement in approximately 1894, was of Nupe origin. A second key figure, Maikaho, came from Gobir, the country that Uthman Dan Fodio himself had subjugated. A third, Malam Bawa, was from Zamfara, which had revolted against Sokoto on several occasions across the nineteenth century. What distinguished these men from the mainstream was not their learning – they were, by caliphate standards, minor figures – but their refusal to make the peace that more successful scholars had made with power. As Lovejoy and Hogendorn paraphrase the alleged statement of Malam Siba himself: he “was fed up with the exactions of the ruling class and was not going to obey the instructions of anyone anymore… [but instead] was going to set up a new great regime.”

What grew at Satiru, on the frontier of four fiefdoms – Danchadi, Dange, Shuni, and Bodinga – was something the caliphate’s administration regarded as an irritant and then, gradually, as something worse. The community refused to pay taxes. It refused to provide unpaid labour. It attracted, in growing numbers, fugitive slaves fleeing from the plantations and estates of the aristocracy. This last detail matters enormously. By 1906, British Resident Burdon would report that the adherents of the Satiru cause were “nearly all run away slaves.” Local tradition in Satiru itself held, as recorded by A.S. Mohammad in his foundational social history of the revolt, that “the leaders of Satiru abolished slavery and as a consequence… slaves flocked to them. The freedom of these fugitives was effectively and strenuously guarded.”

This was, in other words, not an uprising of the godless. It was an uprising of the structurally abandoned — poor clerics, dispossessed peasants, and fugitive slaves –   against the two interlocking systems that were destroying them simultaneously: the late-caliphate aristocracy that extracted their labour, and the British colonial administration that had, since 1903, added new demands of jizya (poll tax) and jangali (livestock tax) to communities that had never before paid such taxes to Sokoto. As a Sokoto citizen wrote bitterly at the time, and as quoted in Lovejoy and Hogendorn’s account: “We have been conquered. We have been asked to pay poll tax and cattle tax. We have been made to do various things, and now they want us to fight their wars for them.”

The movement Satiru had built was, in the framework laid out by Lovejoy and Hogendorn, a form of revolutionary Mahdism – distinct from all the other currents of Mahdist thought that ran through the caliphate at the time. It drew its support from peasants, fugitive slaves, and subject populations. It had no aristocratic supporters, no wealthy merchants, and no members of the established ulama. It was ethnically diverse in a way that the aristocracy was not: Hausa from various origins, Zamfarawa, Gobirawa, Gimbanawa, Kabawa, and Azbinawa – but, strikingly, no Fulani. The battle lines, as Lovejoy and Hogendorn note, mapped onto class so precisely that “the ethnic dimension… reflected the class division.” On the day of the final battle, “all the faces on the battlefield had Gobir, Kebbi, Zanfara, Katsina and other such tribal marks. Not a single Fulani talaka [commoner] joined them.”

What Satiru wanted, ultimately, was the recovery of the original promise – the caliphate that Dan Fodio had said was coming, and that had not arrived. You can call this politics, or you can call it theology. At Satiru, they did not distinguish between the two.

The spark and the suppression

The movement had been building for years, connected by threads of correspondence and travelling clerics to similar currents of dissatisfaction across both the British and French colonial zones in are now Nigeria and Niger Republic. On the French side of the boundary, a blind Zarma cleric named Saybu Dan Makafo had been the central animating figure – charismatic, mystically inclined, and reportedly possessing gifts of ventriloquism that contributed to his reputation as a waliyyi, a saint. 

In December 1905, violence broke out at Kobkitanda, 150 kilometres south of Niamey, in French territory in today’s Niger Republic. Saybu and his followers killed two gardes-cercles (colonial police) from Dosso. The French responded, the Mahdists absorbed losses, and Saybu fled east – eventually arriving at Satiru, where the local community had already been living in a state of armed readiness and messianic expectation.

The revolt was supposed to begin on the Eid El-Kabir (Babbar Sallah), February 5, 1906. It was postponed – there was an internal dispute about the recognition of Isa, the village head of Satiru, as the messianic successor figure who would accompany the Mahdi. The Satirawa (people of Satiru) resolved the question on February 13, when they attacked the neighbouring village of Tsomau. Fourteen people died.

The British response was swift and catastrophically misjudged. Acting Resident H.R. Preston-Hillary moved immediately with a column of about seventy mounted infantry under Major Francis Blackwood, armed with a single Maxim gun. He appears to have been entirely unaware that the rising at Satiru was connected to the weeks of violence that had already convulsed French territory. He rode toward the village with the assumption of a man who believed the gap between his weapons and his opponents’ was so vast that the details of the situation hardly mattered.

He was wrong. 

The Mahdists attacked the British column. Hillary and Blackwood were killed, along with three other white officers and 25 African soldiers. The West African Frontier Force (WAFF) suffered such heavy losses that it was “forced to retreat in disarray.” It was, as Lugard would later acknowledge, “the first serious reverse suffered by the West African Frontier Force since it was raised in 1898.”

The Satiru Mahdists were also severely wounded — their leader, Malam Isa, was struck during the initial encounter and would die two days later, on the morning he was supposed to unfurl the green flag and declare the jihad formally. He did not live to see what his movement had achieved: a genuine military victory over the empire. For a brief, burning moment, the talakawa had won.

The British did not pause to understand what had happened. They regrouped.

The reckoning

On March 10, 1906, a combined force of the British-run West African Frontier Force (WAFF) troops and Sokoto fighters approached Satiru. The Satirawa had dug trenches. But they did not stay behind them. They charged, repeatedly, in massed formation, against troops equipped with Maxim guns firing destructive volleys. Historian Richard Dusgate would later call what followed “the most bloodthirsty expedition in the history of British military operations in Northern Nigeria.” Margery Perham, in her biography of Lugard, noted that subsequent reports – kept secret at the time – found that the “killing was very free, not to say slaughter,” that the soldiers “killed every living thing before them,” and that “the fields were running with blood.”

At least 2,000 Satirawa were killed. An estimated 3,000 women and children were herded to Sokoto, many distributed among the aristocracy as effective slaves – a thinly disguised reassertion of the master-slave relationship that the very people of Satiru had staked their lives on dismantling.

Saybu Dan Makafo, blind and wounded, survived. He was captured and brought to Sokoto, where he was tried. His boy guide, according to a story collected by H.A.F. Johnston, reportedly shouted at the trial that if Saybu was given water, he would vanish into thin air – an indication of the extraordinary tension surrounding the proceedings. The public executioner decapitated him on March 22. His head was mounted on a stake in the market. Four subordinates suffered the same fate.

The political accounting that followed the massacre revealed what the British understood the suppression to mean and to communicate. The Colonial Office initially received dispatches that accurately attributed the uprising partly to the fugitive slave crisis –  Lugard’s own initial cable described the rebels as “outlaw fugitive slaves.” A marginal note in the Colonial Office files, as documented by Lovejoy and Hogendorn, captures the official response with bracing economy: “Better say nothing of slaves.” By May 9, Lugard had incorporated a sanitised version of events into his official reports. The slave dimension was quietly removed from the record. The most dangerous thing about Satiru – that it had articulated a class argument, that it had offered sanctuary to the enslaved, that it had made the connection between colonial taxation and pre-colonial extraction explicit – was the thing the British were most determined to forget.

The Sokoto aristocracy was rewarded for its loyalty. Marafa Muhammadu Maiturare, the Sokoto official who had commanded the local levies and whose authority was partly credited with preventing a general rising, eventually became Sarkin Musulmi in 1915. Hassan, the sarki of Dange, the fief nearest to Satiru, who had greeted Burdon warmly in the hours after the Mahdist victory, would become Sarkin Musulmi in 1931. The collaboration was not forgotten. It was promoted.

What the grammar inherited

Nearly a century and two decades later, an eight-year-old boy named Sa’id watched through a crack in the wall of his grandmother’s hut as the men of his family were dragged outside and shot.

His village, Kajen Shuwa, sat in Marte Local Government Area of Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, a Shuwa Arab community of cattle herders and storytellers, ethnically and linguistically distinct from the dominant groups of the region. Between 2014 and 2015, at the height of the military’s campaign against Boko Haram, soldiers arrived looking for a Boko Haram cell in a village called Kajen Kanuri. The names were similar enough. No interpreter had been brought. No local guide accompanied the unit.

More than 40 men died.

“They had the wrong village,” Imam Abdulkarim, now living with displaced survivors at the Garin Shuwa IDP camp in Bauchi, told HumAngle. “It was later we realised they were sent to Kajen Kanuri.”

One of the survivors told HumAngle in 2026 how the events unfolded as he watched from where he had hidden himself in a tree. He said he was watching when the men were gathered and ordered to produce Boko Haram members. The people apparently did not even understand what was being said to them, so the soldiers simply lined all the men up in a place resembling a ditch and shot every single one of them. Just like that. No trial. No evidence. Nothing. Everyone was killed.

Sa’id is nineteen now. He teaches Quran to children at the displacement camp — children who have their own mornings they cannot stop replaying. He speaks slowly. He flinches at loud sounds. When he told his story to HumAngle, tears came before words, and other residents of the camp stepped in to complete the parts his voice could not carry. They knew the story. They had assembled it over the years, in the way that displaced communities assemble the things they are not allowed to say publicly – from fragments, from the accounts of those who were in different parts of the village when it happened, from the silence of those who were not there to tell anything.

“The families of the killed couldn’t even raise their voices,” Abdulkarim said. “Everyone was afraid that he might be targeted too.”

No soldier was prosecuted. No investigation was publicly announced. No family received notification, compensation, or the minimum of official acknowledgement that their men had been killed by mistake.

What happened to Kajen Shuwa is not exceptional in the region’s chronicle of the last decade. Amnesty International’s 2015 report documented execution-style killings, torture in detention, and mass graves of individuals who had never been charged, tried, or formally arrested — people killed not for what they did, but for who they resembled, where they lived, what language they spoke when soldiers arrived. The Nigerian military’s response to that report was not to open investigations. It was to call Amnesty International a liar.

And then the world moved on, as it always does – to the next atrocity, the next set of statistics that briefly animated international concern before fading into the background noise of a continent the world has learned to observe without fully attending to.

Zaria massacre 

If Kajen Shuwa happened in the shadows – a remote village, an Arabic-speaking minority, a story reaching the press years after the fact — then what occurred in Zaria, Kaduna State, in the country’s North West, in December 2015 happened in full view, and still went unanswered.

The Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), led by Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, was a Shia organisation with roots deep in Zaria’s social fabric. It ran schools and clinics. It was also an organisation that had long attracted the suspicion of the Nigerian state – not because it was violent, but because it was organised, independent, and loyal to a leadership structure that fell outside the state’s system of control.

On Dec. 12, 2015, an IMN procession blocked a road, delaying a military convoy carrying the then Chief of Army Staff. What followed, as documented in meticulous detail by both Amnesty International and the Kaduna State Government’s own commission of inquiry, was a massacre. Soldiers attacked IMN members across multiple locations. The Hussainiyya Islamic Centre was demolished. El-Zakzaky’s residence was destroyed. Three of his sons were killed. El-Zakzaky himself, elderly and partially blind – the parallel to the blind Saybu Dan Makafo feels almost too pointed – was arrested. He and his wife would remain in detention for years, their release ordered repeatedly by courts and resisted repeatedly by the government.

The Kaduna State commission produced a report of unusual honesty. It confirmed that at least 347 IMN members had been buried in a mass grave at Mando. It found the military’s response disproportionate. It recommended the prosecution of specific officers, and it named the mass grave by location. But not one recommendation was implemented.

