North-Central

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

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

Warning ignored

The devastation had been predicted. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epicentres of the 2025 floods

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

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

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

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

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

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

Major setbacks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

De-escalating future risks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The casualties 

Scratch-card sellers are not alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the digital divide

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

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

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

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

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

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

With such situations, privilege often determines access. 

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

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

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

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

Government’s shallow fixes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens when those meant to enforce the law are the ones who break it?

For many in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city in the North Central, before 2024, the answer lay in the abrupt, often unceremonious, motor checks conducted by Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs). To many motorists, these inspections, which were meant to ensure the roadworthiness of vehicles, appeared instead as an avenue for these officers to extort unlawful payments. 

Mubarak Muhammed*, a cybersecurity specialist, who once faced such a situation, said:

“I was stopped by these officers and asked to pay ₦9,000 for no reason. They searched my car but never found anything wrong with it, yet they still asked me to pay. I begged for them to let me go because at the time, I was low on funds, with only ₦11,000 in my account. Well, I ended up paying the money, but it wasn’t enough. Their Oga [referring to the senior officer] entered my car and told me I had to settle him privately, that he knew I had money, so I should give him ₦50,000.” At that point, Mubarak said he called his father, who sent their driver to retrieve the car. Only then did the officers back down. 

Stories like Mubarak’s are commonplace on the streets of Abuja, with ongoing claims by some motorists that extortive car searches were a day-to-day stressor. The issue was so rampant that in 2016, the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust wrote an article summarising the concerns of many. In it, frustrated Abuja drivers expressed their displeasure with the car searches that left their pockets drained. 

Over the years, the issue has not faded. In 2024, some residents took to social media, their anger at the VIO system bitterly typed out. One user, in an essay posted on Reddit, expressed their disbelief over being fined ₦75,000 for allegedly beating a red light, an accusation they denied.

This slow-cooking pot of complaints finally reached its boiling point. Towards the end of 2024, human rights activist and lawyer Abubakar Marshal filed a lawsuit against the Federal Capital Territory Directorate of the Road Traffic Services (FCT-DRTS), commonly known as VIO. He argued that no law allowed the officers or related agents to stop, impound, confiscate, seize, or impose fines on motorists.

The judge, Evelyn Maha of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ruled in favour of Abubakar’s argument. On October 2, 2024, the court barred the VIO in FCT from carrying out such actions. 

The ruling was met with jubilation. On X, the microblogging site, one user said, “This is great news,” while another called it “Long overdue.”

But the victory was short-lived. The directorate quickly opposed the judgment and sought an appeal. A consensus was never reached, and so the initial judgment stayed in place: VIO vanished from Abuja’s bustling streets, vehicles went around without inspections, and motorists adjusted to a city without the officers.

That was until technology offered the officers a way back onto the roads

In February 2025, just four months after the ruling, the VIO unveiled an Automated Number Plate Recognition system (ANPR system) that allowed the officers to digitally check plate numbers and ensure all of a vehicle’s credentials were in place. Abdullateef Bello, the FCT-DRTS director, said the system had “legal backing.” It was a way to subvert the issues posed by the barring. Physical checks had been banned, but tech-geared ones hadn’t.

“We are embracing technology in our activities. We have even started,” Kalu Emetu, the spokesperson of the VIO in Abuja, told HumAngle. “Once you have committed certain offences, there will be no need for officers to go after you. What you will get is an e-ticket from us, and you will go and pay into a designated account which belongs to the government.” 

Digitally armed, the officers returned to the city’s streets in February, sliding back as if they never left. But, just as easily as they came back, so did the issues. 

For starters, some motorists told HumAngle that the technology was abandoned before it could even settle, and in less than a year, physical inspections have made a full comeback to the streets of Abuja, though this defies the legal bounds of their return. 

Hadiza Balal*, a 23-year-old learner driver, fell prey to one of these searches in June.

“I was flagged down in Mpape and asked to pull over. At the time, my car papers were expired, so when I was stopped, I knew I was entering a situation I would not easily escape.” 

The officer leaned his head through the window, eyes darting around the interior of the car in search. Finally, after what felt like an eternity to Hadiza, the officer asked her for the thing she feared he would: her car papers.

“When he noticed they had expired, he demanded I pay a fine. I thought the most he would ask for was ₦5,000, but he insisted I give him ₦27,000 to renew my papers,” she recounted. 

This process not only rattled Hadiza, but also stood in direct violation of what the officers were now allowed to do on the road. Physical papers were meant to be viewed on computerised devices, and checks were meant to be done with a quick scan of Hadiza’s plate number, not with the officer halfway into the driver’s seat.

What’s more, when Hadiza finally paid him, there was no e-ticketing as promised, just a demanded transaction that left her suspicious. 

“I managed to persuade the officer to lower the fine to ₦26,500, which would also cover the cost of renewing my documents,” she said, seeming frustrated. “But when I inquired about paying the fine at his station, he insisted that I pay him directly.”

Hadiza didn’t leave until a transfer was made into an account that, she claimed, could never belong to any official organisation. “It was a personal account,” she stated. “A first and last name, with no indication that the account belonged to the government.”

The moment the transfer was done, the officer’s attitude mellowed. The officer who’d been arguing with her was suddenly kind. But even after this struggle, Hadiza faced a second round of problems at the VIO office, where she went to renew the papers.

She described the place as cramped and stifling. The officers ignored her for several minutes before one approached her — not to assist, but to harass.

“He called me “baby girl” and told me I was his girlfriend. I wanted to punch him when he touched my leg, saying he wanted to get to know me more, but I didn’t do anything because I wanted the process to go fast so I could go home,” she recounted. 

Hadiza eventually renewed the documents. 

While some, like Hadiza, leave physical searches unopposed, others demand their right to a digital check, yet, even with their resistance, they are denied the right. 

At Life Camp roundabout in Abuja Municipal Area, Daniel Livinus was stopped by an officer who followed due protocol, only to be hounded by a second officer who didn’t.

“The first one came and scanned my plate number. He didn’t even say anything, just scanned and left,” Daniel recounted. “Not less than a minute later, another one came and asked me to show him my particulars. I said, “Ah, but you can check it on your phone now.” That’s all it took for the man to start shouting, “Will you be the one to teach me my job?”

The fight got heated, so much so that the first officer and a random passerby went to mitigate the situation. David said that both men sided with the aggrieved officer, saying that he should obey because the officer is “doing his job”. 

“If he followed normal protocol, I wouldn’t have had an issue with him,” Daniel added. 

While some motorists are denied the use of the technology, others face issues with it. Sometimes, when scans don’t go through, the officers use that as an incentive to fine motorists who haven’t done wrong.

For Nanlian Mamven, a 21-year-old youth corps member, his car, registered in Plateau State, made him a victim of this issue.

“VIO stopped me at a traffic light and ran my plate number through this new app,” he recounted. “The app is supposed to bring out all your registration information. Still, my details didn’t pop up for some reason, most likely because my car was registered in Plateau, and I think the app only covers FCT-registered cars. It should have been fine because I still had my valid registration papers, but the officers entered the back of my car, told me to drive to their station, and demanded I pay ₦ 28,000.”

Unlike the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), which oversees traffic regulation across the entire country, the Vehicle Inspection Office is run by state governments and the FCT Authority. This means that systems or technologies introduced in the FCT, such as the ANPR app, may not apply uniformly in other states. As a result, vehicles registered outside the FCT often face complications when subjected to Abuja’s digital checks.

Nanlian soon realised this was not just a technical glitch but an extortion attempt. Only after he contacted his mother’s friend, a senior officer, did the demands vanish.

“The senior officer I called said no, the money they were asking for wasn’t the proposed money they should have called, so clearly they had added something to it. When I gave the phone to one of them, they hastily told me I could go. That was how I escaped that day,” he said.

Yet, even then, the ordeal did not end smoothly. Back home, Nanlian discovered his headphones and groceries missing from the backseat, items he claimed disappeared only after the officers entered his car.

“I put two-and-two together and realised they had taken my things,” he said, a claim we could not independently verify. “But at that point, I just let the matter go. Where was I going to start from?” 

The sense of helplessness he expressed seemed to be a recurring thing for many drivers. It didn’t matter if it was a plate number scanning or a physical search; one thing is clear: many of Abuja’s motorists feel slighted by the city’s vehicle inspection system.

When HumAngle contacted the VIO spokesperson with these allegations, he pushed back. Kalu argued that the problem lay less with officers and more with the motorists. 

“We’ve been having these accusations that our people collect their own share,” he told HumAngle. “But you know, people frame the story the way they want. What the present managers of the directorate are doing now is ensuring that technology takes over most of the activities. For example, if you are fined and told where you are going to pay, you wouldn’t have any reason to blame the person who stopped you because you’ve been given a specific government-owned account to pay into.”

Yet, for drivers like Hadiza, Daniel, and Nanlian, the gap between promise and practice remains wide. If nothing changes, more motorists may teeter to the extreme that Hadiza did when asked how she plans to handle driving in Abuja, sometimes abandoning their cars altogether and risking the city’s notorious “one-chance” cabs.

“I can’t lie to you,” she breathed out in frustration, “I think I now hate driving.” 

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

In a compound nestled in Gitata, a remote community in Nasarawa State, North Central Nigeria, life has slowed to a crawl for the children of the late Mr and Mrs Bawa Danladi. Here, adulthood doesn’t begin with the wings of independence but with the sudden stillness of limbs.

In this house where joy once rang and children laughed freely, a strange affliction casts its long, silent cloud, stealing mobility, dignity, and dreams. The only shared pattern? The affliction grips every family member after they turn 18.

Eighteen is pegged as the age of majority in Nigeria. For some people, turning 18 connotes ‘leaving their nests’; however, for Danlami Dalandi and his siblings, it means being robbed of their coming of age.

Of the eight children born to the late Danladi, seven have been struck by a relentless and mysterious condition. Six are now completely paralysed, while another has lost her sight. For a family once filled with life and energy, the tragedy is not just that their bodies have failed them, but also that nobody seems to know why.

Danlami, who is now in his mid-forties, sits slouched, needing help to eat or shift even slightly in his chair. His voice cracks with exhaustion, but he presses on, determined to speak for himself and his siblings. They have become ghost versions of their former selves, slowly caving under their helplessness.

“I thought turning 18 would bring freedom,” said Danlami, the family’s eldest son, his voice heavy with sorrow. “Instead, it was the beginning of our end.”

As he explained his condition, Danlami’s gloomy face needed no interpretation of the emotional exhaustion it carried. While speaking to HumAngle, he described how he moved from a boy filled with energy to a man who couldn’t walk or stand.

He was the first in his family to encounter the enigmatic illness in 2001. It quietly took hold, showing no fever or noticeable symptoms, but slowly drained his strength. Activities that used to be simple started to feel overwhelmingly difficult. Years later, his younger brother Pious began to show the same symptoms, following the same unsettling pattern.

The illness didn’t strike in childhood. Instead, it waited until they crossed into adulthood, then everything began to deteriorate. Their strength faded, and mobility became a struggle. Even their eldest sister, Asabe, seemed spared at first. She married and gave birth before the sickness took hold. Unable to move without assistance, she shares the same fate as her brothers, who are all trapped in a body that no longer obeys.

The major setback

In 1990, when their father passed away, their mother became their anchor. She carried their burden, pushing wheelchairs, cleaning them up, feeding grown children, and wiping tears no one else saw. In a community with no formal support system, she became nurse, caregiver, and breadwinner at the same time.

When asked if the disorder has a historical origin within the family, Danladi told HumAngle that the condition is alien to them, as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were known to be hale and hearty until their demise.

“Our parents never had this sickness. We even asked if our great-grandparents or grandparents had such illnesses, but none of them did. It is only we, born of the same mother, that are afflicted by this sickness,” he said.

For years, their mother carried this weight of care. When she died in 2017, the siblings were left not just physically immobilised but emotionally adrift. 

Danlami said that despite their condition, they still bear the guilt of being unable to assist their mother. “She was our world,” says Danlami quietly. “She believed we could get better, even when we didn’t. She died in 2017, and that was when it truly felt like everything stopped.”

A rare disease

Their only formal visit to a proper medical facility happened in 2018, and no diagnosis was shared. They were taken to the Federal Medical Centre in Keffi courtesy of the Berekete Family, an Abuja-based reality radio and television programme. Tests were conducted, but no diagnosis was shared. They never saw the results, though they received some financial assistance.

When the broadcast station spotlighted the issue, the Nasarawa State Ministry of Health sent its representatives, including doctors, to conduct additional tests, suspecting polio. But according to Danlami, the only thing the officials told them was that “it’s not polio.”