The IMN was formally proscribed in 2019, an organisation that had existed for four decades and operated schools and hospitals, banned by the government that had killed hundreds of its members, as though the banning were the logical conclusion of the killing rather than an additional punishment for surviving it.

The grammar of impunity

There is a grammar to this. Lovejoy and Hogendorn identified it in the colonial records of 1906 in three steps: a community marked as dangerous, the deployment of force that is “excessive by design,” and the systematic management of the record. 

At Satiru, the British made the decision consciously – the marginal note that said “better say nothing of slaves” was an administrative instruction to suppress an inconvenient truth. The communities targeted after them have had to live inside the silence that administrative instruction created.

But this never worked permanently. What the scholars Godwin Odeh and Williams Efe argue, in their analysis of the Satiru uprising’s historiography, is that the episode was not merely a military or religious event but a demonstration of “the impossibility of subjugating a group permanently without facing a crisis of cultural relevance.” They invoke Amilcar Cabral’s formulation: that culture “is a means by which people assert their opposition to domination… one of the fundamental tools of struggle for emancipation.” The argument is that Satiru never fully ended – that its logic persisted, became available, got taken up again in different forms by different communities facing different versions of the same problem.

The circumstances were different, the enemies differently named, and the legal justifications modernised, but the underlying grammar remained recognisable.

This is not a metaphor. What the British established in 1906 and what successive Nigerian governments have absorbed so completely is a particular relationship between the state and the communities it finds inconvenient. The relationship has a fixed sequence: a community is marked; disproportionate force arrives; the record is managed; and then, reliably, comes the silence. The silence is not passive. It is constructed and maintained by the same institutions that produced the violence –  maintained through the denial of accountability, the obstruction of independent investigation, and the prosecution of those who speak too loudly about what they witnessed.

The families of Kajen Shuwa could not grieve publicly because grief, in that context, was dangerous. The IMN, after Zaria, could not even gather to mourn without risk of further confrontation with the same security forces that had killed their members.

But the cycle continues. 

Muhammed Kaumi had just stepped out of the mosque when his phone rang on the evening of Friday, May 29. He had recently returned from Dikwa, a town in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, and assumed the call was from a relative checking on his journey home. Instead, the voice on the other end delivered news that left him numb.

“Bulama has been killed,” the caller said. “They have killed Bulama.” Muhammed felt his chest tighten. “I instantly felt a sharp pain in my heart,” he recalled.

Bulama Ali was his cousin, a farmer, a father of five, and one of thousands, like him, who have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency that has scarred the region for more than a decade.

Within minutes, Muhammed was on his way to the Custom House Internally Displaced Persons’ Camp in Muna, on the outskirts of Maiduguri, where Bulama had lived with his family for nearly a decade.

As he rushed there, questions flooded his mind: “What had happened? Who had killed him? Why?”

When he arrived, residents told him that Bulama had allegedly been beaten by men they identified as “repentant Boko Haram fighters”, locally known as “Hybrids”.

For many residents of Maiduguri, the allegation struck a painful nerve.

For years, former insurgents who surrendered to authorities have passed through government rehabilitation and reintegration programmes such as Operation Safe Corridor and the Borno Model, before returning to civilian communities. However, some have bypassed both interventions completely. 

The Nigerian authorities have involved some of these deserters in security operations, where they help troops with intelligence gathering, their knowledge of terrorist-held terrain, and even operational activities. The arrangement has remained controversial among many survivors of the conflict and among security analysts. 

Now, residents in these communities say their fears have been justified. 

They brought him back dead

Bulama’s final hours began shortly before the Friday Muslim congregational prayers.

Muhammed was told by relatives and eyewitnesses that “[Bulama] was on his way to the mosque on his bicycle when he received a phone call. He stopped by the roadside [close to Muna, on the Maiduguri-Gamboru highway] to answer it.” Behind him was a vehicle carrying armed men dressed in black uniforms. “They honked at him to move,” Muhammed said. “But he was speaking on the phone and did not hear them.”

Abbas Shettima, who witnessed the incident, said the confrontation, which occurred between 1:15 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., quickly escalated. 

“We were all heading to the mosque when we saw them beating him,” Abbas recounted. According to him, the group consisted of about ten men carrying guns and sticks. “They said he was blocking their way,” he said.

Bulama tried to explain. He apologised repeatedly, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. 

“He kept begging them to spare him,” Abbas said. “He crouched down and covered his head with his hands while they beat him.” When bystanders attempted to intervene, the armed men threatened them. Residents watched helplessly. Eventually, the men forced Bulama into their vehicle and drove away.

No one knew where he had been taken.

At the time, witnesses said they believed the group were members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) because of their uniforms.

Hours later, shortly after 3 p.m., the vehicle returned. “They brought him back severely wounded,” Abbas recounted. “He could barely move.”

Residents rushed toward him to help, but within ten minutes, he died.

The incident was immediately reported to the soldiers stationed at the camp’s entrance. According to Muhammed, the soldiers said they had seen the vehicle dropping Bulama but did not know what had transpired. “They were the ones who told us the men were Hybrids and that they had come from the Maiwa axis,” he said.

Residents later learned that Bulama had allegedly been taken to Maiwa Kura, a remote village in Mafa Local Government Area, Borno State, where the group was reportedly stationed. 

Although “Hybrids” are often perceived as operating independently, they are typically attached to military formations and work alongside security forces, according to a member of a local volunteer security outfit involved in counterterrorism operations who spoke to HumAngle.

“The commanding officer of the military base gives instructions to the ‘Hybrid’ commander attached to that formation, who then relays orders to his men,” the source explained. “During broader operations involving multiple locations, they also have a state commander from whom they receive directives.”

However, this does not necessarily imply military involvement in the attack that claimed Bulama’s life, as Hybrid patrols sometimes operate independently.

Bulama’s family subsequently reported the matter to the police. 

Muhammed said that soldiers, police officers, and members of the CJTF later travelled to Maiwa, where they arrested three suspects, including a commander. “They told us the others had travelled to Mafa for an operation,” he said.

The suspects were taken into custody and transferred to the Borno State Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation.

According to family members, the suspects claimed Bulama died after jumping from the back of a moving Hilux vehicle. But the relatives remain unconvinced. “The doctors told us he had been severely beaten,” Muhammed said. “His hands were tied, and he had internal bleeding.”

The family retrieved the body on Saturday morning and buried him later that afternoon. When the body was prepared for burial, he said, blood continued to seep from his eyes, ears, and nose. “It stained the white shroud.”

When HumAngle contacted the Borno State Police Public Relations Officer, Nahum Kenneth Daso, he said he was not aware of the case and would make inquiries. As of publication, no official update had been provided.

The men known as ‘Hybrids’

In many communities across Borno State, the word “Hybrid” carries different meanings depending on who defines it. 

To security officials, they are a practical asset in a war that has stretched for more than 15 years. For many residents, they are former terrorists trying to rebuild their lives. To others, especially those who lost relatives, homes, farms, and livelihoods during the conflict, they are a constant reminder of wounds that have never fully healed.

The term is commonly used to describe some former Boko Haram members who surrendered and passed through official rehabilitation and deradicalisation programmes, and later became attached to security operations in various capacities.

Since they possess intimate knowledge of terrorist operations and hierarchy, security agencies have increasingly relied on some of them to help in identifying former colleagues, navigating difficult terrain, and providing information that security forces may otherwise struggle to obtain.

For authorities, the arrangement is often viewed as a necessary component of the counterterrorism campaign. However, many civilians find it deeply unsettling.

That is why, for some residents, the sight of former terrorists carrying weapons or working alongside security forces can be difficult to accept.

Bulama’s death has reopened those anxieties. Yet, the resentment many residents express today did not begin with his killing. It has been building for years.

In August 2021, as thousands of terrorist deserters began surrendering from the Sambisa Forest and the Lake Chad region, the Borno State Government convened a high-level stakeholders’ meeting at the Government House in Maiduguri. Government officials, security agencies, traditional rulers, religious leaders, civil society organisations, journalists, and community representatives gathered to discuss the reintegration of former insurgents into society.

At the end of the meeting, participants agreed in principle to forgive and accept these deserters back into their communities. Their acceptance, however, was not unconditional. The stakeholders insisted that surrendered terrorists must be thoroughly screened before reintegration. They also warned against the release of hardened extremists into the communities. They further called for meaningful reconciliation between victims and former terrorists.

The gathering was widely presented as a collective endorsement of reconciliation.

But beyond the conference hall, acceptance has proved far more complicated.

Many residents who had survived the violence felt they had not been part of that conversation. Some had lost parents, spouses, siblings, and/or children. Others had spent years moving between displacement camps, uncertain whether they would ever return home. For them, forgiveness was not a policy decision that could be reached through consensus among stakeholders. It was an intensely personal choice shaped by trauma, memory, and loss.

“The people making these decisions are not always the people who suffered directly,” Abba Gana told HumAngle.

Over the years, some residents have complained of harassment and intimidation by former terrorists and their families. Others say they simply feel the reintegration process has moved faster than community healing.

The debate became even more sensitive as some former terrorists began assisting security operations. To many survivors, the transformation can be difficult to reconcile: people who once arrived as attackers returning as neighbours and protectors, and in some cases, as men carrying authority.

Some government officials have repeatedly defended the reintegration policy. Recently, General Olufemi Oluyede, the Chief of Defence Staff and chairperson of the Operation Safe Corridor National Steering Committee, likened terrorist deserters to the biblical Prodigal Son, arguing that they deserve rehabilitation because they remain Nigerian citizens. 

Those concerns were further amplified by reports that not all former terrorists were passing through official rehabilitation channels. In 2025, a HumAngle investigation documented allegations that some defectors were quietly leaving the forest and reintegrating into communities without participating in formal deradicalisation programmes, raising questions about screening, accountability, and oversight.

Over the years, several incidents involving terrorist deserters have also contributed to public unease. In April, a former Boko Haram member allegedly shot and killed a CJTF member during an argument in the Mafa LGA. According to reports, the victim was rushed to the hospital but was confirmed dead on arrival, while the suspect was later arrested and handed over to the police.

Two years earlier, some deserters reportedly stormed a police station in Maiduguri in an attempt to secure the release of their colleagues arrested over alleged drug-related offences. In another case that generated public outrage in 2023, a deserter was accused of killing his wife at the outskirts of Maiduguri.

Concerns about the reintegration programme are not new. As far back as 2020, Ali Ndume, the senator representing Borno South Senatorial District, publicly criticised aspects of the government’s amnesty efforts, recounting the case of a deserter whom he alleged killed his father and later absconded with his property. The senator argued that the victims and survivors’ concerns were not receiving the same level of attention as the rehabilitation of the deserters.

Taken individually, the circumstances surrounding these incidents differ significantly from Bulama’s case. Collectively, however, they have helped shape public perceptions of the reintegration programmes and deepened anxieties among some residents about the monitoring, supervision, and accountability of deserters, particularly those involved in security-related activities.

For many survivors of the conflict, such incidents reinforce a lingering fear that rehabilitation alone may not be enough. Bulama’s death has now brought those long-simmering concerns into sharper focus. 

“The community is deciding on an action,” Abbas said.

Residents gathered after Bulama’s burial to discuss possible legal steps. Some suggested pooling money to hire a lawyer. Others proposed approaching human rights organisations.

“We are thinking of contributing money and hiring a lawyer,” Abbas said.