Dr Douglas Okor, a consultant neurosurgeon at the Federal Medical Centre, Abuja, told HumAngle that the family might be experiencing a type of muscular dystrophy, a rare and often misunderstood genetic condition that quietly ravages the body’s muscles, starting in adolescence and worsening with age.

According to Dr Okor, the most familiar kinds, like Duchenne and Becker, typically affect boys early in childhood. But a lesser-known group called Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy (LGMD) can surface in late adolescence or early adulthood. LGMD begins in the hips and shoulders and steadily disables the body, just like in the case of the late Danladi’s family.

“LGMD often appears in families with no known history. It can be inherited silently until two parents, both carrying the mutated gene, pass it to their child,” he noted. “Over time, patients lose the ability to walk, feed themselves, or even breathe without assistance, in some cases.”

Rare diseases such as LGMD affect a small percentage of the population, but they pose daunting challenges, especially in low-income countries where awareness, diagnostic tools, and specialised care are limited. While thousands of rare diseases exist globally, many of them genetic, accurate data on their incidence in Nigeria remains scarce, largely because of underreporting or misdiagnosis. 

A study at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria, uncovered 11 cases of Duchenne muscular dystrophy over five years. One key finding was that scarce medical resources and early warning signs were routinely overlooked, leaving patients to arrive late and already deep into the disorder’s grip.

Like Danlami said, they were active children when they were younger. “I used to climb trees, play football, and help on the farm. Then, slowly, it became hard to move. And it never got better.” Their condition kept deteriorating because they were never diagnosed.

His brother, Danjuma, was the family’s powerhouse. Known around Gitata as “the Usain Bolt of the block”, he could out-sprint his peers when he was younger. He later worked as a mechanic, fixing generators, rewiring appliances, and bringing light to homes. Today, he cannot even brush his teeth without assistance.

Dr Okor explained that the symptoms often mask themselves as ordinary fatigue. Unlike infectious diseases, muscular dystrophy doesn’t produce visible inflammation or fever. “That makes it harder to detect, especially in low-resource settings like Gitata, where most people have never heard of the condition.”

Although rare, he noted, the illness can be managed if detected early, with input from multiple specialists and continuous rehabilitation. “It can be managed by a combination of a neurologist, physiotherapist, and occupational therapist,” Dr Okor said.

However, for the Danladi family, such options remain beyond reach, both financially and geographically; there is virtually no system in place to lean on. 

Nigeria has a National Commission for Persons with Disabilities, set up to protect rights and prevent discrimination, but there is no specific programme or policy dedicated to rare neuromuscular disorders like muscular dystrophy. Experts have long urged the government to create a framework for early diagnosis, registries, and specialised support services, but so far, these calls have gone unanswered.

One still standing

Since their mother’s death, the family has been left with one carer: Hannatu, their youngest sister.

The 25-year-old is the only sibling untouched, at least physically. Each day, she cares for her brothers, helping them bathe, eat, and reposition their stiffened bodies when necessary. 

But fear stalks her.

“I don’t know if it will reach me too,” she said, her voice barely audible. “In 2018, our youngest brother was fine. Now, he can’t lift his arms.”

Every tick of the clock reminds her she could be nearing the family’s invisible threshold. Though she has passed the age, she wonders constantly if she’s merely living on borrowed time.

Beyond that dread, the condition carries additional emotional scars for the women in the family. 

Her older sister, Cecilia, 28, is already living with the burden. The 28-year-old has already lost vision in one eye and movement in one of her legs. But what haunts her more is loneliness. Her and her sister’s futures are not just on pause; their love lives are equally hanging in the balance.

“Suitors don’t come our way. I think they’re afraid. They think it’s contagious. Honestly, we’ve all given up on the idea of marriage,” she told HumAngle.

Hannatu nods in silence as Cecilia speaks. Their dreams of families, weddings, careers, and travel have all withered into survival routines. The family’s closest neighbour feels a blend of heartbreak and helplessness. 

“We’ve watched this unfold over 20 years,” Shuaibu Adamu, a neighbour and family friend, said. “First, it was Danlami. Then the others followed. No one knows what this sickness is. We just pray for them to heal.”

In a country battling an overstretched healthcare system and public scepticism of rare diseases, families like the Danladis often slip through cracks too wide to fill. Without consistent intervention or support, their fate remains unchanged.

For now, Hannatu stays vigilant, her hands full, her heart heavy. But she sometimes wonders how long she can keep holding everyone up without falling herself.

On Aug. 16, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, announced that security services had captured two terror leaders, including Mahmud Muhammad Usman, described as a leader of the al-Qaida-linked faction Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina fi Biladis Sudan, popularly known as Ansaru. Authorities also said they had detained Mahmud al-Nigeri, who is associated with the emergent Mahmuda network in North Central Nigeria. 

The arrests, made during operations that spanned May to July this year, were described by the NSA as “the most decisive blow against Ansaru” since its inception, with officials hinting that digital material seized could unlock additional cells and enable follow-on arrests. 

“These two men have jointly spearheaded multiple attacks on civilians, security forces and critical national infrastructure. They are currently in custody and will face due legal process,” Ribadu noted.

For a government under pressure to tame overlapping threats from terrorists, this is a political and operational win. The harder question is whether it marks an actual turning point in a fragmented conflict that has repeatedly adapted to leadership losses. 

A short history of a long problem

Ansaru emerged publicly in early 2012 as a breakaway from Boko Haram after years of quiet cross-border travel, training, and ideological cross-pollination with al-Qaida affiliates. 

The split reflected disagreements over targeting and ideological tactics. While Boko Haram, under Abubakar Shekau, embraced mass-casualty violence, including suicide attacks that killed several civilians, including Muslims, Ansaru positioned itself as a more “discriminating” outfit, focused on Western and high-profile Nigerian targets and on hostage-taking for leverage. 

The group’s founders, notably Khalid al-Barnawi and Abubakar Adam Kambar, had networks developed through al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which shaped their doctrine and operational tactics. This lineage remains crucial for understanding Ansaru’s strategic choices and its enduring connections in the Sahel. 

Ansaru’s first phase was brief but consequential. Between late 2012 and early 2013, the group was credibly linked to a string of operations: the storming of a detention site in Abuja, the country’s capital city, on November 2012, the attack on a Nigerian convoy bound for Mali in January 2013, and, most notoriously, the 2013 kidnapping of seven expatriate workers from a Setraco construction camp in Jama’are, Bauchi State in the country’s North East. The hostages were later killed, and Ansaru circulated a proof-of-death video that stunned Nigeria’s security community. 

Those incidents cemented the group’s image as an al-Qaida-influenced kidnap-and-assault specialist rather than a proto-governance insurgency. 

Two leadership shocks then disrupted Ansaru’s momentum. In 2012, Abubakar Adam Kambar, the group’s first commander, was reported killed during a security operation, elevating Khalid Barnawi’s importance inside the network. 

In April 2016, security forces arrested Khalid al-Barnawi in Lokoja, Kogi State, in the North Central, an event that was widely seen as decapitating Ansaru’s remaining central structure. Ansaru then disappeared from public claim streams for several years after that arrest, an action that suggested the group’s command and control was genuinely degraded. 

However, in January 2020, Ansaru reappeared with an ambush on the convoy of the Emir of Potiskum as it transited through Kaduna State in the North West. Later that year, it issued additional claims in the same region, signalling a pivot from its northeastern birthplace toward spaces where state presence was thinner and terror violence had created both a security vacuum and a recruitment market. 

Reports, including one published by HumAngle, traced some of this revival to the group’s continued ties with al-Qaida affiliates in the Sahel and pragmatic cohabitation with terror gangs, whether through facilitation, training, or weapons flows. 

Why the recent arrests matter

The recent arrests resemble earlier moments when big names like Abubakar Adam Kambar were taken off the battlefield. Officials say Mahmud Muhammad Usman and his counterpart from the Mahmuda network were not only operational leaders but also brokers of transnational connections, including alleged roles in orchestrating the 2022 Kuje prison break and in a 2013 attack against a Nigerien uranium site.

“Malam Mamuda, was said to have trained in Libya between 2013 and 2015 under foreign jihadist instructors from Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, specialising in weapons handling and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) fabrication,” Ribadu said

Those claims serve a dual purpose. They frame the detentions as part of a campaign that reaches beyond Nigeria’s borders, and they signal to international partners that Abuja is aligning against a regional terrorist web that spans from Northern Nigeria through Niger and into Mali and Burkina Faso. 

The tactical benefits are clearer. Removing senior fixers disrupts the flow of money, weapons, and specialised expertise that enable small cadres to punch above their numerical weight.

The haul of digital media, if exploited quickly, can reveal safe-route maps, dead-drop protocols, and liaisons inside other terror syndicates that lease out men and terrain in north-west and north-central Nigeria. When combined with focused policing in towns and market hubs, that intelligence can shrink Ansaru’s margins for clandestine movement and fundraising. 

None of this ends the threat on its own, but it changes the tempo and increases the cost to operate.

What is Ansaru, and what is it not?

To understand fully what this moment means, it is useful to situate Ansaru among the three principal jihadist currents that affect Nigeria today: Boko Haram’s Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna lid-Da‘wa wal-Jihad (often called “JAS” or “Shekau’s faction”), the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Ansaru itself.

JAS was, for years, the most visible face of the insurgency, built around an absolutist and takfiri reading of Salafi-Jihadism, and operationalised through terror attacks that did not distinguish Muslim civilians from security targets. The Shekau era normalised female suicide bombers, mass abductions, and village-level depopulation. Governance was secondary to spectacle and intimidation. Since Shekau died in 2021, JAS has splintered and receded in some arenas, although pockets remain capable of lethal violence. 

ISWAP is different. Born of a schism with Shekau, it has tended to emphasise territorial management in the Lake Chad Basin, with taxation, shadow court systems, and calibrated violence designed, at least nominally, to avoid indiscriminate Muslim casualties. Its commanders often court pragmatic relationships with traders and smugglers, and, unlike JAS in its prime, ISWAP markets itself as predictable enough for civilians to bargain with and understand. International Crisis Group and other researchers have long highlighted these governance motifs as operational advantages, even as ISWAP continues to attack military positions and abduct civilians. 

Ansaru occupies a third lane. Its al-Qaida genealogy predisposes it toward targeted kidnappings of foreigners and high-profile Nigerians, ambushes of convoys, and the cultivation of rural social capital.

During its 2020 and 2022 push in the North West, Ansaru proselytisers distributed food and farm inputs, positioned themselves as protectors against predatory terrorists, and sought to embed preachers who preached against secular politics and democratic participation. This hearts-and-minds approach was less about running a taxation state and more about building safe communities of sympathy to hide in, recruit from, and extract logistics support. 

Ideologically, Ansaru’s guides are AQIM and, by extension, JNIM in the Sahel. That lineage favours calibrated violence, prolonged detentions rather than mass executions, and strategic hostage bargaining, as seen in the Setraco case and other high-profile kidnappings from 2012 to 2013. It also means Ansaru is plugged into the Sahelian marketplace for weapons, trainers, and media distribution, which helps explain its periodic ability to rebound after leadership losses. 

A map of influence, not of control

In the North East, ISWAP and residual JAS cells dominate the insurgent landscape. Ansaru’s post-2019 story unfolded more in Kaduna’s rural west and parts of neighbouring states, where the absence of policing and the rise of kidnap-for-ransom gangs created both a protection racket and an opportunity for ideological entrepreneurs. 

Birnin Gwari Local Government Area in Kaduna State became a shorthand for that nexus. Residents and local leaders reported that Ansaru courted communities, fought some local terrorist groups, and tried to regulate flows on key feeder roads. 

Media and civil society reports described the group distributing Sallah gifts in Kuyello and influencing daily life in and around Damari and other settlements. These were snapshots of temporary influence, not evidence of continuous territorial control, but they were a warning sign that non-state governance was thickening in spaces where the state was thin. 

That is the context in which Ribadu’s announcement landed. If the commanders arrested were connective tissue between al-Qaida-adjacent logisticians, local fixers, and local terrorist entrepreneurs, then removing them will reverberate in Birnin Gwari and similar corridors. It is also why the arrests were paired rhetorically with claims about plots and partnerships far from Kaduna, including across the Maghreb and the Sahel. 

The Federal Government wants Nigerians to see Ansaru not as another rural gang, but as a node in a continental web that justifies sustained, internationally backed counterterrorism.

Lessons from 2012 and 2016

This is not Nigeria’s first experience with decapitation strikes against Ansaru. In 2012, the reported killing of Kambar set off internal adjustments. 