Justice and unfinished wounds

For Muhammed, grief and anger now coexist. His cousin survived displacement and years of uncertainty. He, however, did not survive a short journey to the mosque.

When asked what justice would look like for his family and the displaced community, Muhammed replied, “The law does not play by sentiments; it follows laid-down rules. I hope they will do what is right. If it is by my sentiments, I would not want them to be free. I would want them imprisoned for life.”

He paused.

“I don’t care about compensation. I don’t care about apologies. Justice for me is their imprisonment.”

A family left devastated 

Bulama was only 30 years old. He left behind two wives and five children.

He earned a living as a farmer. And before displacement forced the family from Boboshe in 2016, his father was killed. His elderly mother remains alive and still lives with them at the displacement camp.

The survival of his family, which was Bulama’s responsibility as the breadwinner, hangs uncertainly over relatives, who are also struggling to survive. “We are not rich people,” Muhammed said. “Caring for five children in addition to our own children will be difficult.”

Around the camp where he lived for over a decade, residents gather beneath makeshift shelters to rest, but the conversations about Bulama’s death remain on their lips. 

What remains immediate is his nuclear family, and the space left by a man who left home for Friday prayers and never returned.

The death of Abakar Minuki, one of the most influential leaders of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in a joint United States and Nigerian military operation, marks one of the most consequential blows to the insurgent group in recent years. Yet, analysts and insiders familiar with the terror group warn that history offers little reason to assume the killing will significantly diminish the long-term threat posed by the group.

Multiple sources familiar with ISWAP’s internal structure told HumAngle that Minuki’s most likely successor was Baba Shuwa, commonly known as Ba Shuwa. However, indications emerging from the aftermath of the operation suggest he may also have been killed. If confirmed, the simultaneous removal of both men would trigger the most significant leadership transition in the organisation since its emergence from Boko Haram’s internal schism nearly a decade ago.

For the first time, leadership could pass not to the insurgency’s founding generation, but to a second generation of fighters raised entirely within the movement’s war ecosystem. Two names have emerged as the strongest contenders: Abu Salem and Bana Chingori.

“This would represent a generational shift unlike anything the movement has experienced before,” a source familiar with ISWAP’s internal dynamics told HumAngle.

From village barber to insurgent leader

Known variously as Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Ali al Mainoki, Abor Mainoki, Abubakar Mainoki, and Abakar Minuki, the slain commander was himself a product of the insurgency’s evolution.

Born in 1982 in the village of Mainok, a settlement along the Maiduguri-Benisheikh corridor in Borno State, he adopted his nom de guerre from his hometown. Long before becoming one of the most feared figures in the Lake Chad Basin insurgency, Minuki was known as a young barber operating a modest salon in the village.

Those who encountered him during the rise of Mohammed Yusuf’s movement recall a quiet young man who blended into daily life. That anonymity would eventually disappear. By the time Boko Haram transformed from a fringe religious movement into a powerful insurgent force, Minuki had become part of its military structure.

Abu Mus’ab, Abu Fatima, and other Boko Haram leaders had to secure Minuki’s approval before finalising their escape from Abubakar Shekau in the Sambisa forest to the islands of the Lake Chad Basin, shortly before ISWAP split from Boko Haram. Minuki not only provided refuge for members of the newly formed ISWAP fleeing Shekau’s crackdown, but also protected them and facilitated their settlement in his territory, where he ruled as one of Shekau’s most formidable Amirul Fiya.

He belonged to the first generation of fighters who entered the organisation before the 2009 uprising that transformed the movement forever.

The last men of Yusuf’s generation

To understand what Minuki represented, one must return to Boko Haram’s earliest years. According to sources familiar with the group’s formative history, Mohammed Yusuf’s original armed contingent consisted of fewer than 100 members. These men were responsible not only for security but also for recruitment.

As the organisation expanded, Yusuf reorganised fighters into military formations named after prominent figures from Islamic history. Among them were the Zubair Ibn Awwam Battalion, Umar Farouk Battalion, Salmanu Farisu Battalion, Khalid Ibn Walid Battalion, and Salaudeen Ayubi Battalion.

Several battalions survived years of expansion, state crackdowns, factional disputes, and battlefield losses. Over time, however, only two retained their original lineage and remain operational: the Timbuktu formation, associated with Faruk, and the Buhairiya structure, which absorbed the remnants of several earlier battalions.

Minuki was already a Naqeeb, a junior commander, during the pre-2009 period. Ba Shuwa, by contrast, was merely a foot soldier. While Abu Salem, who is now touted as the likely successor of ISWAP, was still a child. That generational distinction highlights that few survivors remain from the movement’s founding era.

The rise of the second generation

If Minuki and Ba Shuwa are both dead, the succession process could elevate men who never knew the insurgency before it became a regional war. Among them, Abu Salem stands out. Sources describe him as both a military commander and a religious authority within the insurgency. He currently serves as Amirul Fiya, based in Krinua, a battlefield commander with influence extending beyond purely military affairs.

His biography mirrors the insurgency’s own evolution. The son of a respected first-generation Boko Haram member, Abu Salem benefited from mentorship by senior leaders from an early age. His pedigree gave him access to influential networks that many younger fighters lacked.

He also carries the scars of combat. During one battle with members of Nigeria’s armed forces, he sustained serious gunshot wounds to the lower abdomen. The injuries required long-term medical management involving a Foley catheter. According to sources familiar with his condition, he continued participating in military operations despite the injury for years.

Within ISWAP, Abu Salem has cultivated a reputation for bravery, clerical authority, and charisma. Several sources compared his influence to that once exercised by Abu Musab al-Barnawi and Minuki himself.

Another contender is Bana Chingori, regarded as Ba Shuwa’s closest deputy. Unlike Abu Salem, however, Bana faces a structural challenge: He does not originate from the Faruk battalion network, which sources estimate supplies approximately 70 per cent of ISWAP’s current fighters and leadership, including Minuki.

In an organisation where battlefield alliances and battalion loyalties remain deeply influential, that may prove decisive.

The ethnic question behind ISWAP leadership

Leadership succession inside ISWAP is not determined solely by military competence. HumAngle understands that ethnicity, lineage, dialect, and social hierarchy continue to shape power within the organisation.

Public portrayals often reduce Boko Haram and ISWAP to ideological movements driven exclusively by extremist interpretations of Islam. The reality is considerably more complex. The overwhelming majority of ISWAP’s estimated fighting force originates from the Kanuri ethnic nationality, which has historically been dominant across the Lake Chad Basin. Yet, the Kanuris are far from homogeneous.

They are divided into numerous dialect communities, clan networks, and social categories that carry significant political weight, all of which the insurgents take very seriously. These divisions influence recruitment, promotions, alliances, and leadership legitimacy.

Mohammed Yusuf, for example, belonged to the Manga dialect group, one of the most prestigious Kanuri communities. His lineage strengthened his standing within the movement’s formative years. Abubakar Shekau came from the Kaama-speaking Ngala’a community, often viewed as socially marginal within traditional Kanuri hierarchies.

Several researchers and former members argue that Shekau’s relationship with the broader movement was shaped partly by this outsider status. Minuki himself emerged from Borno Central, where multiple Kanuri dialect groups intersect. Ba Shuwa’s ancestry has also been the subject of internal scrutiny.

Sources say rivals occasionally questioned the purity of his Kanuri lineage, reflecting how deeply social stratification continues to influence perceptions of authority within insurgency networks in the Lake Chad basin.

For this reason, sources told HumAngle, the emergence of a non-Kanuri leader remains highly unlikely. Even if such a figure were elevated, sustaining authority would be extraordinarily difficult. “The movement talks about Islam and the caliphate,” one source familiar with internal deliberations said, “But when leadership questions arise, ethnicity still matters.”

The foreign fighters effect

The leadership transition unfolding inside ISWAP is taking place within an organisation that has undergone profound internal transformation in recent years. Sources familiar with the group’s operations told HumAngle that the growing presence of foreign fighters from across the Sahel and beyond has reshaped not only the movement’s military tactics but also its internal security culture.

As foreign fighters increasingly settled in the Lake Chad region, ISWAP imposed some of its strictest operational security measures to date. Members were ordered to delete existing photographs and cease documenting activities through images. The use of smartphones was largely prohibited, reflecting mounting concerns about surveillance, geolocation tracking, and intelligence penetration. 

The restrictions marked a sharp departure from earlier years when both Boko Haram and ISWAP routinely photographed preaching sessions, training exercises, weapon displays, and daily life in territories under their control. Such imagery formed a central component of the group’s propaganda and recruitment machinery.

According to sources, the new rules were enforced ruthlessly. Several fighters accused of taking photographs or retaining images on their devices were reportedly executed. The killings served as both punishment and deterrence, reinforcing a culture of secrecy that now permeates much of the organisation. 

“The message was simple,” one source familiar with the group’s internal directives said. “Any digital trace that could expose fighters, commanders, or locations became a security threat.” The arrival of experienced foreign fighters appears to have accelerated this shift. Many brought with them lessons learned from conflicts across the Sahel, where drone surveillance, signals intelligence, and electronic tracking have increasingly shaped the battlefield.

The influence of foreign fighters introduced a greater emphasis on counter-intelligence, operational discipline, compartmentalisation, and the elimination of digital footprints that could expose personnel, camps, supply routes, or command structures. The result is an insurgent organisation that has become considerably more cautious than its predecessors. While leadership losses continue to disrupt, ISWAP’s evolving security architecture suggests a movement increasingly focused on institutional survival rather than on dependence on individual commanders.

Fractured, not defeated

The killing of Minuki undoubtedly represents a serious disruption, and the elimination of Ba Shuwa, if confirmed, would considerably deepen that disruption. Yet, military and intelligence officials caution against interpreting the development as a strategic defeat for ISWAP.

“The organisation has experienced similar moments before with the deaths of Mohammed Yusuf, Mamman Nur, Abu Musab al Barnawi, Ba Idrissa, and several other senior commanders, each of which generated predictions of organisational collapse,” said Kyari Mustafa, a conflict researcher in Maiduguri.

Those predictions never materialised. Instead, the group adapted. The pattern has become familiar across the Lake Chad Basin.

HumAngle has documented a pattern where successful military campaigns weaken the insurgency. Communities experience a period of relative calm. The group regroups, reassesses, and eventually resumes attacks. This cycle has repeated itself for more than 15 years. What makes the current moment significant is the possibility that an entire generation of commanders may be disappearing simultaneously. If Minuki and Ba Shuwa are indeed gone, the future of ISWAP may soon be shaped by men who were toddlers when Mohammed Yusuf built the movement.

Whether that transition produces fragmentation, renewal, or further violence remains uncertain. What is clear is that the Lake Chad Basin has witnessed enough leadership decapitations to know that the death of a commander, however important, does not automatically mean the end of the war.

Two years ago, Bashir Muhammad received an invitation to attend a journalism summit in Niamey but declined. That decision, and the argument it provoked, told him everything he needed to know.

He runs one of the growing number of Hausa-language digital news platforms that have emerged across northern Nigeria in the past decade, serving local audiences that legacy English-language media have largely ignored. That profile made him a target. In 2024, Bashir was approached by Mariam Laouali – a woman known across West African Hausa media circles as Sarkin Abzin. She is a prominent Nigerien broadcaster and, as he would come to understand, a committed supporter of the military regime that had seized power in Niamey the previous year.

In July 2023, the military junta, led by General Abdurrahman Tchiani, overthrew the democratically elected President Muhammad Bazoum. The coup met with strong resistance from the international community, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the leadership of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu. This led to severe diplomatic tensions between ECOWAS and the new military regime in Niger, culminating in threats of invasion from Nigerian leaders and ultimately the division of ECOWAS and the formation of the Alliance of the Sahel States (AES). While some diplomatic efforts have been restored, tensions remain, and the Niger Republic, supported by Russia and its AES allies, has been engaged in information efforts to attack ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin Republic. Bashir felt this approach could be part of the recruitment efforts. 

The pitch sounded professional. Sarkin Abzin told him of a pan-African summit of Hausa-language journalists to be convened in Niamey. It was the first of its kind, according to her. She described it as an exercise in cross-border media cooperation and a chance for journalists from across the continent’s Hausa-speaking belt to build something together. 

Bashir had questions, but he did not like the answers, so he declined.

Sarkin Abzin pushed back, insisting that he should consider it, but he became more suspicious. The conversation escalated. By the end, she was visibly frustrated. It ended there. 

“She didn’t take it well,” Bashir told HumAngle, sitting in his home office while casually scrolling on his computer, searching for her Facebook page. “The way she reacted told you this wasn’t just about journalism.”

He was right. It was not all about journalism. The summit in Niamey was just bait. What Sarkin Abzin and her sponsors in the Niger Republic seemed to want was access to northern Nigeria’s forty million Hausa speakers and to exploit their grievances and distrust of Nigerian leaders.

Many Nigerians were consumed by anxiety and bitterness over the country’s dire economic pressures. Many also harboured deep anger toward their leaders – particularly President Bola Tinubu, against whom protests erupted in August 2024, during which some demonstrators raised Russian flags and called for a coup. For that reason, this was a country where recruiting the discontented would come easily, because the grievances were already there, waiting.

Pro-junta actors and AES-aligned influence networks have been weaponising TikTok’s virality to erode confidence in Nigerian democratic leadership, particularly targeting President Tinubu and the broader ECOWAS establishment.

Online influencers and sympathetic media outlets, including some based within Nigeria itself, have circulated claims accusing Nigerian politicians of backing insurgent networks and conspiring with foreign powers to destabilise the AES states.

The recruitment drive

Sarkin Abzin’s tour of northern Nigerian newsrooms and radio stations in 2024 was, in retrospect, the visible edge of something much larger. She moved through Kano, through the northwest, knocking on the doors of editors and station managers, carrying the same pitch: come to Niamey, meet your counterparts, and build solidarity. Several journalists, like Bashir, declined quietly. A general manager at a prominent radio station in Kano, who pleaded anonymity, told HumAngle that Sarkin Abzin had reached him, but that he had turned her down.

“Looking at the timing when there was a diplomatic rift between Nigeria and Niger, and the suspicion of foreign influence, I felt it was unwise to join,” he said.

However, not everyone had the luxury of that suspicion, or the will to act on it. Musa Abba (not real name), a journalist at a private radio station in Kebbi State, saw a conference invitation and a chance to connect with Hausa journalists beyond Nigeria’s borders. His station was invited and the managers nominated him. Accommodation and food were covered by the organisers. The journey, according to him, was arranged through the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), in a vehicle shared with other attendees and, notably, with some politicians and government officials who had also been invited.

What he found in Niamey, however, upended the premise of the invitation entirely.

He concluded that “it was a sophisticated plan to form Hausa journalists who will be promoting the Nigerien junta and anti-West sentiment across Hausa-speaking countries.”

On her TikTok page, Sarkin Abzin does not hide her bias. She promotes Sahel juntas and specifically asks her followers to promote Tchiani. 

In a social media exchange with Fati Niger, a Kannywood musician originally from the Niger Republic who had called for a return to democratic rule, Sarkin Abzin’s response betrayed her sentiments. “We don’t care about entertainment,” she mentioned in a TikTok video. What mattered, she said, was building their country and confronting those she described as “hypocrites and oppressors within the West,” as well as “hypocrites among us here, those in exile in every country in the world, including Nigeria, and those Nigerians who support the old system [of democracy] and do not stand behind these soldiers under Abdourahamane Tchiani.”

The summit Sarkin Abzin organised had state backing, institutional cover, and a well-hosted programme. It had everything, in other words, that a genuine journalism conference would have – except genuine journalism at its centre.

The irony is that the junta in Niger has been repressing and arresting journalists in the country. Moussa Ngom, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s Francophone Africa representative, explained that “arrest and detention have become tools of choice for Nigerien authorities to try to control information they find undesirable.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that in October 2025 six journalists were arrested in Niamey – Moussa Kaka and Abdoul Aziz of Saraounia TV; Ibro Chaibou and Souleymane Brah from the online publication Voice of the People; Youssouf Seriba of Les Échos du Niger; and Oumarou Kané, founder of the magazine Le Hérisson – over their alleged role in circulating a government press briefing invitation on social media, criticising the introduction of the mandatory payment for “Solidarity Fund for the Safeguarding of the Homeland”, a form of security levy in Niger. 

The conference that wasn’t

The organisation behind the summit, Kungiyar Yan Jarida Na Afrika Masu Magana Da Harshen Hausa or, in French, Résegu Africain des journalistes en langue Haoussa (Association of Hausa-speaking Journalists in Africa), was founded by Sarkin Abzin herself. She held a senior position at RTN, the Nigerien state broadcaster. Her organisation, she told prospective attendees, had the backing of the Nigerien government institutions. 

Inside the hall at the Centre International de Conférences Mahatma Gandhi in Niamey, when the summit was opened on Aug. 24, 2024, the keynote speakers were not press freedom advocates, editors or media economists. They were politicians. Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine appeared as Tchiani’s representative, delivering a speech whose original French had been translated into Hausa. He spoke about Niger’s exit from ECOWAS as a show of sovereignty.

The junta had, by this point, accused ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin, of colluding with France to destabilise Niger and sabotage its economy- allegations that, according to independent fact-checkers, had no credible evidentiary basis but which had proven effective at consolidating domestic support by replacing accountability with external threat. The Niamey summit was the moment that the narrative was offered to Nigerian voices who could carry it home.

Among those who spoke was Hamza Almustafa, a Nigerian retired general and a politician who used the platform to denounce the West. Najaatu Muhammad, a prominent northern Nigerian political figure, delivered what several attendees described as the most incendiary address of the proceedings. She told her audience that the Nigerian federal government was conspiring to sever Niger from Nigeria – to cut through bonds of religion and culture that no colonial border had ever truly divided. Abuja, she suggested, served Paris and Washington before it served Kano or Sokoto.

“It was not really a journalists’ meeting,” Musa told HumAngle, “By the time the politicians started speaking, those of us who understood what was happening knew we had made a mistake.”

Sarkin Abzin’s organisation had achieved, in a single day, what overt propaganda rarely manages: it had placed legitimate reporters in a room and given the junta’s narratives the texture of a press conference. The journalists went to Niamey to cover something. They came back as part of it. 

HumAngle reached out to Sarkin Abzin for comment. She did not respond. 

The Hausa messages 

The Niamey summit was not the opening move in this campaign. 

On Christmas Day of 2024, General Tchiani sat before the cameras of Radio-Télévision du Niger and delivered what a casual viewer might have mistaken for a holiday address. Although French had been Niger’s official language, he spoke in Hausa – a lingua franca in both Niger and most of northern Nigeria, spoken by millions across West Africa. 

His choice of language was deliberate. The message was not addressed to Niamey alone. It was addressed to Kano and other Hausa-speaking states, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where there is an already visible pro-Russian and anti-West sentiment, as reflected in 2024 when Russian flags were raised during a nationwide protest against insecurity and economic hardship.

The claims Tchiani made were engineered to sound verified. He alleged that France had paid Nigerian authorities to establish a military base in Borno State with the sole aim of destabilising Niger and its Sahel Alliance partners. He also accused France of supplying Boko Haram fighters in the Lake Chad basin with anti-aircraft weapons. He claimed that France and ISWAP had struck an agreement to establish a Lakurawa training camp in the Gaba forest near Sokoto, and that Nigerian leaders were aware. He named Nigerian security officials by name. He cited dates and operational specifics to express the grammar of verified intelligence, though deployed in the service of disinformation.

The hook embedded in the allegations was not entirely invented, which is precisely what made it effective. Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters had classified Lakurawa as a terrorist organisation with jihadist affiliations just weeks earlier, in November 2024. HumAngle’s own investigations had revealed the group had operated in the northwest for around six years, with local security authorities having previously and dangerously dismissed it as a harmless faction of herders from across the border. The name was already known. The fear was already settled. Tchiani simply attached a culprit to both.

In Sokoto and Zamafara, where communities had been facing terrorist violence for years, the allegation did not sound outlandish.

“People said, ‘We always knew France was behind this,’” a civil society worker in Kano who monitors social media, Muhammad Hamza, told HumAngle. “Tchiani just confirmed what they already believed.”

When BBC Hausa published testimonies refuting Tchiani’s claims, the reaction was contemptuous. “We know you won’t agree because you’re all on the same side,” one commenter wrote. “But we believe what he said. We have seen the signs.”

A survey conducted by HumAngle in Kano State found that 50 per cent of the respondents believed Tchiani’s claims, 30 per cent were undecided, and only 20 per cent rejected them outright. Many pointed to President Tinubu’s perceived closeness to France as a reason for suspicion. 

One respondent, Abubakar Saidu, explained his reasoning, “President Tinubu has been close to France since he assumed power, and we all know that France can create terrorists to attack Niger due to their diplomatic fallout.”

Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, had attempted to refute the claim, but it was unsuccessful. According to him, “Nigeria has never given its land to any foreign troops—not even Britain. When the [United States] requested a military base, we denied them, but Niger gave them.”

In a country with an audience that receives official rebuttals as confirmation of the original charge, its psyche could easily be captured. Nigerians didn’t believe Ribadu. 

“This is the new reality of information warfare. It is no longer just about truth versus falsehood. It is about who controls the language in which truth is told. It is about who defines the enemy—and, ultimately, who is believed,” Kano-based security analyst Balarabe Ismail told HumAngle in April 2025.

Tchiani returned to the theme in June 2025, this time in a three-hour televised address delivered in Hausa, Zarma, and French, in which he again accused Nigeria of conspiring with France and the United States to sponsor terrorism, alleging a covert meeting in Abuja in December 2024 attended by CIA agents and Nigerian security officials who discussed arming groups targeting Niger. 

The headquarters of disinformation 

Analysts had already identified increased activity from disinformation networks affiliated with Russia in Niger following the coup in Niger. 

According to a report by Al Jazeera, since the July 2023 coup, Niger had become the latest hotbed of disinformation in the Sahel, with social media inundated by false rumours, misleading videos, and manipulated audio clips. The template, according to the report, was borrowed from Mali and Burkina Faso, where Wagner-linked networks had deployed online assets, locally cultivated contacts, and Russian state media to produce a sustained information environment that preceded, accelerated, and then legitimised military takeovers. In Niger, the same playbook ran faster because the infrastructure was already warm.

Following the death of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023, these operations were absorbed into two successor structures: the Russian Africa Corps, which provides military presence on the ground, and the Africa Initiative news agency, connected to Russian intelligence services and overseen from Moscow. Africa Initiative is an upgrade and institutional legitimacy that Wagner never possessed. With press credentials, cultural programming, and regional language capacity, it successfully dressed influence as media development.

The three Alliance of Sahel States junta leaders — in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso — have converged around a shared political project. They launched a joint television channel to promote a unified narrative across their territories, a regional media infrastructure whose audience mandate extends explicitly beyond their borders — into the Hausa-speaking communities of northern Nigeria, who share language, faith, and enough legitimate frustration to make the narratives land without the need for fabrication in every detail. 