In 2016, the arrest of Khalid al-Barnawi appeared to shutter Ansaru’s media pipeline and disrupt its external ties, which supports the argument that leadership matters for a relatively small, networked faction. 

Yet by 2020, the group was reclaiming relevance in the northwest, an adaptation that coincided with the Sahel’s worsening jihadist crisis and the metastasis of rural banditry inside Nigeria. 

This short history suggests a dual lesson: Taking leaders off the board works, especially when accompanied by seizures of communications and couriers.  However, it works less well when ungoverned spaces expand faster than the state can fill them and when adjacent theatres, like Mali and Burkina Faso, are producing more seasoned cadres than the region can absorb.

Operations that shaped Ansaru

Ansaru’s brand was shaped by a handful of headline incidents:

Kidnapping and killing of foreign construction workers, Jama’are, Bauchi State, February–March 2013. Seven expatriates seized from Setraco’s compound were later executed after a period of captivity. The case demonstrated Ansaru’s preference for hostage taking aimed at political signalling and bargaining leverage, even if the outcome was ultimately murderous. 

Attack on Nigerian troops en route to Mali, Kogi State, January 2013. As Abuja prepared to contribute forces to the international intervention against jihadists in northern Mali, Ansaru claimed a lethal ambush that underlined its Sahel-centric framing and its willingness to hit military targets to deter Nigeria’s regional role. 

A cluster of 2012 operations, including an assault on a detention facility in Abuja and kidnappings such as the abduction of a French national. The pattern resembled AQIM’s repertoire in the Sahel more than Boko Haram’s campaign in Borno, with a focus on foreigners, convoys, and facilities that maximised international attention. 

More recently, investigators and journalists have traced Ansaru’s fingerprints to influence activities in Kaduna’s rural belt, including the deployment of preachers, gift distribution to farmers, and cooperation or competition with bandit factions. Even where attribution is contested, the persistence of these reports speaks to Ansaru’s hybrid strategy of armed proselytisation and transactional coexistence.

What the arrests change, and what they do not

The most optimistic reading is that neutralising senior Ansaru leaders will slow operational planning, complicate cross-border procurement of arms, and deter terrorist groups from entering into further tactical pacts. In the near term, that could translate into fewer complex ambushes, fewer kidnappings with political messaging, and a reduction in the movement of specialist bombmakers or media operatives between northwest Nigeria and Sahelian fronts.

If the digital evidence that Ribadu referenced is robust and rapidly exploited, the state could also roll up facilitators in markets, transport unions, and phone shops that act as the quiet arteries of clandestine groups. 

A more cautious reading is grounded in Ansaru’s history and the adaptive ecology of violence in the North West. The group is small, but it has repeatedly used alliances to magnify its reach. If surviving mid-level cadres can maintain relationships with bandit-terror leaders who control forest sanctuaries and rural taxation points, Ansaru can regenerate a functional structure even without marquee names at the top. 

In some cases, the brand itself is a currency: men can claim to be acting on behalf of Ansaru to secure access, while the real command node sits far away and communicates sparingly. Detentions alone do not break that reputational economy.

There is also the question of displacement. Pressure in one theatre can push cadres into neighbouring spaces. As long as Sahelian conflict systems continue to produce itinerant trainers and brokers with AQIM or JNIM pedigrees, there will be a supply to meet Nigeria’s demand for clandestine services. Here, the government’s signalling about cross-border links is more than public relations. It points toward the necessity of intelligence sharing with Niger, and, depending on the political climate, with authorities in Mali and Burkina Faso, where applicable. Securing those partnerships in an era of coups and shifting alliances is not a technical task. It is political.

What would “success” look like six months from now?

A realistic definition of success is not zero attacks, but measurable attrition in Ansaru’s facilitation capacity and a visible shrinking of its rural social space. There are indicators Nigerians can watch for:

• Fewer kidnap incidents with clear ideological framing in Kaduna’s rural west and adjacent corridors, and more arrests of kidnap coordinators with al-Qaida ties.
• Disruption of preacher networks that have been used to socialise communities into Ansaru’s worldview, ideally with community-led alternatives filling the vacuum.
• Intelligence-led seizures on trunk and feeder roads that connect markets in Kaduna and Niger States to forest hideouts, particularly around Birnin Gwari, Kuyello, and Damari.
• Public defections of mid-level facilitators following a perception that the brand can no longer protect them from arrest or rival bandits.

If kidnappings bridge into the harvest season with familiar signatures, or if new names suddenly surface to replace those detained, then the state will need to ask whether it has struck the right balance between kinetic pressure and political management of the rural economy of violence.

The bottom line

Ribadu’s announcement is welcome news in a war that has lacked good headlines. For a government facing simultaneous pressure in the North East and the North West, removing Ansaru leaders offers a chance to disrupt one of the more insidious cross-border pipelines feeding violence in Nigeria’s heartland. 

The history, though, counsels humility. Ansaru has absorbed leadership losses before, gone quiet, and then reconstituted itself where the state was weakest. What comes next will depend less on what was said at a podium than on what happens on back roads and in forest clearings, at checkpoints and market stalls, and in the daily bargains between frightened communities and the armed men who claim to protect or prey on them.

If the new arrests are leveraged to dismantle facilitation networks, to keep pressure on safe havens, and to fill the governance gap that Ansaru has so skillfully exploited, then Nigeria could indeed be at a turning point. If not, the country risks watching this chapter follow the pattern of 2012 and 2016, when a decapitated network lay low and then returned in a new guise. 

The choice now is whether to treat this as a headline or as the start of a sustained campaign that finally closes Ansaru’s page in Nigeria’s long insurgent story. 

The day after Eid al-Fitr, a festive period for Muslims, is usually quiet; a time for rest, reflection, and recovery for most tailors who had had sleepless nights to ensure people looked colourful during the celebrations. For Abubakar Ibrahim, this March, it became a day etched in trauma.

It began as a brawl between two boys from neighbouring communities, Tunga Sabon Titi and Maje, divided only by a narrow stretch of road in Minna, the capital of Niger State in North Central Nigeria. The brawl quickly escalated into a full-blown gang clash, drawing in allies and sympathisers from both sides.

Ibrahim, a tailor and student in his early twenties, was at home when the commotion began. “I was heading somewhere when I heard the rants ‘karya ne wallahi, Ba sulhu [It’s a lie, no reconciliation]’,” he recalled. “While all this was happening, vigilantes were trying to disperse the crowd as we stood and watched.”

Moments later, gunfire shattered the air. He never saw it coming; six pellets from a Dane gun tore into him. Two lodged near his clavicle, the rest in his lap. “I didn’t realise I was hit until someone drew my attention while we were running,” he told HumAngle. “Then I felt dizzy, my leg went numb, and I collapsed.”

Residents told HumAngle that Mada, a local vigilante, had been aiming at the gang when his bullet missed and struck Ibrahim, who had no part in the clash or any gang activity. He was simply trying to earn a living, yet became another innocent casualty in a pattern of violence that has become disturbingly familiar in Minna.

Tracing the origins

Investigations by HumAngle trace the roots of Minna’s gang violence to long-standing turf rivalries between youths in neighbourhoods in the mid-2000s, when loosely organised gangs, locally called Yan Daba, engaged in sporadic confrontations, largely confined to street-level disputes.

Over time, the scale and lethality of these conflicts grew. Neighbourhood rivalries now pit entire communities such as Limawa, Unguwan Daji, Bosso, Soje, Kpakungu, Barikin Sale, against each other. Festive periods, school closures, and political transitions frequently trigger violent episodes, often leaving deaths, injuries, and property destruction in their wake. Some sources within these communities said the violence sometimes happens as weekend fights over petty theft, insults, or territory.

These confrontations have also spilt into schools, with rivals asserting dominance through violence. Schools such as Zarumai Model in Bosso, Government Day Secondary School in Unguwan Daji, Father O’Connell Science College (formerly Government Secondary School), and Hill Top Model Schools have all witnessed inter-school violent gang clashes, sometimes ending in serious injuries or deaths.

HumAngle has previously documented the activities of a gang with the same name in northwestern Nigeria’s Kano, where they terrorised neighbourhoods, showing that this style of youth-driven violence is not confined to one city.

These gangs are usually armed with daggers, cutlasses, and sharp weapons like scissors, animal horns, and screwdrivers. 

This violence is not confined to the past. In a pre-dawn sting operation in April, police officers in Niger State arrested 24 suspected criminals linked to thuggery and armed robbery in Maitumbi, a troubled suburb of Minna. The coordinated raid, led by the Anti-Thuggery Unit and backed by local police divisions and vigilantes, targeted crime hotspots like Angwan-Roka, Kwari-Berger, Flamingo, and Tudun Wada, following a surge in youth violence and gang activity, according to police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun.

In March, the state Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education shut down Government Day Secondary School, Bosso Road, and Father O’Connell Science College in Minna, after assessing ongoing conflicts between students and local youths, some posing as students.

Although many incidents go unreported, they continue to claim lives and property.

In April last year, a violent clash between rival gangs in the Maitumbi area left two dead, with shops, vehicles, and tricycles damaged. The police confirmed the arrest of six suspects connected to the incident and stated that efforts were underway to apprehend others involved. 

Later in December, a 15-year-old boy, Saidu Ubu, was killed in another fight between rival groups from Gurgudu and Kwari-Berger. The altercation, which began as a minor dispute late at night, quickly escalated into a brutal fight that caused panic among residents. By the time police arrived, the attackers had fled.

More recently, police arrested 18-year-old Jamilu Abdullahi, known as Zabo, over alleged armed robbery, culpable homicide, and gang violence in several of the affected communities.

Caught in the fix

For residents like Ibrahim, these flare-ups are more than news headlines; they are life-altering. After he collapsed due to the gunshots, his brother rushed to the scene and took him to Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida Specialist Hospital, a nearby public medical facility.  

But the ordeal was far from over. 

When they arrived at the hospital, they were told that there were no doctors available to attend to him at the moment. “They only gave me some injections but didn’t attempt to remove the bullets,” Ibrahim recounted. 

Four days later, still in pain, his family turned to a local hunter in nearby Wushishi known for removing Dane gun pellets. The hunter succeeded where the hospital had failed.

“I was unconscious when I arrived at the hospital,” Ibrahim said. “I only woke up there. But the bullets stayed in me for four days until they were removed by the local hunter.”

The recovery was slow and painful. Ibrahim missed his exams, adding academic loss to physical trauma. “It took me a while [over a month] to recover,” he said quietly.

The vigilante accused of shooting him was reportedly arrested, but Ibrahim has heard nothing since; no justice, no closure. 

Residents who spoke to HumAngle expressed concerns over the lingering menace that has not only continued to affect their loved ones but has also left them worried about having to raise their children in such an environment.

“I do not want my child to grow up witnessing this violence and someday be influenced to partake in it. It will break my heart,” said Danlami Shittu, a designer whose shop is just metres away from where Ibrahim was shot. “Every festive period, we hold our breath. These boys do not just fight; they settle old scores. Yet those of us who are not involved still pay the price.”

The missing links

Aminu Muhammad, a consultant in peace and conflict management, said the roots of this crisis lie deep within the decay of societal values and systemic neglect and a defect in the state’s justice and security frameworks.

He identified poor parenting as a primary driver of youth delinquency in the city, noting that many parents in the city are disengaged from their children’s lives, unaware of where they live or who they associate with.

This parental neglect has created a vacuum filled by peer influence and street culture, pushing many youths toward gang affiliation. “You must first take care of your children before they become more acceptable in society,” he told HumAngle.

Beyond the home, Dr. Aminu, who is also a lecturer at the Abdullahi Kure University, Minna, revealed that lack of access to education and vocational training has left many young people idle and vulnerable. Those who cannot enrol in formal schools are rarely offered alternatives to learn trades or acquire skills that could make them self-reliant. This absence of opportunity often translates into frustration and a turn toward violence.

Dr. Aminu also points to the failure of security agencies and the justice system. 

“When there are calls to security personnel during violent encounters, the response is often delayed. These delays allow attackers to escape and victims to retaliate, perpetuating a cycle of violence,” he added. “Even when arrests are made, the lack of stern punishment mechanisms undermines accountability. These guys are granted bail or discharged without much consequence. Influential persons and even government officials sometimes intervene to secure their release.”

To stem the tide of violence, the conflict management consultant suggested a multi-pronged approach: stronger parental involvement, public sensitisation through the National Orientation Agency, and a tougher security and judicial framework. Without this, he warns, Minna risks losing its identity as a peaceful city and its youth to the streets. 

Bello Abdullahi, the state’s Commissioner for Homeland Security, did not respond to multiple calls and messages requesting official comments on the issue.

For Ibrahim, the physical wounds have healed, and he has returned to his tailoring, but the emotional scars will outlast the headlines. And for other casualties of this violence, their stories never even make it that far.

“I want peace. Not just for me, but for all of us,” Ibrahim said.

Aminu Ishaku now earns a living as a commercial motorcyclist in Abuja.

His family has five hectares of land in Chadari, a farming village in Kano State’s Makoda Local Government Area, North West Nigeria, where they once planted maize, sorghum, and millet, crops that fed and earned them some money.

Until 2021, the land never failed them completely. Some years, it brought 10 bags of sorghum, seven of millet, and nine of maize. 

That year, Aminu borrowed ₦300,000 ($196) and walked into another season with faith. 

“There was rain,” said the 22-year-old. “Everything germinated beautifully. We even added manure to help them grow faster. We were expecting more because of how well they sprouted.”

But the rains stopped. And for two long months, nothing fell from the sky. The young crops dried, devastating the family. No irrigation system, no borehole, no motorised pump. Just the soil and their hopes.

When the rains eventually returned, they planted again. But the second harvest was nothing close to what they needed. 

“That was when I told my father I would go look for work,” Aminu said. 

It was his first time leaving Kano. With only ₦2,000 ($1.31) to cover transport, Aminu, who had just finished secondary school, travelled 12 hours by road to Abuja, arriving on the outskirts of Apo, a district in the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), where the city asphalt gives way to dust.

“That is where I settled,” he said.

Each year, he returns briefly during the planting season, hoping things will be different. But it has not been.

“In 2022, there was another drought,” he said. “Then, insects attacked the crops. They grew, but the insects destroyed them. The dry spell made them vulnerable.”

In late 2023, the problem worsened. 

There was flooding, said Aminu. Water swallowed homes and farmlands, and crops that survived the dry spell perished under the flood. 

“That caused food shortages,” he said. “Those whose crops did not drown had to harvest early.”

“We barely had enough to eat, let alone sell,” Aminu added. “That is why I stay in Abuja to work, to support the family.”

Aminu is one of the many young men fleeing the slow violence of environmental breakdown in Northern Nigeria. For some, like 30-year-old Abdulhamid Sulaiman, the journey began earlier. Abdulhamid left Danja, a farming town in Katsina State, in 2014, long before climate change became synonymous with rural poverty.

“Rain would disappear in the middle of the season,” he said. “The crops would grow weak. Then insects would come. Sometimes they ate the maize from inside.”

When he married, his father gave him four hectares of land, where he planted maize and tomatoes.

In good years, he harvested five to 10 bags of maize and earned up to ₦250,000 ($164) from tomatoes. But the rains changed. 

“The harvest could not last us till the following season,” he said. “And I did not have another job.”

Groundwater began to seep from the earth during the rainy season, soaking parts of his farm and stalling growth. 

He did not know why. 

“It just kept coming up, slowly, like it was rising from underneath,” he told me.

So, like Aminu, he left.

Idris Sale’s story is no different. In 2015, he left Kano for Abuja after repeated seasons of dwindling millet and cassava harvests. As food dwindled, he began searching for alternative survival means for his family.

These are not isolated stories. They are early signals of a broader shift.

A 2021 study warned that climate-induced migration could surge in states like Sokoto, Zamfara, and Katsina by 2050 under worsening environmental conditions. Northern Nigeria is already losing up to 350,000 hectares of arable land each year to desertification, a crisis that the United Nations estimates costs the country $5 billion annually in lost livelihoods.

On-the-ground reporting confirms this trend. In July, HumAngle showed how desertification and the shrinking of migration corridors are intensifying farmer-herder conflicts across the region. A 2022 investigation highlighted similar tensions in Yobe, while a 2024 story detailed how desertification continues to consume livelihoods in the Northeast. 

In the same month, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, the Minister of Environment, disclosed that 50 to 75 per cent of the land across Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara States was now degraded, some of it permanently.

The ripple effects are devastating. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) ranks Nigeria as the country with the second-highest number of food-insecure people globally. 

In the first six months of 2025, nearly 31 million people faced acute hunger, another WFP report states. The burden falls disproportionately on children. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international non-governmental organisation working in conflict zones, reported that in Katsina alone, 652 children died of severe malnutrition in just six months.

The structural vulnerability is clear. Roughly 80 per cent of northern farmers are smallholders who grow over 90 per cent of the country’s food. Yet, most lack irrigation, climate-resilient seeds, or access to state support. As environmental shocks multiply, subsistence agriculture is collapsing beneath them.

Life on the fringes

Aminu now lives in Apo, Abuja. He came here chasing the stories he had heard from others back in Chadari, that the capital held promise for those willing to work. But like many climate migrants arriving from the north, he quickly realised that without formal education or connections, the only available work was in the city’s informal economy.

“When I first came, I worked at construction sites,” he recalled. 

He moved from one project to another, saving steadily until he could add to the little money he had left behind at home.

Eventually, he bought a motorcycle and started working as a commercial rider (an okada man), shuttling passengers along the busy Galadimawa-Garki-Apo corridor. 

“I was making about ₦15,000 [$9.80] daily,” he said.

Out of that, he regularly sent between ₦10,000 ($6.52) and ₦15,000 home weekly.

The outskirts of Abuja have become a magnet for climate migrating northern youths, who join the 93 per cent of employed Nigerians working in the informal sector.

But the city is not always welcoming.

“My first bike was seized by the VIO [Vehicle Inspection Officers],” Aminu alleged. “I had the papers, but I could not get it back.” 

With no income, he returned to construction work and farming during the rainy season. After a year, he scraped together enough to buy another motorcycle, this time at a discount. That one would be stolen. 

“Now I use a friend’s bike,” he said. “I ride during the day and pay him a return each evening.”

Despite better earnings, the stress wears on Aminu. 

“I am making more money here,” he said, “but I have more peace of mind back home.”

His frustrations echo a broader pattern of tension between informal workers and city authorities. Multiple reports have documented how commercial motorcycle riders in Abuja face routine harassment, extortion, and crackdowns, sometimes sparking violent clashes. In April, the Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS) crushed over 600 impounded motorcycles, enforcing a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) regulation that prohibits their operation in designated areas.

Abdulhamid’s story took a different turn. When he first left Danja in Katsina, he arrived in Zuba, another edge community in the FCT, where a few acquaintances from home had already settled. 

“I spent five days looking for work,” he recalled. “When I couldn’t find anything, I returned home.”

But hardship forced him back. This time, he found work as a manual sand miner. 

“We go from stream to stream, in different communities, digging sand by hand,” he said. 

On a good day, he earns between ₦6,000 ($3.91) and ₦12,000 ($7.83). From that, about ₦2,100 ($1.37) goes into daily transport and meals. 

“I send at least ₦10,000 [$6.52] every two days to my family,” he said.

“The sand is heavy, and the places are hilly. It is dangerous climbing up and down with it,” Abdulhamid added.

Worse, he has no idea the work he does may be worsening the climate crisis he fled. 

Their only point of contact with the authorities is the farmers who own land near the riverbanks. 

“Nobody from the government has ever questioned us,” he said. 

“We just pay them [the farmers] ₦1,000 per truck of sand.”

But unregulated sand mining is accelerating erosion, destabilising riverbanks, and contributing to downstream flooding, especially in flood-prone areas like the FCT. HumAngle has documented how unchecked mining in Kano destroyed farmland and made seasonal floods deadlier. A similar report shows the issue in Ogun State, South West Nigeria. 

Abdulhamid shrugged. “The sand brings fast money, but we don’t know it’s part of why floods are worse.”

A 2022 UNEP study estimates that 50 billion tonnes of sand are extracted globally each year. In Nigeria, much of this is done illegally and manually, depleting aquifers, degrading river ecosystems, and displacing communities. Ironically, the work Abdulhamid now relies on contributes to the flooding and food shortages that pushed him out of Danja.

Idris Sale’s path was steadier. Since arriving in Abuja from Kano in 2015, he has moved between carpentry and construction labour. 

“On a good day, I make ₦10,000 [$6.52],” he said. 

He saves about ₦7,000 ($4.57) and sends up to ₦20,000 ($13.6) home weekly. 

“There are more job opportunities here,” he said. “I do not get that kind of money in Makoda.”

His main challenge is not the police or permits, but broken promises. 

“Sometimes, they don’t pay me at all,” he said. “Or they give less than we agreed. They just keep postponing it.”

Still, Idris believes the move has been worthwhile. 

“My life has changed,” he said. “Back home, farming was failing. There was no other way to earn.” 

Despite the setbacks, he sees his situation improving. But his shelter is now under threat. Since late 2023, Abuja’s city administration, under FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, has launched a sweeping demolition campaign, targeting informal settlements in what it calls a clean-up and security initiative. Dozens of communities have been levelled.

These demolished neighbourhoods used to shelter many climate immigrants.

According to UN-Habitat, a significant portion of Abuja’s population lives in informal settlements. They are not criminals or squatters, but part of the shadow workforce that keeps the city running. They dig its foundations, ferry its passengers, and haul its waste.

What policies ignore

Aminu has lived through the shifting seasons. He has felt the searing heat, watched the rains falter, and struggled through the floods. But he cannot explain them. 

“Maybe it is the cultivation that drives the rain,” he said. “Before you plant, there will be rain. But after you plant, it will seize.”

Abdulhamid, too, notices the changes. The dry spells have become harsher. But when asked what causes them, he admits, “I have no idea.” 

His family, like others in his community, now relies on a hand-dug well to water crops during dry periods. “An exhausting process with limited results,” he said.

Neither has access to irrigation tools or drought-resistant seeds. Climate change may not be in their vocabulary, but erratic rainfall, failed harvests, livelihood losses, and migration define their lives.

While Aminu and Abdulhamid have quietly adapted by digging wells or leaving home, Nigeria’s climate strategies have not. The country’s policy documents, from the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the National Adaptation Plan, emphasise mitigation: solar energy, reforestation, and emission cuts. But they say little about rural youths like Aminu and Abdulhamid, those forced to migrate not by armed conflict, but by empty fields and dead crops.

The National Adaptation Plan warns of climate risks to agriculture. But it says little about the migration of young people, or the pressure that climate displacement places on informal urban economies.

Meanwhile, data paints a clearer picture. Climate-related displacements across Africa have surged sixfold since 2009, reaching 6.3 million people in 2023. While floods remain the main driver, drought-related migration is accelerating. Nigeria alone recorded over 6 million people displaced by climate events between 2008 and 2021. Yet adaptation funds rarely follow them to the cities where they resettle.

In Abuja, planning documents acknowledge flood threats, but not the steady influx of rural migrants building lives on the fringes. There is no policy for them. No targeted relief. No plan to absorb or empower.

“We are mostly farmers in Chidari,” Aminu said. “And it is rainfed farming. We cannot afford to dig boreholes in our farms, and our politicians did not construct any for us.” 

He is not bitter, just resigned. “During the dry season, we are jobless. Some youths join politics as thugs. Others, like me, leave for the city.”

Aminu says he would return to farming in Chidari if he had access to irrigation tools, fertilisers, and pesticides. Otherwise, he sees himself remaining in Abuja’s informal economy or joining the military. “I have applied several times,” he said, “but ha’ve never been selected.”

Abdulhamid, too, says he would stay in his village if empowered with climate-smart farming tools. 

“I love my village,” he said. “But the hardship and responsibilities were what made me leave.” 

He wishes those in government would come and see what their policies overlook. 

“If I could talk to them, I would ask them to visit the villages during the rainy season. Let them see what we go through,” he said.

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

Nigeria’s security landscape is a complex and multifaceted one. The dynamics differ according to each region. In Borno State, there is the Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency, and complications resulting from the government’s resettlement efforts.

In this episode, we will be hearing the voices of some HumAngle reporters as they offer insight from their respective regions of coverage.

Hosts: Salma and Salim

Guests: Usman Abba Zanna, Saduwo Banyawa, Labbo Abdullahi, Damilola Ayeni

Audio producer: Anthony Asemota

Executive producer: Ahmad Salkida

No one recalls the road to Wawa. New detainees are blindfolded several kilometres ahead. Inmates are also blindfolded and driven out before release. 

It was July 27, 2021. Eleven people returning to South East Nigeria after the trial of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), at the Federal High Court, Abuja, were intercepted by the Department of State Services (DSS) along Lokoja. (IPOB has been fighting to secede the southeastern region to the independent nation of Biafra.) Labelled members of IPOB’s armed wing, known as Eastern Security Network, the travellers were taken into a dark, underground DSS cell in Abuja. A few weeks later, they were paired out before daybreak and chained ahead of a “military investigation.” 