Sarkin Abzin’s journalist recruitment initiative sits within this structure. The goal may not have been to turn Nigerian journalists into salaried agents but to create a class of northern Nigerian media voices who feel a degree of solidarity with the junta’s framing. 

A security analyst who works on influence operations in West Africa and spoke to HumAngle on condition of anonymity offered some insight. “What Niger and Russia are doing is not complicated,” he said. “They are creating the conditions under which Nigerian citizens begin to see their own government as the enemy.”

The operation has not yet achieved its full objective. Bashir Muhammad’s refusal was one of the resistance points among others. Some journalists who attended the Niamey summit have since spoken, cautiously, about the gap between what they were promised and what they found. The WhatsApp group formed after the summit, according to Musa Abba, the journalist who attended, had almost collapsed. 

“They promised to continue communicating via WhatsApp and to organise more summits in other countries, but more than a year later they said nothing and group members didn’t say anything either,” he said. Even Sarkin Abzin’s Facebook page is no longer active.  

This article was produced by HumAngle with support from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI) and the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) as part of an initiative by Code for Africa (CfA). Visit https://disinfo.africa/ for more information.

There are moments when nations move dangerously close to collapse before the public fully realises it. It begins with carefully framed messages that conceal or even deny a storm, then the country is described as dangerous, lawless, and extremist-tolerant. By the time formal consequences arrive, the political judgment has often already been made. By late 2025, Nigeria was approaching that threshold in Washington DC, the United States’ capital. 

Donald Trump was accusing the Nigerian state of failing Christians, and Republican lawmakers were describing the country as one of the world’s deadliest countries for Christians. Evangelical organisations in the United States were also mobilising around massacre narratives from Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, and parts of the North Central region. These led to congressional pressure, visa restrictions, and discussions of sanctions. Later, Trump threatened military action and warned that the United States could move into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” if the killings continued.

Inside sections of conservative American politics, Nigeria was no longer merely a troubled African country but was becoming a pariah state, a symbol of global Christian persecution, failed governance, Islamist expansion, and state weakness.

Then, the trajectory shifted. Within months, the same Trump administration that had threatened consequences against Nigeria began working with Abuja on counterterrorism cooperation. American intelligence support deepened, and US military involvement expanded, leading to widely criticised (for their lack of any real impact) airstrikes targeting Islamic State-linked and Lakurawa positions in northwestern Nigeria in December 2025. However, in May 2026, Trump publicly celebrated a successful joint Nigerian and American operation that killed Abu Bilal al-Minuki, described in both countries’ security circles as one of the most important Islamic State figures operating across Africa.

Nigeria had moved from an accused state to an operational partner, even though many have wondered what the cost might have been or continues to be. Behind that dramatic transition was one of the most consequential diplomatic-security campaigns mounted by Abuja in recent years. It involved diplomats, intelligence officials, military officers, embassy staff, policy advisers, lobbyists, diaspora actors, civil society networks, and security partners.

At the centre of this coordination stood National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, the coordinating figure who pulled the necessary elements together: the presidency’s political authority, the security establishment’s operational credibility, the embassy’s diplomatic access, the military’s counterterror capacity, policy networks in Washington, and a message that American officials could not easily dismiss.

Working with figures including a senior Nigerian career diplomat in DC, an influential woman at the NSA’s secretariat, senior defence and intelligence officials, foreign affairs officials, and other intermediaries, Ribadu helped steer Nigeria away from a potentially disastrous confrontation with Washington, DC.

The crisis Abuja could not treat as routine

Nigeria has faced criticism from the United States before on corruption, election disputes, human rights abuses, military excesses, and oil theft — all governance failures. None of those carried the same immediate danger as the late-2025 escalation. This crisis was different because it had moved beyond policy disagreement into moral accusation. The phrase “Christian genocide” changed the stakes.

Inside conservative American evangelical circles, Nigeria had already become symbolic before Trump’s escalation. Reports from groups such as Open Doors, International Christian Concern, Aid to the Church in Need, and Nigerian Christian advocacy organisations had repeatedly described Nigeria as one of the world’s deadliest places for Christians. Killings in Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, parts of Niger State, and other flashpoints circulated widely through American church networks. 

Nigeria’s First Lady, Pastor Remi Tinubu, also operated far beyond the ceremonial margins. Using her deep evangelical and clerical networks, she became a decisive force in breaking resistance, opening doors that formal diplomacy and security channels could not. Her interventions softened hardened positions, clearing the path for diplomatic and security engagement to gain some traction.

“Nigeria is facing a complex security crisis that has sustained for over two decades and has currently metastasised into several violent crimes, including active insurgencies, farmer-herder violence, armed groups, gang violence, ethnic militias, and vigilantism, among several others,” Managing Director of Beacon Intelligence Consulting, Dr Kabiru Adamu, told HumAngle.

“While the triggers of the violence sometimes include identity such as ethnicity and religion, other factors, including socio-economic, political and environmental causes, are behind the violence.”

Amara Nwankpa, Director General, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation, argued that acknowledging complexity should not become a shield against responsibility.

“Nigeria is facing a complex security collapse,” he agreed. “But saying the crisis is ‘complex’ should not become a way to avoid the harder question of why some communities consistently suffer more than others.”

“The Nigerian state is weak. In many places, it genuinely struggles to protect people because of overstretched security forces, corruption, political fragmentation, and poor state capacity. That matters. A state that cannot protect is different from a state that deliberately chooses not to. But that distinction does not remove responsibility,” he told HumAngle.

“The mistake of the ‘Christian genocide’ framing is that it treats all the violence as one coordinated religious project,” he said. “The mistake of the ‘it’s complicated’ response is that it sometimes uses complexity as an excuse for inaction.”

Johnstone Kpilaakaa, an award-winning journalist who has closely followed the Middle Belt crisis, submits that the violence cannot be separated from the collapse of state protection across rural Nigeria. “Overall, the crisis reflects the broader failure of the Nigerian state to provide protection for its citizens,” he said. “Rural communities in the Middle Belt, many of which already experience a near-total absence of state presence, even in basic social services, have become especially vulnerable to terror attacks and organised violence.”

According to Kpilaakaa, the genocide narrative gained traction in the Middle Belt partly because many of the most devastated communities were Christian. “Historical memory also plays a role. The legacy of the 19th-century Sokoto Jihad, which faced resistance in parts of the region, continues to shape perceptions and fears today.” Children, he added, are raised with those stories, and those inherited fears continue to shape how violence is interpreted.

James Barnett, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, framed the crisis more as systemic collapse than coordinated extermination. “Nigeria is experiencing something more like a nationwide security crisis than a specific campaign targeted at one group,” Barnett said. “This is a collapse of state capacity that is felt in all corners of the country to different degrees, and it’s allowed militant and criminal groups of various stripes to kill, loot, and take over communities with significant impunity.”

He acknowledged that some armed actors operate with religious motivations. But much of the violence, he argued, is driven by opportunism, local disputes, criminal economies, and governance breakdown. That complexity became Abuja’s central diplomatic argument later in Washington.

The conservative machinery turns against Nigeria

Several American political actors helped turn the issue into a Washington crisis. Senator Ted Cruz became one of the strongest congressional voices accusing Nigeria of systemic anti-Christian violence. He introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 and repeatedly cited casualty figures involving Christians killed, churches destroyed, and communities displaced.

Congressman Riley Moore also became a central figure in the pressure campaign. He pushed the White House towards stronger action and publicly accused the Nigerian state of failing to protect persecuted Christians. But the deeper force came from evangelical networks. American evangelical activism is not simply moral advocacy but also an organised political ecosystem. It has media platforms, donor structures, church mobilisation capacity, congressional access, lobbying relationships, legal advocacy groups, and influence inside Republican politics.

Pastors, televangelists, diaspora activists, advocacy groups, conservative influencers, and social media personalities amplified reports from Nigeria, often portraying the country as the global epicentre of anti-Christian violence. Prayer campaigns followed. At the same time, misinformation and disinformation flooded digital spaces, blurring the line between verified atrocities and fabricated claims. Across Telegram channels, Facebook pages, WhatsApp broadcasts, podcasts, YouTube ministries, and conservative media networks, emotionally charged narratives circulated with little scrutiny, shaping international perceptions of Nigeria’s security crisis.

Yet even some analysts sympathetic to Christian suffering warned that the narrative was becoming distorted. “In attempting to draw global attention to the suffering of communities in the Middle Belt, some evangelical advocacy networks and social media actors have also oversimplified the crisis,” Kpilaakaa said.

“In certain cases, this has involved the circulation of half-truths, selective reporting, or sensationalised accounts that do not fully capture the complexity of the situation.” He stressed that multiple forms of violence were being collapsed into a single frame. “Beyond terrorist violence, the Middle Belt also faces attacks carried out by local militia groups and criminal networks, particularly in states such as Benue,” he said.

“Unfortunately, many of these distinct forms of violence are often merged into a single narrative of religious persecution, which can make the crisis more difficult to properly understand, analyse, and address.”

Nwankpa reached a similar conclusion, though he warned against dismissing the suffering that fuels those narratives.

“Some evangelical networks and social media platforms have distorted global understanding of the violence, but not by inventing suffering,” he said. “The suffering is real. Many Christian communities, especially in parts of the North and Middle Belt, have experienced terrible violence.”

According to him, the distortion emerges when an entire national security collapse is reduced to a single religious explanation.

“Incentives also drive that simplification. In the US, persecution narratives mobilise donors and audiences very effectively. Clear stories raise more money than messy realities.”

He added that diaspora activism had amplified simplified narratives globally, often detached from the wider context of Nigeria’s security breakdown.

Kabiru Adamu was direct. “Yes,” he said when asked whether evangelical networks and social media had distorted international understanding of Nigeria’s violence. “Their narrative of Christian genocide and the bandying of falsified figures contributed to the Trump administration’s earlier stance.”

Still, he warned against swinging to denial. “This is not to say Christians are not being killed. They are. But so too are Muslims.”

Christians had been killed, churches attacked, villages emptied, and priests abducted. But Muslims are also dying in larger numbers as Nigeria’s conflicts defy simple religious labels. Islamic State affiliates targeted Muslim communities, soldiers, traders, aid workers, schools, and transport routes. Armed groups kidnapped indiscriminately. Farmer-herder conflict, jihadist expansion, criminal economies, land pressure, governance failure, and communal grievances all overlapped. The genocide frame compressed those realities into one dangerous explanation. 

Trump turns pressure into a state crisis

In late 2025, Trump’s administration escalated pressure against Nigeria under international religious freedom frameworks, including the Country of Particular Concern designation. He accused Nigeria of allowing Christians to be killed by “Radical Islamists” and threatened possible military action. 

For Abuja, the implications were dire. They could bring about diplomatic isolation, damage to intelligence and security cooperation, and investor panic in an already fragile economy. This was where Ribadu’s office became central. The National Security Adviser understood that Nigeria could not defeat the pressure campaign through blunt denial.

So, Abuja adopted a more difficult strategy that involved acknowledging the insecurity while rejecting the genocide label and repositioning the crisis as part of a broader counterterror and state fragility problem.

Kpilaakaa argued that, “The absence of proactive state action, credible investigations, and timely justice creates space for speculation and mistrust, while trauma inevitably shapes the perceptions and judgment of survivors.” 