Nonso and Pius Awoke landed in the Wawa prison, a military detention facility in North Central Nigeria.

Nonso, in his final year, was studying computer science at the Ebonyi State University, and Pius practised law in Akwa Ibom State. On the night they arrived in prison, they said they were first stripped by soldiers and beaten with cables. Nonso got the registration number 3220, and Pius, 3218.

Located in Niger State, the Wawa prison complex is shrouded in mystery. Except for an October 22 attack by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), almost nothing is public about it. Even the specific location of its housing facility, the Wawa Cantonment, is a subject of disagreement. Some reports trace it to Wawa town, others say it’s in Kainji or New Bussa, which, though geographically related, are different communities in the state. 

HumAngle combined Open-Source Intelligence and satellite imagery to locate it. It is situated along the Kainji-Wawa highway, roughly 3 – 4 km east of Wawa town and another 3 –4 km west of the Nigerian Air Force Base in New Bussa. It is accessible from both towns within 4 to 6 minutes by vehicle, depending on road conditions. 

Far left into the sizable military installation on Wawa-Wakwa Road, between Wawa town and Tamanai village in the Borgu Local Government Area (LGA), is a collection of buildings that closely match the description of two sources. The nine two-storey blocks separated by double walls are the prison complex, designated ‘A’ to ‘I’.

“Each floor contains 10 cells,” Pius said. “In every cell, there are 15 inmates, making approximately 450 per block.”

The military prison primarily holds suspected members of Boko Haram, which has terrorised Northern Nigeria for 16 years and killed at least 20,000 people. In 2017, a court set up in the cantonment tried 1669 suspects behind closed doors, convicted some and awarded prison terms ranging from three to 60 years. ISWAP’s attack on the facility later was to liberate their incarcerated members, but they lost eight more men instead, including a commander, to a joint force of local vigilantes and soldiers. 

United by fate

The largest groups in Wawa are tied to terrorism in the north, militancy in the middle belt, and secession threats in the South East. Most of the Igbo inmates were picked up after the nationwide #EndSARS protests of October 2020, sources said. During the protest, which started as a peaceful demonstration against police brutality, there were reports of IPOB-sponsored attacks on security personnel in Obigbo, Rivers State, which led to the declaration of a curfew and the invitation of the military by the then-governor Nyesom Wike. The soldiers, however, embarked on door-to-door raids, torture, rape, executions, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances of locals, especially men. 

“Thirty-four of them were taken to Wawa,” said Nonso. “Some of them were conductors and drivers going about their businesses. One of them was arrested for having a tattoo. They said he was an unknown gunman. One was even arrested for having a beard. One of my brothers from Rivers State, his offence was that he greeted a soldier.”

The rest came from Anambra and other southeastern states. Emeka Umeagbasi, whose organisation, Intersociety, sent an undercover agent to Wawa while compiling a report in 2024, confirmed this. 

“In our recent report, there’s a declassified document showing a request by the Nigerian Army for the transfer of so-called Boko Haram and IPOB terrorist suspects from the police headquarters to Wawa Military Cantonment,” he told HumAngle. “What else is more evidential?”

The events that culminated in the incarceration of a large number of Tivs in Wawa began with a peace meeting in the Katsina-Ala LGA  of Benue State on July 29, 2020. Politicians, chiefs, and religious leaders gathered in Tor-Donga, the Tiv people’s capital, to settle years of “armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, rape, and other criminal acts” connected to Terwase Akwaza, also known as Gana, a notorious militia leader who had been in hiding. The team requested amnesty for Gana and his gang members and offered an apology to Samuel Ortom, the governor at the time.

Though a known criminal, Gana was also a messiah in Sankera, the senatorial district covering Katsina-Ala, Logo, and Ukum LGAs. When the federal government appeared to be ignoring deadly armed herder incursions, it was Gana and his men who protected the people and their vibrant agricultural economy. Sankera, the location of Zaki Biam, the world’s biggest yam market, accounts for 70 per cent of Nigeria’s annual yam production. 

“Gana was employed by community leaders to defend the people against herders,” Jeremiah John*, a Sankera native, told HumAngle.

The militia leader bowed to pressure from traditional authority after the Tor-Donga summit. On September 8, 2020, he and his gang members publicly gave up their weapons and joined a convoy heading to Makurdi, the state capital, to conclude a peace deal with the governor. The military, however, intercepted the convoy, which included clergymen and community leaders, and took Gana and his gang members. News of his death would spread a few hours later. 

In a picture of his dead body later circulated on social media and seen by HumAngle, his body was bullet-ridden, and his right arm had been severed from his body.

On Facebook, HumAngle saw a petition addressed to the National Human Rights Commission in November 2020, seeking the release of 76 surrendered militants arrested with Gana. Tor Gowon Yaro, the Benue State native who signed the petition, told HumAngle that the men were still in military detention. 

“None of them has been released,” he said. “None that I’m aware of.”

Suspected terrorists are the largest single group in Wawa. About a decade ago, Boko Haram took over communities in the Banki axis of Borno State and held residents hostage. Upon a counter-operation by the military, the terrorists fled. However, soldiers claimed that the villagers were complicit and drove hundreds of them to the Bama IDP Camp, where they separated the men and took them to military detention. This happened in several other villages, and residents who also tried to escape their terrorised villages to Maiduguri, the capital city, were often intercepted and detained. 

“Half of Borno youths, especially the Kanuris, are in detention,” Pius cried. 

Other demographics in the facility are Fulani men detained over kidnapping, underage boys, and even some mentally-challenged people arrested in Maiduguri and accused of being Boko Haram members, sources said. 

HumAngle has extensively documented this arbitrary detention problem in Borno, involving thousands of men who have been detained for about a decade now, prompting their female relatives to form the Knifar Movement to advocate for their release. Though they are periodically released in batches, many are still in detention. HumAngle has confirmed the release of at least 1009 men from the Wawa prison and the infamous Giwa barracks in Maiduguri.

Behind the prison walls

“Once you’re inside, you’re inside,” said Onyibe Nonso, an undergraduate who spent nearly three years in the facility. The cell door quickly shuts after letting in food, and the special day when inmates step out for sunning may not come in a whole year. To survive, you must first accept every cellmate, no matter their tendency or ideology, including terrorists and mentally ill people.

Every day is a routine, Pius said – wake up, pray, sit down. Sometimes, you gist with fellow inmates. Other times, cellmates play the Ludo board game among themselves. Some cells have Hausa literature supplied by the Red Cross, where one could read. Since no single meal in the facility can satisfy an adult, many have formed the habit of fasting every day until evening, when they combine the meals and drink the little water available. 

“If they gave us beans, you would not see a single seed, only water,” said Pius. He also recalled having no water to bathe for a whole month. 

The toilet and bathroom carved out of each cell, the same cell that is smaller than the average bedroom and still accommodates belongings like jerricans, has no door. 

“We shared the rest of the space,” said Nonso. “To sleep, each person would place their blanket on top of their mat and leave a small space in-between.”

You stand and sit in your small portion. On the evenings when inmates squabble over space, they quickly resolve before soldiers return in the morning. It must not escalate lest they all suffer the following day. 

Conditions generally improve when the Red Cross visits, but soldiers assure inmates of a return to the old ways. 

“And truly, things would return,” said Pius. “For over a year before I was released, the Red Cross did not come. We heard that it was because the military authorities mismanaged the things they brought.”

An information blackout tops Wawa’s many woes, according to Pius.

“I didn’t know they changed money,” he said, referring to the time when Nigeria redesigned the naira note.  “I didn’t know whether a relative was dead or not. We didn’t know Tinubu was running. We didn’t know who was going to be sworn in – just like I was completely excommunicated.”

Back home, families were struggling to move on. When Nonso’s mother heard his voice for the first time in three years, she called back to make sure it wasn’t just another fantasy. It was on June 21, 2024, the day he was released. After two months in the hospital, 20 bags of drips and a lot of prayer, she was already making peace with her only son’s death.

And death is truly cheap in the military prison. From beatings, starvation, and complications arising from inadequate healthcare, inmates die randomly. When the undercover agent from Intersociety arrived at the facility in September 2024, at least 10 inmates had just died within the week. 

“A Muslim lieutenant colonel from the north, who provided us with 10 names of people who had just died in the detention that week, told our undercover, ‘Look at how your people are dying here,’” Umeagbasi told HumAngle. 

Nonso saw at least two dead bodies himself. Despite being rarely allowed to speak with inmates from other cells, Pius knew of at least 10 deaths. Earnest, one of those brought in from Port Harcourt shortly after the #EndSARS protests, died of complications related to diabetes. 

“I know him in person,” Pius told me. “We met one day.”

The more inmates die, the more new ones arrive. The total number, which Pius said matched his registration number on arrival, had climbed to over 5000 by his release in June 2024. As the number grows, so does the intensity of abuse.

“Some of those who got there before us said there was no such thing as beatings when they were brought in. We met it during our own time, and those who came after us had even tougher experiences. They sustained serious injuries and weren’t given adequate treatment,” Nonso said. An inmate who was released from the prison last year after 11 years in detention had an account similar to this. She told HumAngle that though the physical abuse was intense at the beginning of her stay there, it stopped at some point. Shortly before she was released, however, it resumed.

Many of the Tiv inmates arrested alongside Gana couldn’t survive the abuse they were subjected to, Pius revealed. “They beat them in a way that when they got to that detention [Wawa], most of them died.” 

Until their release over media pressure and advocacy efforts by the Nigerian Bar Association, neither Nonso nor Pius set foot in court, raising questions about why they were arrested in the first place.

The Red Cross and the Nigerian Army have not responded to inquiries sent to them.

*Jeremiah John is a pseudonym we have used to protect the source’s identity. 

From camps in Borno to street corners in Jos or online forums in Lagos, Nigerians are asking the same question: “Who’s responsible for our safety?” 

It echoes louder each time a village is attacked, a school is shut, or families are forced to flee again. The country is replete with soldiers and police checkpoints. A new special task force is formed frequently. Yet, the violence continues.

Across the North East, insurgents wage a relentless campaign, displacing communities and destabilising entire regions. Separatist agitation is volatile in the South East, feeding unrest and confrontation. The North West is plagued by the kind of terrorism that blurs the line between ideological violence and organised crime, while the North Central battles a dangerous mix of terrorism and sectarian conflict. 

In Nigeria’s commercial centres, violent crime festers, expressing itself through kidnappings, cult clashes, and armed robbery that no longer respect time or place. Each is complex, rooted in history, grievances, and deep socio-economic fractures. Though different, they all persist, grow, and adapt despite the government’s multi-pronged security interventions. For every new strategy launched or force deployed, the violence seems to morph and resurface elsewhere, often with greater ferocity.

The military’s grip on internal security

Nigeria’s reliance on the military for internal security is not new. A retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) notes it began during the military era, when armed forces sought visibility and influence, often at the cost of the police.

Brigadier General Saleh Bala (rtd.), a veteran of many military campaigns and the president of White Ink Institute, provides deeper historical context. He links the military’s domestic role to the post-colonial period, particularly the Tiv riots and Operation Wetie in the Western Region. Even then, while police retained the lead, the military’s active support gradually expanded.

According to Bala, the real shift occurred post-civil war, with surging armed robbery in urban areas during the era of notorious figures like Oyenusi and Anini. The police’s inability to match this threat due to outdated equipment, low morale, and inadequate training enabled the military’s growing internal role. This, he says, was cemented further after the 1983 coup, where regime protection became paramount following attempts by then Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sunday Adewusi to thwart the coup.

These developments paved the way for the military’s sustained involvement in internal policing through state-led operations like “Operation Sweep” under General Buba Marwa, which set the template for numerous state-level joint task forces today.

The AIG remarks, “The result was that the police were denied funding for equipment and training, lost morale, and slowly withdrew.” Bala adds that while military interventions initially curtailed violent crime, overexposure led to diminishing professionalism and allegations of abuse similar to those levied against the police.

Soldiers as police: a reversal of roles

Today, soldiers respond to crime scenes, enforce curfews in peacetime cities, and patrol highways. The line between policing and military duties has blurred, with the military often serving as the de facto internal security force.

Bala agrees with this description but clarifies, “The military does not assume this role unilaterally. It acts only when requested by civil authorities and sanctioned by the President through the National Security Council.” He emphasises that this support role is constitutional and subsidiary, designed to help the police regain control and hand over post-stabilisation.

Where the AIG sees erosion of roles, Bala sees the outcome of evolving threats, particularly hybrid threats like Boko Haram and multi-layered terrorism, that overwhelm police capacity. However, both agree that the police must be revitalised to regain primacy in internal security.

Policing the elite, not the public

The CLEEN Foundation and a number of other civil society organisations in Nigeria have written extensively on the drift from securing the nation by the police to a troubling focus on protecting VIPs, in addition to widespread corruption and low faith in the police institution.

The AIG points out a disturbing trend: officers cluster around VIPs, leaving ordinary citizens exposed. This elite capture of police services, coupled with a dismal police-to-citizen ratio in most African countries, including Nigeria, undermines the safety and security of citizens.

Brigadier General Bala refrains from directly challenging this critique but shifts focus toward the need for the police to “rise above their preference for soft, high-profile urban operations.” He urges a move toward rural policing and special operations, citing international examples where law enforcement operates capably across diverse terrains.

He stresses political leadership as the driver of such reform: “The police need political direction to prioritise nationwide security expectations over elite security needs.”

Too many uniforms, too little coordination

HumAngle has, over the years, documented Nigeria’s bloated security environment, in which the DSS, NSCDC, Immigration, Customs, and other agencies frequently act in opposition. Intelligence is delayed, mandates are unclear, and many outfits lack focus.

The AIG calls for streamlining, suggesting that the DSS return to its 1980s and 1990s focus on community-centric intelligence gathering, while the NSCDC personnel be redeployed as a foundation for state police. Many analysts offered similar advice for merging vigilantes and dozens of self-help militias across the country into the NSCDC and maybe decentralising this outfit into regional police, rather than each state in Nigeria having semi-autonomous or independent security force.

“Rather than 36 separate police entities, we should have regional police that are in line with Nigeria’s six geographical zones,” a top police officer in Abuja said, adding that if state-based police institutions are adopted, governors who already have authority over local government administration “will muster too much power.”

The crisis of imagination

The AIG argues that Nigeria’s insecurity stems from a flawed belief that force alone ensures safety. Instead, he champions investigative policing, forensic tools, training, and direct departmental budgeting.

Bala provides a broader context: “Warfare itself is now institutionally all-encompassing. Security threats are increasingly urban and asymmetric. Policing must now be part of a whole-of-government, all-of-society approach.”

He warns of the “militarisation of all security forces” due to adversaries’ tactics. He draws attention to advanced democracies where police forces are as capable as some militaries. This, he suggests, should inform Nigeria’s transformation: building police forces that are not only community-responsive but also operationally hardened.

Restoring trust, rebuilding institutions

The AIG proposes revamping police colleges in Ikeja, Kaduna, and Maiduguri into detective hubs. He calls for merit-based recruitment and unassailable discipline to restore legitimacy.

Bala doesn’t directly oppose these views but reiterates the need for synergy: “Military, intelligence, law enforcement, and paramilitaries must become domain-specific specialists who can adapt across blurred threat boundaries.”

Both agree that trust in the police can only be restored through professionalism, neutrality (especially during elections), and effective public service—not militarisation.

Towards a new vision

Nigeria stands at a crossroads. Its current security model, built on elite protection and military overreach, is unsustainable. Both Bala and the AIG call for a pivot towards decentralised, professional policing, political will, and community-grounded justice.

Bala underscores the need for coherence: “The answer lies in orchestrated cooperation. Security cannot be left to force projection alone. It must be institutional, strategic, and inclusive.”

In a country overwhelmed by uniforms, one truth endures: security is not guaranteed by presence, but by purpose. And that purpose must be justice.

On a Tuesday morning, Kaneng Fom’s* mind told her she was going to die.

The day had begun normally: Kaneng took a short walk down her estate street with her brother, watched her favourite anime, and hoped for an update to the show, before finally getting in the car. Her mother was waiting at the steering wheel to drive her down the road in the Gwarimpa area of Abuja, North Central Nigeria, to get a loaf of bread. The ride was usually smooth for Kaneng, but not that day; the crushing feeling of death and panic consumed her.

That feeling unsettled her mind, tightened her chest, and overwhelmed her breath. Her mother was talking to her in the car, but Kaneng’s anxiety prevented her from truly hearing. She knew how best to describe what was happening; she had learned this phrase online when trying to understand the strange anxiety that randomly overpowers her: a panic attack.

Her mother, however, seeing this for the first time, has different verbiage to handle the condition.

“Jesus!” she yelled.

“She was screaming, ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ until I eventually calmed myself down,” Kaneng recounts. “After she asked me a few questions, she said that I should pray more and if I prayed more or invited the Holy Spirit to go about my day, I would have fewer panic attacks.”

Nigeria is a religious country. About 99.4 per cent of the country’s population is affiliated with a major religion, according to the World Factbook. For those deeply connected to its culture and way of life, like Kaneng’s mother, religion is viewed as a solution to nearly every problem, including mental health challenges.

But while religion offers a source of strength, its dominance also reflects a deeper issue: mental health care in Nigeria is expensive, under-resourced, and often out of reach. As therapy costs rise and stigma remains high, for many Nigerians, then, the default response to psychological distress isn’t clinical but spiritual.

Research by the West African Academy of Public Health shows that many Nigerians like Kaneng are first and solely pushed to seek spiritual sustenance when they face a mental health challenge. 

‘Why worry when you can pray?’

Such was the case for 22-year-old Tolu*, a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), who identifies with several symptoms from autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and trauma from sexual assault.

“I come from a very Catholic family, so obviously I believed the church should be my first option,” he said. “I was at a church retreat, and my head just wasn’t clear, so I went to the priest for guidance. I was like (to the priest) ‘I don’t think I’m okay mentally’ and all he told me to do was pray. I didn’t ask him for any particular help, but he didn’t provide any particular help either. ”

A study by researchers at the Department of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the country’s South East, revealed that some Nigerian religious bodies have positioned themselves as entities capable of curing any struggle, mental illness included. The study explains that this posture, in some cases, allows religious leaders to extort Nigerians who come to them for help. 

Despite estimates from the African Polling Institute suggesting that 20 to 30 per cent of Nigerians may have mental illness, there is a significant lack of care and attention dedicated to addressing their needs. The Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN) also estimates that only about 300 psychiatrists are tending to mentally ill Nigerians, with only about 4.72 per cent of Nigeria’s total health budget allotted to mental health care. For many, accessing a psychologist can be a painful struggle, and when they do get access, the psychologists often lack proper resources.

In the context of widespread need and inadequate support, spiritual solutions become the more accessible, familiar, and often the only option available.

This “faith-centred healing” approach is echoed by popular religious leaders like Jerry Eze, an evangelist and founder of an Abuja-based Pentecostal ministry, Streams of Joy, who conducts services where the “spirit” of depression or anxiety is cast away on the authority of Jesus. 

During a sermon to thousands of congregation members on June 22, Pastor Jerry described anxiety as something people position themselves in. 

“If I position in fear, my seed (blessings) will be eaten. If I position myself in anxiety, then my seed (blessings) will be eaten,” he claimed during the sermon, giving many a sense of power over something they may feel helpless about. To fix this issue, he insisted his devoted listeners command the spirit of fear away, saying, “It does not matter whether there is change (in your fears) or not, keep commanding!”

When Ruth Anya*, a Streams of Joy member, was asked whether Pastor Jerry encouraged the congregation to seek professional mental health care, she replied, “He doesn’t discourage us, and has even encouraged people to speak to loved ones if they are struggling. But we all know we are at Streams of Joy for our miracles.”

People of other faiths face similar situations, where spiritual explanations are often prioritised before other possibilities are explored. In May, Suhayla Yusuf*, a young Muslim woman, told HumAngle that she had turned to an Islamic platform to share her distress over the intrusive thoughts associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but was simply told the thoughts were from the devil, with no further support offered. OCD has different subtypes, and in Islamic discourse, Suhalya’s experience aligns with what is commonly referred to as waswas, a term that translates to “whisperings of the devil.”

The cost of mental wellness

In 2024, Nigeria’s minimum wage was increased to ₦70,000. While this policy has been slow to implement, the price of therapy and the general cost of living in the country have continued to skyrocket beyond what the average Nigerian makes monthly.

To better understand the cost limitation to seeking mental health support, HumAngle researched and found that a leading psychiatry resource in Nigeria offers therapy sessions that range in price from ₦15,000 to ₦155,000. The cost depends on factors such as your location, the therapist’s qualifications, the type of therapy provided, and whether the session is conducted online or in person. Regardless of the circumstances, many Nigerians may find this cost of a single therapy session unaffordable.

“Therapy is largely inaccessible to the average Nigerian. The cost of treatment, especially private services, remains out of reach for most,” Okwuchukwu Mary-Ann, a clinical psychologist, told HumAngle. 

Her reasoning is backed by data: the World Bank estimates Nigeria’s rural poverty rate is 75.5 per cent. The World Health Organisation has reported that those living in poverty are the most likely to experience mental health issues. Therefore, a ₦15,000 session is far too expensive for the majority of Nigerians who need mental health support.

“Finances pose a big problem for me,” Kaneng noted. “I’ve always been supportive of therapy, but I’ve never been able to afford to go. I would ask my parents, but as I told you, my mother thinks I need to pray more, and my father, our breadwinner, agrees.” When asked if they tried to help her beyond this advice, Kaneng said, ‘My mother prayed whenever I brought it up. That was it.’”

Tolu also faces the same challenge, explaining, “I diagnosed myself through a test sent to me by a friend. A big hindrance towards me getting a formal diagnosis is money.”

Morayo Adesina*, a student at the Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos, South West Nigeria, who tried therapy in 2022, told HumAngle it wasn’t a favourable experience. “It wasn’t easy to find a therapist in Nigeria,” she claimed. “As a student, my only options were the school therapist who may potentially expose my secrets to school authorities, or a therapist gotten through my mother who may potentially expose certain aspects of my worldview to her that I didn’t want her to know about.”

Despite her reservations, Morayo had no choice but to trust her mother’s judgment. This path led her to two therapists, the second of whom she stayed with for some time.

“The second therapist I saw cost around ₦50,000 for the first session, and ₦30,000 for subsequent sessions. That was three years ago, though, and the price today should be over ₦70,000,” she said. 

When asked why she stopped, Morayo responded, “I did about four to five sessions before I started to feel like I was wasting my mum’s money.” 

With a few sessions and over ₦100,000 spent on therapy, Morayo was able to reap some benefits from her sessions with the therapist, who eventually gave her a diagnosis for the persistent pessimism and gloominess she has carried as long as she can remember. 

The verdict was depression, anxiety, and, most importantly, a way for Morayo to feel more at ease with herself; “this diagnosis made me feel more normal because it felt like I could at least tie what was wrong with me to something outside of the feeling that I was probably irredeemably broken.”

However, Morayo doesn’t think the sessions were enough, telling HumAngle that the cost and number of therapy sessions necessary to fix what she thinks is wrong with her come at an expensive price. The American Psychological Association has shown that 15 to 20 therapy sessions are essential to heal 50 per cent of people with mental illness, meaning Morayo’s five sessions only scratched the surface. When people like her, a middle-class student, can’t afford to pay for therapy sessions, the chances of the majority lower class seem far less likely. 

Rashid Usman*, an Arabic and Islamic teacher, agrees that the cost of therapy is too high, but believes surrendering oneself to Allah is the perfect way to avoid mental illnesses. “Mental illness is a condition that affects your thoughts, behaviours and emotions when you are too worried rather than allowing your creator to control your affairs,” he argued, noting that instead of spending money on therapy, it is much cheaper to position God at the heart of your problems. 

“People should be taught how to handle and manage anything that could lead to this problem in the way of God, at the worship centre,” he added. Rashid’s answer explains the reason some look to divinity rather than therapy.

Between stigma and possession

The cost of therapy is a significant barrier for many individuals, but the stigma associated with mental illness also presents a considerable obstacle. When Kaneng was asked about the difficulties of managing a mental illness in Nigeria, she sighed and responded, “It’s truly challenging, and it becomes even more difficult when I can’t express my feelings to my parents or convey my desire to seek therapy. I often feel like an outsider.”

Tolu also experienced the same thing: “It is challenging. You go through things people do not understand, and sometimes you want to explain, but you just dismiss the idea because they will most likely misunderstand your situation.”

Nigerian society has taught people like Tolu and Kaneng that it is better to be silent, whispering the particulars of their mental stress only to God. 

Rashid puts it plainly when asked if he thinks mental illness has a spiritual cause, stating, “Yes, spiritual attack from Jin [demon] can alter mental stability.”

Religious leaders from different faiths preach messages that align with his views. In 2022, Adeola Akinniyi, a pastor at Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, published a sermon titled “The Enemy Called Depression,” in which he described mental illness as a spiritual attack.

“The enemy is using the weapon of depression against believers in the church, manipulating sisters, brothers and everyone. That you have money does not stop the enemy from attacking you with the weapon of depression,” he told his congregants.