The Nigerian response, therefore, focused less on arguing morality and more on changing strategic calculations in Washington. The message became simple: weakening Nigeria would strengthen the so-called Islamic State.

Nwankpa believes Ribadu’s intervention succeeded not because it resolved the crisis, but because it changed how Washington interpreted it.

“Ribadu did not solve the crisis,” he said. “What he did was change the diplomatic framing, and he did it very effectively. He shifted the conversation from ‘Nigeria is allowing Christians to be killed’ to ‘Nigeria and the US are facing a shared terrorism problem.’ That helped cool tensions with Washington and turned pressure into cooperation.”

But he warned that the strategic success came with consequences.

“Once the relationship became centred on counterterrorism, the space for human rights and accountability pressure became smaller,” Nwankpa said. “The focus moved from protecting vulnerable communities to fighting shared threats. In that sense, the deeper issue of impunity remained unresolved. It was postponed.”

Ribadu’s reframing strategy

Ribadu’s role with coordination happened because many parts needed to move in specific directions. For example, the presidency had to provide political authority, the military had to provide operational credibility, diplomats had to reopen channels in Washington, intelligence officials had to frame the regional threat, lobbyists and intermediaries had to reach spaces formal diplomacy could not easily penetrate, and the central message itself had to remain consistent.

Nigeria was a battered state confronting overlapping extremist, criminal, communal, and regional threats, and if the state weakened further, Boko Haram and a confluence of other terror groups across the country would benefit.

Kabiru Adamu believes Ribadu deserves significant credit for the diplomatic de-escalation. “The NSA Nuhu Ribadu can be credited for de-escalating the earlier US stance when the Trump Administration, after designating Nigeria a country of particular concern due to perceived religious persecution and Trump’s threat to come ‘guns a blazing,’” he said. “Ribadu led a high-level delegation to the US and followed through with engagements that led to the creation of a joint working group between the two countries as well as deeper defence engagement.”

Barnett reached a similar conclusion. “The Nigerian government has responded pretty effectively on the diplomatic front so far,” he said. “After initially being caught unprepared for the Country of Particular Concern designation, it realised that it wouldn’t get very far by publicly protesting Trump’s narrative and instead sought to leverage Washington’s focus on Nigeria to secure new security cooperation.”

That recalibration reshaped the relationship because even though the United States still publicly raised concerns about religious freedom, Nigeria became increasingly valuable as a regional counterterror partner. Barnett noted that the new working relationship also elevated Ribadu internationally. “The US-Nigeria working group has boosted Ribadu’s profile internationally,” he said.

Kpilaakaa observed that Abuja’s strategy prevented a deeper rupture. “Despite recent joint military operations in Metele, Borno State, which reportedly led to the death of a senior ISWAP leader, some influential American politicians continue to frame US involvement as part of an effort to stop what they describe as a genocide against Christians in Nigeria only,” he said.

“That suggests the National Security Adviser has not fully succeeded in reshaping the narrative.” Even so, he argued that the cooperation itself remained strategically necessary. “Beyond the competing narratives, effective counterterrorism operations remain in Nigeria’s national interest,” he said. “If military cooperation is conducted professionally, ethically, and strategically, the outcome should contribute to greater security and stability for all Nigerians, regardless of religion or ethnicity.”

Why Trump changed course

Trump’s shift appeared dramatic from Abuja. One moment, he was threatening Nigeria. Months later, he was celebrating joint counterterror operations with Nigerian forces. But analysts say this logic was less ideological than transactional. “The change in stance by the Trump administration from declared hostility to now engagement is mainly because of the diplomatic engagements by Nigeria, including Ribadu’s engagements,” Adamu said.

“There is also the lobby group contracted by the Federal Government that may have played a role in supporting a de-escalation.” Barnett believes Nigeria itself was never central to Trump’s broader worldview. “Nigeria is not actually a foreign policy priority for Trump, despite how much it might feel to Nigerians like he is now a looming presence in their politics,” he said.

“The US government has dedicated much more time and resources to its Venezuela and Iran policies, for example, than it has to Africa. When Trump threatened to go into Nigeria ‘guns a blazing’ last year, he was essentially calling on the US national security bureaucracy to come up with ideas to ‘do something’ in Nigeria that would look impressive but not consume significant energy and resources or entail political risk.”

The solution Washington eventually settled on was a partnership rather than confrontation. “The US military, for its part, would always prefer to fight jihadists with the help of a capable local partner rather than opposition from the host government,” Barnett explained.

“So, when the Nigerian government signalled it was willing to work with the US military, that gave the Trump administration an opening to show its supporters that it was fighting terrorists, supposedly in defence of Christians overseas, without engaging in a messy humanitarian intervention or state-building exercise.”

Nwankpa argued that the political logic behind Trump’s shift reflected both American strategic interests and Nigerian sensitivity to external pressure.

“Trump changed position because the political framing changed,” he said. “Threatening Nigeria appealed to parts of his evangelical and religious freedom base. Working with Nigeria appealed to American security interests. Once Abuja accepted the counterterrorism framing, Trump no longer needed a public confrontation.”

But he also pointed to a deeper Nigerian calculation.

“Most Nigerians want stronger security responses, but very few want foreign powers taking over the process,” Nwankpa said. “There is a strong sovereignty instinct in Nigeria. External pressure that appears paternalistic often collapses domestic coalition support, even among people who agree with the underlying criticism… Ribadu’s approach worked partly because it allowed Nigeria to engage America as a partner, not as a country being lectured or managed from outside.”

Kpilaakaa argued that Trump never completely abandoned the persecution narrative. “I do not believe there has been a complete shift in position,” he said. “Even recently, Trump shared material on Truth Social that reinforced the same narrative that frames every attack as religious persecution targeting Christians alone.”

He added that religious framing remains deeply embedded in Trump-era politics. “The use of religion, in this case Christianity, as a framework for discussing political and security issues is synonymous with the Trump administration,” he said.

Yet, Abuja avoided turning the disagreement into a public confrontation.

“It is also significant that Nigerian authorities have largely avoided engaging in public confrontation with Trump or his allies,” Kpilaakaa said. “Instead, they have focused on maintaining cooperation around the shared objective of combating terrorism and protecting lives, irrespective of religion or ethnicity.”

The Sahel and Nigeria’s strategic value

Regional realities strengthened Abuja’s hand. The Sahel was deteriorating rapidly; Mali had drifted away from Western influence, Burkina Faso remained unstable, Niger’s political upheaval disrupted Western security architecture, and Russian-linked actors expanded across the region.

Washington needed a capable African partner, and Nigeria’s geography, population, intelligence infrastructure, military size, and position between multiple conflict systems made it indispensable. Ribadu’s team aggressively leveraged that reality.

Weakening Nigeria, they argued, would not save Christians. It would strengthen the very extremist groups killing Christians and Muslims alike. That logic resonated strongly inside American security circles because it aligned humanitarian concern with strategic necessity.

The limits of the recovery

None of this erased the suffering that produced the controversy. Benue, Plateau, and Southern Kaduna still bleed. Communities across Niger State, Borno, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Yobe, and Adamawa continue to experience displacement, extortion, killings, and fear.

The average Nigerian, irrespective of their faith and ethnicity, genuinely believes the Nigerian state has failed them and the state must do more, not only to save lives, but to regain their trust in governance. The deeper question now is whether security cooperation alone can sustain the diplomatic recovery if the violence continues unresolved.

Kpilaakaa warned that “military cooperation alone will not resolve the deeper structural issues driving instability in the Middle Belt.” “Addressing land disputes, prolonged displacement, impunity, and the absence of justice remains critical,” he said.

He pointed to one grievance. “One of the most persistent grievances among affected communities is that many victims have spent more than a decade in displacement, with little accountability for the violence they endured. Without credible justice, reconstruction, and long-term conflict resolution, security cooperation may contain the violence temporarily, but it will not produce lasting peace or stability.”

“No,” Adamu said when asked whether security cooperation could survive if killings and impunity continue. “Evangelical groups will continue to mount domestic pressure on the Trump administration should the killings continue.”

Barnett also cautioned that Abuja should not assume permanent stability in the relationship. “You can’t be too certain where things go from here as Trump is notoriously unpredictable,” he said.

“He might be satisfied with periodic strikes against the Islamic State that make for good Fox News content while the militaries engage in more routine behind-the-scenes coordination and training.”

But the pressure networks inside American politics remain active. “There is also a vocal American constituency on this issue,” Barnett warned. “Those folks can be highly critical of the Tinubu government, and they are likely to perceive any continued violence, particularly in the Middle Belt, as justification for sanctions or even more radical forms of intervention.”

His conclusion was stark. “Tinubu can’t be certain he’s out of the woods just yet.” That is the reality beneath Nigeria’s diplomatic recovery. Abuja escaped one dangerous moment in Washington, but it has not solved the crisis that created it.

Back in Abuja, Ribadu remains trapped in a far more complicated war. His growing influence has unsettled opposition figures, threatened entrenched interests within the ruling party, and fuelled quiet anxieties about his long-term political ambition, multiple sources within Abuja policy networks implied. “If Ribadu misreads that terrain, his ambition could become his greatest vulnerability.”

Before sunrise, Kellu Habila had risen from her mat in Mussa, northeastern Nigeria, and stepped into the kitchen, moving carefully in the dim light while the rest of the house slept. Outside, the dry-season dust had disappeared, replaced by the heavy stillness that precedes the rains in southern Borno. She prepared breakfast, then woke her four children one after the other: three boys and the youngest, a girl named Rifkatu.

It was early in the third term of the 2025/2026 academic session.

Unlike her brothers, who had resumed nearly a month earlier, Rifkatu was returning to school that morning for the first time because her old uniform was too worn to use. It was only the previous day that her parents had managed to buy another one.

“She was very happy,” Kellu recalled.

Four-year-old Rifkatu Habila and her friend, Alheri Olu, were both in Nursery One at Central Primary School, Mussa, a remote farming community in Lassa town, Askira Uba Local Government Area, Borno State. “The two girls were inseparable,” Kellu said. They played together, walked together, and often sat beside each other in class.

After the children left for school that Friday morning on May 15, Kellu headed to her farm on the outskirts of town. The farming season had begun, and like many residents of Mussa, she was trying to make use of the early morning before the sun hit hard.

Then the gunshots started.

“I hid inside a nearby stream when I heard them,” she told HumAngle. “It was a few minutes past 8 a.m.”

For a while, she remained there, crouched and listening. When the shooting eased, she ran back home.

By then, panic had already spread across Mussa. Parents were rushing toward the school. Some shouted their children’s names, while others disappeared into nearby bushes, searching for them. The gunshots, residents realised, had come from Central Primary School.

“We were told the children had been taken,” Kellu said. “So we started searching.”

She found her three sons hiding inside a nearby bush. But Rifkatu was nowhere to be found. Her voice broke when she spoke about what happened next.

“We kept searching. Later, her father and some men found children’s footwear outside town where the attackers had passed. He recognised hers.”

That was how they knew. Rifkatu and Alheri had been abducted together. That day, Friday, May 15, terrorists attacked Central Primary School, Mussa, abducting dozens of pupils. The exact number remains unclear. “Community leaders told us 43 children were taken,” Kellu recounted. But she believes the number may be higher. An official register recorded 40 confirmed names.

A pattern of attacks

Residents say the terrorists entered Mussa on motorcycles.

“Farmers running from the direction they came from said they also saw two Hilux vehicles parked outside town,” Emmanuel Hyarawa, Rifkatu’s uncle, said. “That was what they used to take the children away.”

No group has claimed responsibility, and no ransom demand had been made at the time this report was filed. But residents say the terrorists may be fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a group that has repeatedly attacked communities along the southern Borno axis in recent years.

“They are the same people who attack soldiers here and abduct farmers,” Kellu said. “We recognised the way they dressed and moved.”

This was the fourth attack on Mussa within two months, according to residents. 

“Occasionally, they would attack the town, often focusing on the military. They would burn buildings, loot shops, and cart away military vehicles and equipment,” Emmanuel said. “They had come in early April and attacked the military. They killed four soldiers and a civilian.” A week before the Friday abduction, “They had attacked, looted shops, and carted away six cattle,” Kellu added.  In November 2025, Nigerian troops rescued 12 teenage girls abducted while working on farmlands in the area. 

But no school had been attacked before. “This is the first time,” Emmanuel said.

The gunshots from Friday’s attack were heard as far away as Lassa, a town nearly 20 kilometres from Mussa. “We heard them around 8:30 that morning,” Andrew Adamu, a resident of Lassa, said.

The two communities are separated only by a smaller village called Kelle. According to Kellu, the attackers arrived through the Damboa axis on nearly 40 motorcycles, each carrying at least two armed men.

There is a military presence in Mussa, but residents say the soldiers are few.

“They are not up to 30,” Emmanuel said. “And usually, they are outnumbered.” “When the terrorists entered, they used the pupils as shields. So, the military could not engage them,” he added.

Kellu said part of the school itself now serves as a military armoury. “The soldiers stay there during the day,” she said. “They have been using part of the school for years.”

Residents believe the timing of the attack was deliberate.

After the April assault that killed soldiers, reinforcements had arrived from Askira, the LGA headquarters, and remained in the community for more than two weeks. But on Friday morning, according to Emmanuel, the troops had only recently withdrawn.

“It was less than an hour after they left that the terrorists came,” he said.

When the shots were heard in Lassa, residents said security forces left the town immediately. “I didn’t see them leaving myself, but I saw their return in the evening,” Andrew said. “Often, when something like this occurs, reinforcement is sent from here, Lassa, or Dille, another village not far away, Askira, the local government headquarters, or Uba, another major town,” Andrew added.

However, as of the time this report was compiled, residents of Mussa said no reinforcements had returned to the community.

A police constable based in Askira, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak, said, “Although Mussa is a Borno community, it is not under our coverage because of proximity. They are closer to Adamawa and, therefore, Adamawa forces are often the ones responding to situations there. We received a red alert about the abduction moments after it happened. However, on our end, no reinforcement was issued because it is not under our protection. Maybe the military went.”

Over 40 pupils and teachers abducted in Oyo

On the same day as the Mussa school abduction, terrorists, also on motorcycles, stormed three schools and kidnapped schoolchildren and staff in the Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State, South West Nigeria. It was a coordinated attack across the three schools in Ahoro-Esinle, a community in the LGA. 

In the early hours of May 15, motorcycle-riding attackers invaded Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota, near Alawusa, as well as Community Grammar School and the L.A Primary School in Esiele, all in the Ogbomoso axis of the state.

No armed group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the invaders operated in a coordinated manner that suggests they belong to a terrorist syndicate. There had been no such mass abduction in the area before now, as locals describe the remote area as peaceful until recently. Witnesses said the terrorists spoke Yoruba, Hausa, and Nigerian Pidgin as they invaded the schools, abducting over 40 pupils swiftly in a matter of minutes. 

The principal of the Community High School, Alamu Folawe, was also abducted alongside the pupils, while two teachers were killed during the early morning operation. Locals in Ogbomosho town told HumAngle that the area has recently been experiencing attacks, which have been largely unreported in the mainstream media.

The terrorists marched the abducted pupils and teachers towards the Old Oyo National Park, causing a hail of pandemonium and panic for residents. “The axis is actually underdeveloped and is quite far from town,” said Qosim Suleiman, a resident of Ogbomosho. “They have no electricity, and no paved  road networks.”

Alamu had only been redeployed to one of the schools recently, sources said. Most teachers are deployed to the community schools on a rotational basis from Ogbomosho town because “no one wants to stay permanently in the satellite villages with very poor government control.”

Following the attack, however, the Oyo State Universal Basic Education Board (OYOSUBEB) has ordered the shutdown of schools in Oriire LGA due to fears of a possible recurrence of such incidents. In a statement obtained by HumAngle, OYOSUBEB also directed all primary schools in neighbouring communities, including Surulere, Oyo East, and Olorunsogo LGAs, to vacate their premises until further notice.

“This is a dark and painful moment for our education family in Oyo State, and our hearts are with the affected parents, teachers and the entire community,” said Nureni Adenira, the OYOSUBEB chairperson.

“We understand the fear and anxiety this situation has caused, and we want to assure our parents and stakeholders that the safety of our children remains our utmost priority.”

The Oyo Global Forum, a group of professionals in the state, condemned the attack, charging the government to rescue the abducted pupils and teachers from the hands of the armed assailants. The group said in a statement sent to HumAngle that “every hour of slow response emboldens these armed criminal groups and increases the risk of further attacks across vulnerable communities and adjoining forest corridors linked to Kwara and Niger states.”

“This must not be treated as an isolated incident. It is a clear national security threat requiring sustained military, intelligence, and community-based security operations,” said Taiwo-Hassan Adebayo, the chairperson of the group. 

“Beyond the immediate rescue efforts, the government must urgently establish a preventive security framework across the affected axis, including strengthened rural policing, coordinated forest surveillance, and a functional early warning and rapid response system developed in partnership with local communities.”

The Oyo State Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Dotun Oyelade, announced in a statement on May 16 that the government has taken security measures to prevent the attackers from moving beyond the national park before they are accosted. He said security operatives have commenced a rescue operation in the axis, stressing that suspects’ movements have been restricted.

“Patrol operations also commenced this morning after intelligence indicated the suspects remained within the National Park in Oyo State,” Dotun said. “Three separate patrol teams, comprising Amotekun operatives and hunters drawn from seven local government areas in Oke-Ogun, were deployed through Igbeti towards Oloka and adjoining communities,” he added.

Amid the ongoing search for the missing pupils and teachers, footage of some of the abductees has surfaced. In one of the clips, Racheal Alamu, the Community High School principal, is seen speaking from captivity, pleading with Nigerians and the government to rescue them.

“I’m doing this video to ask for help from everyone, starting from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Oyo State government, the Christian Association of Nigeria and all well-meaning Nigerians, that they should come to our aid and settle this thing peacefully so that our lives will not be lost,” she said.

Another abductee, a woman with a baby strapped to her back, weeps heavily while asking for the government’s intervention. “We need your help so that these people will release us. Please help us,” she wailed.

HumAngle has also exclusively obtained the names of the abductees, including seven teachers and 39 pupils.

Names of Schoolchildren and Teachers Abducted During the May 15 School Attacks in Oriire LGA, Oyo State, South West, Nigeria

From Borno to Oyo: Resurgence of School Abductions Sparks New Terror Wave in Nigeria by IT HumAngle

The lingering memories of school abductions

For many families in southern Borno and, now, in some parts of Oyo State, schooling has become entangled with fear. Any attack involving schoolchildren in Borno, particularly, inevitably revives memories of the Chibok schoolgirls’ kidnapping, where 276 girls were abducted by Boko Haram from their dormitories in April 2014.

More than a decade later, some of the girls are still missing.

The abduction drew global attention to attacks on education in Nigeria, but it also marked the beginning of a broader wave of school-targeted kidnappings across the country.  

Even the Nigerian government’s multimillion-dollar Safe School Initiative, launched after the Chibok abduction to strengthen school security, has struggled to achieve its objectives and has been dogged by allegations of corruption, poor implementation, and inadequate protection for vulnerable communities.

In 2018, 110 girls were abducted in Dapchi, Yobe State. Two years later, hundreds of students were kidnapped in Kankara, Katsina State. Then came Jangebe in Zamfara, and later Kuriga in Kaduna State, where more than 200 pupils were abducted earlier in 2024. Subsequently, in November 2025, more than 300 schoolchildren and staff were abducted from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger State, in the North Central region. Some were later released in December, while others remain in captivity.

What began in the North East gradually spread into the North West and other regions, where armed groups increasingly adopted mass kidnappings for ransom and leverage. Over time, these attacks altered something less visible: the way families think about education itself.

In 2021, UNICEF warned that attacks on schools and kidnappings “discourage parents from sending their children to school and leave children traumatised and fearful of going to classrooms to learn.” That fear now shapes daily life in places like Mussa. “My boys will not return to school anytime soon,” Kellu said. “I don’t want to lose them, too.” The incident had left her devastated, Emmanuel said. “The three boys are in my house,” he added.

Mussa itself was once emptied under the weight of conflict. Residents fled in 2015 as insurgent violence intensified across southern Borno. Many only returned the following year. “When we first came back, we could farm far outside town,” Emmanuel said. “Now, we barely go beyond one kilometre.”

Even nearby communities remain tense. In Lassa, residents had already panicked before Friday’s attack fully became clear. The previous day, according to Andrew, gunmen had abducted a logger near the town, killed five others, and burned their vehicle.

Amid all this, schools still reopen every term. 

By the time the announcement that Abu Bilal Al-Minuki was killed reached the outside world, the strike itself was already hours old. In the early hours of Saturday, May 16, somewhere in Metele, in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, a compound had been hit. 

First, US President Donald Trump posted a statement on Truth Social. Another came from Bayo Onanuga, Special Advisor to Nigeria’s president on Information and Strategy, on Facebook and X. Al-Minuki, described as one of the most senior figures inside Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), was dead, both statements claimed.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally,” Trump said in the post.  

The Nigerian military said special forces were deployed to block escape routes while air components executed precision strikes against what was described as a “concealed and fortified terrorist enclave.” The mission was completed, the military added, “without casualties or equipment loss on the part of friendly forces.”

During a televised interview, the Director of Nigeria’s Defence Media Operations, Major Gen. Michael Onoja, explained that the US military provided intelligence and surveillance support, while Nigeria deployed boots on the ground for the operation. 

“There were no foreign boots on the ground during this operation. What we received were intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance support and other force enablers,” he said.

There was only one problem: according to the Nigerian military itself, Al-Minuki had already been killed once before – in 2024.

For nearly two years, Al-Minuki’s name – also known as Abubakar Mainok or simply Abu-Mainok – had existed in the strange afterlife of Nigeria’s counterterrorism war; a conflict where terrorist commanders are frequently declared dead only to reappear later through propaganda videos, from Abubakar Shekau to Abu Mus’ab Al-Barnawy. 

“Our determined Nigerian Armed Forces, working closely with the Armed Forces of the United States, conducted a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State,” President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement issued from Aso Villa on Saturday. “Early assessments confirm the elimination of the wanted IS senior leader, Abu-Bilal Al-Manuki, also known as Abu-Mainok, along with several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.”

However, in the counterinsurgency operations in northeastern Nigeria, where insurgency and information warfare have become deeply intertwined, certainty is always expensive.

Strategic realignment 

Saturday’s strike was the first major public success to emerge from the military partnership between Nigeria and the US. The operation, designated under Nigeria’s existing counterterrorism framework as falling under Operation Hadin Kai, commenced at 12:01 a.m. and ended at 4:00 a.m. on May 16, according to a statement from the Joint Task Force North-East spokesperson, Lt.-Col. Sani Uba.