Faith and therapy 

In the ongoing conversation about the role of religion in mental health, a question arises: Can communion with God truly lead to complete healing from mental struggles? While Kaneng leans toward a hopeful affirmation, her response reveals a more complex truth.

“I’m not irreligious,” she cuts in quickly. “And I do feel some relief when I pray, but never in the middle of a [panic] attack, and they always come back.  I’ve begun to believe that praying or fasting can’t fix certain things, but they provide relief.”

Mary-Ann highlights the risks of relying solely on religious intervention for mental health issues. “This mindset of only seeking religious help can delay the pursuit of additional support, which may worsen symptoms or lead to chronic problems,” she noted.

Several other medical sources warn that unchecked mental illness can become permanent over time, an issue Kaneng thinks befell her.

“My panic attacks are less intense now that I’ve done research into what they are and I try to manage them,” she said. “But over the last two years, they have become more frequent, and I consider them a part of my daily life.”

There are religious leaders who understand the place of mental healthcare, however. 

Femi Ogunleye*, a youth pastor at the Cathedral Church of Advent in Abuja, believes mental health care is not restricted by God, explaining, “Christianity only discourages sin. Wanting help healthily isn’t a sin.”  

He proposes this dual style of healing: “There are medicines that can help (mental health care), you know, and depending on the type [of medicine]. Some can be resolved by going back to God in prayer and reading the word of God, but there are some that you need mental health care. So the church should promote going to mental health facilities when you have such challenges.”

He is not alone in believing that faith and therapy can coexist. Other Nigerian religious leaders, such as the well-known Apostle Femi Lazarus, have spoken extensively on the subject. In a sermon titled “Issues of Mental Health Need to be Addressed in The Body of Christ”, Lazarus affirms his belief that Christians and Nigerians need to pay better attention to mental health problems, saying, “Many people have mental health issues, and we need to first take them for therapy.” 

In Nigeria’s South South region, a group of Catholic nuns is providing free mental health services to women at risk of homelessness in Uyo and surrounding areas.

Additionally, mental health advocates like Mariam Adetona have found ways to properly combine faith with mental health care. On a muslim-advocacy blog, “Reviving Sisterhood”, Mariam spoke about reaching people who need mental health help, saying, “I have noticed many do not think therapy is necessary or are sceptical about its efficiency or effectiveness. In cases like this, I use my own experience with therapy to persuade them, as well as others’ experiences.”

Still, until therapy becomes truly affordable and stigma fades, many Nigerians will continue to find themselves caught between their faith and their pain, turning first to prayer, even when what they need most is professional care.

Names marked with * have been changed to protect identities.

The spate of insecurity in Nigeria is turning many local communities into ungovernable spaces. As the secular government withdraws from these communities, terrorist groups expand their influence, consolidate authority, and accumulate illicit wealth. Traditional leaders—once the primary link between the people and governance—now operate under the coercive control of armed factions, which have established parallel administrations and seized the reins of the local economy.

North East

The government’s absence is nearly absolute in northeastern Nigeria, around the Lake Chad basin. Here, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and remnants of Boko Haram terrorists operate not as fugitives but as rulers. Their authority is layered, structured, and chillingly effective.

ISWAP has organised its territory into mantikas (localities), which are regional districts aligned with Nigeria’s federal structure. These mantikas oversee taxation, zakat (alms-giving), farm levies, education (Qur’anic schools and ideological reprogramming), security, courts, and patrols.

Several communities in Abadam, Guzamala, Kukawa, Marte, and Mobbar no longer wait for state forces; they negotiate directly with insurgent-appointed administrators. The group’s brutality is, for many, accompanied by a disturbing sense of order within a context devoid of hope.

North West

While ISWAP’s rule is ideological, in North West Nigeria, it encompasses a chaotic mix of economic, ethnic, and religious factors. In Zamfara, armed groups now operate like proto-states. The forests of Maru, Bakura, and Anka are home to well-defended camps with command hierarchies, blood-draining tax systems, and armouries supplied via Sahelian trafficking routes and after raids on military positions.

HumAngle investigations found that communities like Tungar Doruwa, Maitoshshi, Chabi, and Kwankelai—once protected under the Dankurmi Police Outpost—are now under the firm control of Kachalla Black and Kachalla Gemu. Further south, Kungurmi, Galeji, and Yarwutsiya are governed by Kachalla Soja and Kachalla Madagwal. Up north, Kango Village and Madafa Mountain serve as fortresses for terrorists like Wudille and Ado Aleru, who command loyalty through a combination of fear and patronage.

Here, terrorism is no longer sporadic. It is systemic. It is territorial governance without borders, aided by the region’s gold trade, deep forests, and a broken justice system. Entire LGAs now function as autonomous war zones where Nigerian laws hold no sway.

The little-known Lakurawa terror network is enforcing a form of stealth insurgency in the areas of Isa, Sabon Birni, and Rabah in Sokoto State. Schools are shuttered, roads are mined, and civilians pay levies for survival. The group’s cross-border tactics, using the Niger Republic as a tactical fallback, make them elusive and resilient.

Many villages with large populations, like Galadima, Kamarawa, and Dankari in Sokoto, now survive on whispered warnings and ritual bribes. Lakurawa’s governance is less visible but equally firm, with taxation, curfews, and brutal retribution. Residents say sporadic military raids offer little relief; the terrorists return hours later, more vengeful than before.

The fractures in Kaduna State mirror the broader problems in Nigeria. In Chikun, Giwa, and Birnin Gwari, attacks by Ansaru factions and criminal warbands have pushed out state institutions. Southern Kaduna adds another layer, with ethnic violence fused with terror raids, leaving villages like Jika da Kolo and Tudun Biri in ruins.

Katari, once a symbol of Kaduna’s transport link to Abuja, is now a ghost zone, haunted by the memory of the 2022 train attack. Trains now pass, but the residents remain missing, displaced or dead.

North Central

In Niger State, rural districts like Shiroro, Mashegu, and Borgu are steadily slipping from state and federal control. After attacks such as the 2021 Mazakuka mosque massacre, entire villages fled, leaving behind ghost towns. ISWAP and affiliated terror cells have since moved in, using dense forests to launch ambushes and collect tribute.

In Rafi, Allawa, Bassa, and Zazzaga, residents speak of “government by gun”, which is enforced through nighttime raids and extortion rackets. What began as raids has metastasised into permanent displacement. Farming has ceased. Children grow up never having seen a police officer.

Niger State is next to Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital territory.

South East

The secessionist group known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has transformed parts of Imo and Anambra States into shadow states. What began as ideological agitation has evolved into fragmented shadow governance, particularly in Orsu, Oguta, and Nnewi South, where IPOB’s Eastern Security Network (ESN) now operates checkpoints, enforces lockdowns, and levies informal taxes. Police presence is almost nonexistent; courts are shuttered; schools function sporadically.

This pattern is not isolated. As Mgbeodinma Nwankwo reports for HumAngle in Onitsha, “Southeast Nigeria has greatly changed from a region with historical landmarks and trade centres to areas of gunfire that make life deadly for civilians and law enforcement officers.” States like Anambra, Imo, Abia, and Ebonyi have become centres for violence. Non-state armed groups routinely block roads and attack police stations. Businesses close early, travel routes are avoided, and fear governs daily life.

IPOB’s camps, hidden in forest belts, serve as training grounds and operational bases – funded by diaspora networks and sustained by black-market arms. The state’s coercive apparatus has collapsed in these ungoverned interiors, like Ihiala and stretches of rural Imo. Local vigilante outfits like Ebube Agu and Operation Udo Ga Chi strive to maintain a fragile order, often overwhelmed by better-armed non-state actors.

As Nwankwo describes, uniforms have become “magnets for attacks.” Police and military personnel are hunted, ambushed, kidnapped, or executed. One soldier, attending a party in Imo while off duty, was identified and found dead the next morning. 

“Wearing a uniform here is like painting a target on your back,” said a police officer in Imo, speaking anonymously. “We go to work in mufti and only change when necessary. Even then, we operate in groups, as solo patrols pose a significant risk.”

The psychological toll is immense. Morale among security forces is at an all-time low. Many seek transfers, and while some still consider the southeastern region postings financially rewarding, the life-threatening risks overshadow any incentives.

The violence is driven by a volatile mix: separatist agitation, criminal opportunism, and state withdrawal. IPOB and ESN are often suspected to be responsible for many of the terror attacks, though they frequently deny involvement. Criminal gangs, exploiting the chaos, further destabilise the region.

State response has focused on increasing highway checkpoints, leaving interior communities exposed. Critics argue this reactive approach exacerbates tensions. “Deploying more soldiers is not enough,” warns Dr Chioma Emenike, a conflict resolution expert based in the southeast. “There must be dialogue, economic empowerment, and trust-building between security agencies and local communities.”

Ultimately, the region faces a dual crisis of security and legitimacy. As uniforms vanish from the rural southeast, so does any semblance of state authority. What remains is a precarious state of fear and survival—residents trapped between hostile non-state actors and a disengaged state, teetering on the edge of anarchy.

Nigeria’s unseen frontlines

Nigeria’s forests have become its most telling metaphor. Once tourist destinations and biodiversity treasures, they are now frontlines of insurgency. No-go zones include Kamuku, Kainji, Falgore, and Sambisa. Dumburum and Kagara are insurgent capitals.

Even southern states are not spared. In Ondo, Edo, and Lagos, the forests harbour kidnappers and traffickers. In the Niger Delta, mangroves shelter oil theft rings bleeding billions from the national treasury.

These green belts mark the outer limit of Nigeria’s practical sovereignty. Beyond them lies another Nigeria: unrecognised, ungoverned, and rapidly growing.

Kabir Adamu, a seasoned security analyst and the CEO of Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited–a security risk management and consulting firm– expressed concerns over the scarce presence of governance and secular leadership in territories overrun by terrorists.

“Where they exist, they typically include poorly staffed and under-resourced police posts, non-functional or abandoned local government offices, dilapidated schools, and health and medical centres with little to no medical personnel or supplies,” he told HumAngle, noting that, in some locations, especially in northern Borno and remote areas of Zamfara and Katsina, such structures have been destroyed or taken over by terrorists, further eroding state presence.

Adamu added that, as the state recedes, communities have been forced to adapt in ways that challenge conventional notions of governance. He said many communities have resorted to local self-help mechanisms, including forming or reviving armed vigilante groups, with support from traditional rulers or local elites in some cases.

“These groups often serve as the first and only line of defence against armed groups, conducting patrols, manning checkpoints, and gathering intelligence. Unfortunately, the formation of the vigilantes continues not to reflect the communities’ diverse residents,” the security analyst noted.

Forest guard corps

The federal government’s response to these problems offers a glimmer of optimism, as it established the new Forest Guard Corps to reclaim these wild spaces. Trained in guerrilla warfare and intelligence, these units, drawn from local populations, are tasked with intercepting armed groups and restoring order.

However, without systemic reforms such as real policing, honest governance, and economic renewal, the corps risks becoming merely a temporary solution to a persistent problem. These affected communities nationwide need more than just soldiers; they need schools, courts, trust, and opportunities.

Although Adamu admitted that the Nigerian government has taken various actions in and around ungoverned spaces to reduce the influence of armed groups, he insisted that these approaches remain fragmented and often lack the institutional follow-through needed to fill the broader governance vacuum.

“There are clear signs that the ungoverned spaces in Nigeria are expanding, consolidating, and in some cases, connecting across local government and state boundaries in mostly the northern regions but also affecting some of the southern areas,” he said, adding that although military operations have resulted in the arrest or killing of militants, and recovery of weapons, the gains are often temporary in the absence of sustained civilian governance.

The rise of an economy of fear

As formal taxation collapses, ransoms rise in northwestern Nigeria. In Dansadau, HumAngle found that farmers trade goats and sorghum to retrieve kidnapped relatives. In Zugu and Gaude, families pay monthly levies to criminals to avoid attacks. Pay tribute is the only way to ensure public safety in some places.

A breakdown of ransom payments made in Nigeria between May 2023 and April 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Infographics: Damilola Lawal/HumAngle>

In many towns and cities across northern Nigeria, the voices once carried on the airwaves to inform, empower, and provoke reflection have dimmed to whispers of praise songs, sponsored jingles, and obsequious commentary.

Behind the studio microphones and soundproof booths, journalists, mostly young men and women, say they work under suffocating conditions that leave them voiceless both figuratively and literally.

While the region faces intensifying insecurity, mass displacement, and a crisis of governance, local radio and television have largely retreated from their watchdog roles. In their place is a culture of cautious Public Relations (PR) journalism, tailored to please state authorities and avoid retaliation from both government regulators and armed non-state actors.