The operation reflects a rebuilding of the partnership after it had been almost damaged after a single catastrophic night on Christmas Day 2025, when Donald Trump ordered missile strikes into Sokoto State. Trump framed the strikes as retaliation against militants killing “innocent Christians”—a language that resonated with parts of his domestic base but landed badly across northern Nigeria, where the conflict is far more complicated than the religious framing imposed on it from abroad.

Several of the missiles reportedly malfunctioned. One strike landed near a civilian settlement with no known militant presence. Nigerian officials found themselves balancing two competing realities: the military needed American intelligence and surveillance capabilities, but the Nigerian government could not afford to appear subordinate to the US narrative of the war.

The months that followed produced a quieter arrangement. American military personnel arrived in northeastern Nigeria – eventually around 200 troops – under a structure designed carefully around optics as much as operations. Nigerian authorities retained formal command. The Americans supported intelligence gathering, aerial coordination, and technical operations around the A-29 Super Tucano fleet already deployed against insurgent groups in the Lake Chad Basin.

The choreography surrounding the recent announcement of Al-Minuki’s death was as deliberate as the operation itself. Donald Trump spoke first. Tinubu issued his statement a few hours after Trump posted on Truth Social. Major Gen. Samaila Uba, Director of Defence Information, released a detailed press statement under the Armed Forces of Nigeria letterhead, complete with Al-Minuki’s full array of aliases — Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Ali al-Minuki, Abor Mainok, Abubakar Mainok, Abakar Mainok — and a comprehensive accounting of his alleged roles. 

Everyone involved in the recent communication appeared determined not to repeat the Sokoto embarrassment on  Christmas Day, when Washington’s messaging had almost completely overshadowed Abuja’s.

“Nigeria appreciates this partnership with the United States in advancing our shared security objectives,” Tinubu said. “I extend my sincere gratitude to President Trump for his leadership and unwavering support in this effort. I look forward to more decisive strikes against all terrorist enclaves across the nation.”

The statement was noted for its tone and content. Tinubu’s public gratitude to Trump marks a significant shift from the friction that defined the relationship only five months ago, when parts of Nigeria’s political and diplomatic establishment, along with some ordinary Nigerians, were quietly furious over both the Christmas strikes and the framing of responding to the claims of Christian genocide that accompanied them. 

So who exactly was Al-Minuki?

Trump described him as “the second in command of ISIS globally.” AFRICOM called him “the director of global operations for ISIS”. The Nigerian Defence Headquarters offered the most specific claim: that as recently as February 2026, Al-Minuki “may have been elevated to the position of Head of the General Directorate of States, placing him as the second most senior leader within the ISIS global hierarchy.”

The same statement linked him to the 2018 Dapchi kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls, to the facilitation of fighters into Libya between 2015 and 2016, to weapons manufacturing and drone development, and to “economic warfare” coordination across the Sahel.

“His death removes a critical node through which ISIS coordinated and directed operations across different regions of the world,” the Defence Headquarters’ (DHQ) statement said.

Al-Minuki was a product of the insurgency itself. Born in 1982 in Mainok, a town along the Benisheikh axis of Borno State, he took his nom de guerre (pseudonym) from his hometown. Those who knew him in his early years, during the rise of Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram, told HumAngle that he was a young man who ran a small barbing salon in Mainok village, about 58 kilometres west of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria. Long before his name became associated with violence and insurgency, he was known simply as a village barber.

Before pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015, he was a senior Boko Haram commander with a documented antagonism toward Abubakar Shekau. His split with Shekau was a result of competing visions of insurgency: Shekau operated through spectacle, brutality, and deliberate isolation from the Islamic State central command. The faction that became ISWAP sought structure, territorial governance, and integration with the IS international hierarchy. When IS reportedly requested fighters for Libya during the height of the Syrian conflict, Shekau refused. Al-Minuki, then commanding ISWAP’s Lake Chad division, complied — one reason, analysts say, he rose within IS’s provincial bureaucracy while Shekau remained suspect in its eyes.

The DHQ’s assertion that Al-Minuki served as “Nigeria-based al-Furqan GDP Office Emir” from 2023 onward is consistent with what analysts had been tracking for several years: his role as the connective tissue between ISWAP’s local operations and the IS’s transnational administrative architecture. His designation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US in June 2023 under Executive Order 13224, cited in Saturday’s military statement, reflected assessments that he had become central to ISWAP’s financial networks, weapons procurement, drone acquisition, and communications between the Lake Chad insurgency and IS-linked structures across West Africa and the Sahel. 

The “second in command of ISIS globally” framing is a political claim, pitched to an American domestic audience that requires a recognisable villain. Still, it doesn’t situate Al-Minuki well within ISIS’s formal hierarchy. 

Al-Minuki had long occupied a powerful position within the ranks of ISWAP, but his influence deepened after the deaths of Abu Musab al-Barnawi and, later, the death of Abu Rumaisa or Abba, both sons of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf in 2023, as reported by HumAngle. Their deaths created a vacuum at the centre of the ISWAP leadership structure and how it interacts with the Islamic State global networks, thrusting Mainok into a more strategic role in coordinating operations of the terror group across the Lake Chad region.

Al-Minuki was the man most responsible for keeping ISWAP wired into the Islamic State’s international infrastructure. His death is a meaningful disruption, but not the decapitation of a global terrorist hierarchy. 

ISWAP has repeatedly demonstrated that it can regenerate leadership after losses. It replaced leaders and survived the loss of top commanders. Its resilience has never derived primarily from any single commander; rather, it has stemmed from the political and economic conditions within Borno and across the Lake Chad Basin that continue to enable recruitment, taxation, and territorial control. The DHQ acknowledged as much, noting that “Battle Damage Assessment is ongoing, while follow-up exploitation operations are being conducted to clear remaining terrorist elements in the area.”

“Mistaken identity” 

The official statement from the Army said it was common for numerous terrorists to use the same names or aliases, suggesting that both the individual killed in 2024 and the commander killed in this strike shared the same name. It did not acknowledge any mistakes. 

“This time around, this individual [we killed] is the original owner of that name,” the Director of the Defence Media Operation said. 

Meanwhile, Bayo Onanuga, President Tinubu’s spokesperson, in a Facebook post on Saturday, claimed the discrepancy between the person killed in 2024 and the one killed now was due to a case of mistaken identity. He also warned that sceptics had “rushed to question the authenticity of the Nigerian-American joint military operation” and said the criticism was “premature and not grounded in the realities of modern counterterrorism operations.” He noted that Nigeria’s Armed Forces were “operating in one of the world’s most complex insurgency environments where targets often move across borders and use multiple identities.”

Nigeria has lived through this before. Shekau was declared dead multiple times across more than a decade until soldiers grew to distrust the announcements and civilians in Borno learned to reserve judgment until they saw real change on the ground.

The Presidency’s warning that “premature dismissal of military claims can inadvertently undermine operational morale and strategic messaging” is a legitimate concern. But it is also an argument for public deference rather than public accountability. 

For now, Trump has another example to point to as evidence that American military engagement abroad delivers results. Tinubu also has a successful joint operation that projects competence and international partnership without appearing commanded from outside.

The Armed Forces of Nigeria, in Major Gen. Uba’s words, have demonstrated “unwavering resolve to confront terrorism and deny extremist groups the ability to threaten national, regional and international security.”

But in the displacement camps and farming communities scattered across Borno State, the significance of Saturday’s strike will be measured differently. 

The presidents of Nigeria and the United States have announced the killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described as the second-in-command of ISIL (ISIS).

Donald Trump first made the announcement in a social media post on Friday, without disclosing when or where the joint Nigerian-US military operation happened.

On Saturday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said in a statement that al-Minuki, also known as Abu-Mainok, was killed “along with several of his lieutenants” during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.

The Nigerian army described it as “a meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation” carried out on Saturday between midnight and 4am (23:00 to 03:00 GMT) in Metele, in Borno state in northeast Nigeria.

Borno has been the epicentre of a long-running campaign by the Boko Haram armed group and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which is linked to ISIL.

Who was al-Minuki?

Little is publicly known about al-Minuki, who had been under US sanctions since 2023.

Before pledging allegiance to ISIL in 2015, al-Minuki was a prominent Boko Haram leader, according to the Nigerian army.

An army statement described him as a “key” operational and strategic figure who provided guidance to ISIL entities outside Nigeria on media operations, economic warfare and weapons manufacturing.

“His death removes a critical node through which ISIS coordinated and directed operations across different regions of the world,” the army said.

It added that al-Minuki oversaw ISIL-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa, including attacks against “ethnic and religious minority communities”. In 2018, he was linked to the kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls in Dapchi, in northeastern Nigeria’s Yobe state.

Emerging power

Al-Minuki is believed to have risen through the ranks of ISWAP following the disappearance of veteran commander Mamman Nur in 2018.

His reported ability to operate discreetly and avoid public attention helped him maintain influence over operations, while evading detection by regional and international security forces.

Cheta Nwanze, chief executive of the Lagos-based advisory group, SBM Intelligence, said al-Minuki had previously been declared killed in 2024 after a military operation in Kaduna state.

“That earlier announcement did not produce a lasting degradation of ISWAP’s capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera, warning that eliminating a single commander may have a limited impact.

Nwanze said the group will be able to recover as long as a growing “ransom economy” in Nigeria – which raised some $1.66m between July 2024 and June 2025, according to an SBM intelligence report – “remains intact”.

“The ultimate tool for control is the man on the ground with a gun, and the ultimate backing for that man is a functional social contract, which sadly Nigeria does not have,” he said. “Until the economic logic that feeds these groups is disrupted, the cycle will continue.”

Experts say leaders such as al-Minuki have been central to coordination between local fighters and ISIL’s broader network, but are not irreplaceable due to the group’s decentralised command structure.

“The killing of al-Minuki will disrupt ISWAP operationally in the short term,” Alex Vines, the Africa programme director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera.

“ISWAP has proven resilient to leadership losses, suggesting this killing will not be strategically decisive on its own.”

‘Inclusive governance reforms’

ISWAP has recently intensified attacks along the Nigeria-Cameroon border, targeting military outposts and humanitarian convoys.

These operations are seen as part of a deliberate effort to consolidate territory and demonstrate the group’s continued relevance despite ongoing pressure, including after Trump accused Nigeria of not doing enough to protect Christians in the country’s north from attacks.

The Nigerian government has rejected the claim, insisting that Muslims are also being targeted by armed groups. In recent months, dozens of US troops have been deployed to Nigeria to help in the fight against armed groups by providing intelligence sharing and technical support.

Tinubu said Nigeria “appreciates” the partnership with the US “in advancing our shared security objectives,” adding that he looked forward “to more decisive strikes against all terrorist enclaves across the nation”.

Vines said al-Minuki’s killing was “a tactical win” for the Tinubu administration, but ISWAP remains a “serious security concern”.

As for the US, eliminating al-Minuki is likely to be framed as a victory against ISIL’s Africa network. It will also reinforce Nigeria’s importance “as a key security partner and a reminder that bilateral relations are much better than a year ago”, Vines told Al Jazeera.

Nwanze said the joint nature of the strike signalled a deepening of US‑Nigeria security cooperation, but the collaboration “will face limits”.

“Washington’s willingness to engage is likely contingent on narrow counter‑terrorism objectives, not on a wholesale commitment to rebuilding Nigeria’s fractured security architecture,” he added.

Mubarak Aliyu, a political and security risk analyst, called the elimination of al-Minuki “a remarkable operational success”. He stressed, however, that “broader, inclusive governance reforms remain fundamental to solving the long-term security challenges in the wider region”.