A culture built on the airwaves

For a long time, radio has been the primary means of communication in northern Nigeria, especially for Hausa speakers. In rural communities where literacy rates remain low and access to newspapers or television is limited, radio serves as a crucial lifeline. It is not merely a medium for entertainment but a trusted channel for education, public health campaigns, civic participation, and political discourse. It is so instrumental that former Boko Haram members have told HumAngle that they laid down their arms and returned to state-controlled areas because they heard constant appeals to do so on the radio. 

From the era of Radio Kaduna’s dominance to the rise of community and FM stations in the 2000s, northern Nigeria has nurtured a unique culture of listenership. Markets pause during radio dramas; political discussions unfold around communal radios in village squares. Yet, this cultural power is precisely what makes radio such a potent target for manipulation.

Barely paid, but always owing

Few local journalists report earning a stable income. Most complain they are unpaid volunteers or receive stipends far below minimum wage.

“Many of us are not paid respectable salaries, and irregular, low wages or sometimes no payment at all are common challenges. Some colleagues take on additional freelance work to survive. These financial strains affect our focus, morale, and overall performance as newsroom staff,” said a radio presenter in Gombe, northeastern Nigeria.

“I’ve been reporting for three years, and my salary is ₦10,000, barely enough to feed myself,” said Rukaiya, a young reporter at a privately owned FM station in the north-central region. “Sometimes, I survive on commissions from adverts that I get. Otherwise, we survive however we can.”

The term “however” often refers to morally or socially risky paths. One other young female journalist who spoke with HumAngle on condition of anonymity described engaging in transactional relationships to supplement her income. Others depend on charitable contributions from friends, side hustles like event hosting, voice-over work, or farming, or even resort to panhandling. Some are offered contracts with state governments in exchange for loyalty on-air.

With no employment contracts, health insurance, or protection against harassment, young broadcasters in many communities across Nigeria are vulnerable to exploitation by station owners, politicians, and advertisers.

A 2023 study on media poverty highlights the challenges that affect the growth of rural news journalism in Nigeria. From journalists not well paid to several media houses owing salaries for months or years. “This discourages journalists in Nigeria from going to live in rural areas to practice rural journalism.” 

“My salary is barely enough to cover my transport fares to the office, but I have grown so popular in my community that gifts keep pouring in regularly,” said a broadcaster in Nassarawa State, who said she will not demand better pay because she has created an agency that caters to her needs.

When confronted with the suggestion that her views might lead to conflicts of interest and set a negative precedent for young journalists who may succeed her in the future, she said, “We don’t report anything serious; we cover events, read out press releases handed to us, and air drama, music, and shows.”

For some of these journalists, critical journalism is something they admire, but it is not for them to contemplate practising: “We were never trained for this, and we were never told these types of stories are for platforms such as ours,” another radio presenter said. 

A reporter in Kano who spoke to HumAngle admitted that not all programmes reflect the real problems people face, particularly because private broadcasters are heavily driven by revenue. “We don’t always talk about these issues because we’re afraid or because the station owners don’t want us airing anything that goes against their views or interests,” the reporter noted.

Regulated into silence

Senior media professionals widely view the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), which oversees Nigeria’s broadcast sector, as a tool of censorship. Stations that broadcast critical commentary, especially regarding security failures or corruption, risk suspension, fines, or outright closure.

“Therefore, we train our mentees and reporters in a practice that better serves our reality.” The term “reality,” according to this station manager in Nassarawa State, means young journalists are handed rules of engagement; there are words and phrases that are never to be aired, and some stories, even if you witness them, you tell them to your friends and family “off-air.”

The NBC’s lack of institutional independence, with its leadership appointed by the executive arm of government, has entrenched political interference, turning the commission into an enforcer of ruling party interests rather than a neutral regulator.

After airing a report critical of the national security leadership in 2022, Vision FM Abuja faced fines and a temporary shutdown. The message was clear.

“Since then, we don’t touch anything security-related that is sensitive,” said a senior manager at the station. “It’s not worth NBC’s hammer.”

Journalists say the ambiguity of NBC guidelines encourages preemptive censorship. Rather than risk sanctions, station managers vet programming scripts for anything potentially “inciting” or “divisive,” terms that critics say are weaponised against dissent.

Through these, NBC undermines citizens’ access to diverse perspectives and weakens the role of the media as a civic watchdog. The deliberate stifling of the airwaves, in a region already grappling with insecurity and governance failures, intensifies public disempowerment and undermines the remaining pillars of accountability. 

HumAngle looked at all TV and radio stations in northern Nigeria and found that up to 15–20 per cent of media ownership lies with the federal and state governments. 

Infographics by Damilola Lawal/HumAngle.

Infographics by Damilola Lawal/HumAngle.

Political capture of the airwaves

Across northern states, local broadcasting is not merely cautious — it is captured. In states like Borno, Sokoto, and Zamfara, station managers say governors and political appointees directly influence their programming. They often determine who gets airtime, what topics are discussed, and which voices are silenced.

“During the last election, I was warned not to host opposition candidates,” said a producer at a state-owned station in Kano. “We were told it would ‘destabilise the peace,’ so we played safe.”

Often, stations are directly owned or heavily funded by state governments. Editorial independence becomes a fiction. Presenters who align with the party line receive rewards such as political appointments, contracts, or PR gigs. Those who deviate risk professional exile.

“It has been a norm in our journalistic practice [for funders] to dictate the tune when you pay for the piper,” said a staff member at a state-owned broadcaster in northwestern Nigeria, adding that not all reports or leads on insecurity can be aired, especially without censorship. “Stories that may cause chaos are rather dropped or rejigged,” the reporter added.

Authoritarianism at the state level

The erosion of press freedom in northern Nigeria is not just an outcome of national-level repression; it is deeply rooted in the authoritarian instincts of state governors who wield enormous influence without sufficient checks.

These governors routinely deploy state security services to intimidate journalists, withhold advertising revenue from critical outlets, or threaten the revocation of broadcast licenses.

Governors in the region have always wielded significant power over local media organisations in their states. In 2016, a TV anchor in Sokoto was forced off air after criticising the state’s healthcare policies.

A broadcast reporter in Borno faced detention in 2021 for “cyberstalking” after exposing purported corruption in post-insurgency reconstruction contracts.

Such actions rarely provoke public outrage, partly due to a climate of fear and partly because the press itself is too compromised to amplify its oppression.

Caught between armed groups and the microphone

In parts of the North West and the North East, fear of armed groups has further stifled local media. Journalists in the northwest, northeast, and north-central states describe receiving direct threats after airing reports perceived as critical of armed groups.

“We stopped reporting kidnappings in some areas,” one radio editor in the north central told HumAngle. “They called and said if we mentioned their names again, they would burn down the station.”

“The threat of violence, whether from state actors or armed groups, has influenced editorial decisions,” a radio presenter in Maiduguri told HumAngle. “Sometimes, we have to downplay or completely avoid certain sensitive topics for personal safety and the safety of our families and colleagues, as well as to secure our jobs. It’s a constant internal conflict between professional duty and survival.”

These threats come amid a broader climate of insecurity, where state protection for journalists is practically nonexistent. As a result, communities find themselves under siege, yet they lack a voice or a platform to express their concerns.

From watchdogs to whispers

In a healthy democracy, local media act as civic mirrors and watchdogs—holding power accountable and giving voice to the voiceless. But in much of northern Nigeria, local radio has been reduced to echoes of power, playing jingles and feel-good stories while real crises unfold off-air.

The tragedy is not just professional; it is societal. When local media fail, communities lose more than news; they lose agency.

Suleiman Shuaibu, a business development specialist in Abuja, highlights that international broadcast stations, airing in local languages like Hausa, are uniquely positioned to pose and tackle challenging questions. “The sole constraint they face is their inability to address context-specific topics that pertain to individual communities.” They focus solely on major news developments.

The VOA Hausa has ceased operations in light of Donald Trump’s decision to freeze US foreign aid and activities. The presence of BBC Hausa, Dutch Welle, Radio RFI, and others is notable, yet their future hangs in uncertainty due to various European governments implementing policies aimed at reducing expenditures on extensive and ambitious initiatives that do not directly benefit their citizens.

Towards a new frequency

To reverse this trend, several experts who spoke to HumAngle on this subject call for a multipronged approach: “fair remuneration and protections for media workers, the depoliticisation of regulatory bodies like the NBC, and coordinated efforts to protect journalists from both state and non-state threats.”

Support can also come from within: local media houses banding together to resist political capture, civil society amplifying their role as watchdogs, and donors investing in long-term media independence projects.

The stakes are high. In a region where radio remains the most accessible and trusted medium for news, revitalising local broadcasts is critical to preserving democracy. 

This report was produced by HumAngle in partnership with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) as part of a project documenting press freedom issues in Nigeria.

“‘Oya Oya, tell am make him wire us ₦200k before we leave you; if not, na Kaduna we go carry you go like this,” yelled the driver who abducted Precious Joseph during a phone call with her fiancé. 

What was supposed to be a normal evening for Precious, a businesswoman in her thirties in Abuja, North-central Nigeria, turned out to be a harrowing ordeal that left her traumatised. 

It was around 6 p.m. in February when the incident happened. That evening, she was patiently waiting for a roadside taxi in Gwarimpa, popularly called ‘along’, after receiving a call from an unhappy customer waiting at her other shop branch in Garki. 

A green-coloured Golf taxi stopped for her — a lady sat in the front, and two men occupied the rear seat. Unsuspecting, she entered the vehicle after negotiating the fare. It wasn’t until they approached the Oando Filling Station along the Gwarimpa highway that she realised something was deeply wrong.

“The lady in the front started winding up her window; then the driver and the guy next to me did the same,” Precious recounted. “Mine was the only window still down, so the man beside me reached over to wind it up. I refused. That’s when he slapped me.”

Her panic escalated after the driver confirmed her worst fears: “You think say we be normal human beings? You de craze?” She recalled him saying. 

From that moment, she knew she was in the hands of ruthless criminal drivers notorious for robbing and sometimes harming unsuspecting commuters in Abuja. The criminal enterprise is commonly known as ‘one-chance’.

“I told them to take whatever they wanted. But the driver just laughed and said, ‘We don’t want anything from you yet. When we reach where we de go, we go know whether we want something,’” Precious recounted.

Her panic intensified when the driver asked her what she could offer because they had been paid ₦5 million to bring her. 

At that moment, she peed on herself.

An unending crime

Precious is just one of many victims of one-chance operations in Nigeria’s capital city. 

These operations, where criminals disguise themselves as taxi drivers and passengers to lure unsuspecting commuters, are not a new phenomenon. It is not only a menace widely recognised by Abuja residents but also one of the most persistent security threats that has remained a frightening norm in the capital city and other states in Nigeria. 

Several victims told HumAngle that these criminal gangs operate with precision, selecting their victims carefully based on vulnerability, isolation, and distraction. 

Unsuspecting commuters are lured using gang members of any gender, who disguise themselves as everyday passengers. In some cases, these members are scattered along different routes, where they are then picked up by the drivers at intervals to avoid suspicion. Within minutes of the ride, they then reveal their true intentions.

Findings by HumAngle, based on interviews with victims, revealed that some of the hotspots for one-chance operations in Abuja include but are not limited to the Gwarimpa expressway, Wuse, Berger Roundabout, Area 1, Central Area, Jabi, and Lugbe Axis.

Though there is no publicly available data specific to one-chance victims or incidents in Nigeria, a report published by The Guardian, a Nigerian newspaper, revealed that over 100 cases have been recorded since 2015. 

Some of these tragic incidents, as also reported by HumAngle in the past, have led to injuries and, in some cases, death due to their inability to provide a police report. This raises concerns about how much value is being placed on the lives of average citizens.

In June 2024, Prisca Chikodi, a personnel of the Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS), was killed by one-chance operators after boarding a vehicle at Area 1 bus stop. Her body was later found in Utako, with no visible signs of gunshot wounds or stabbing.

This year, precisely in February, a social media clip revealed how two suspected one-chance operators were apprehended by mobs in Lugbe. The suspects had allegedly picked up a young woman, who raised an alarm upon sensing danger. Bystanders intercepted the vehicle, rescued her, and took justice into their own hands.

Kabir Adamu, a security expert and the director of Abuja-based Beacon Security Intelligence, explained that despite attempts by previous commissioners of police and the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to end the menace through the banning of illegal parks, advocacy, and arresting drivers or vehicles that are not registered, it has not succeeded in reducing the crime in the FCT.

He also revealed that the lack of efficient public transportation in the capital city is one of the reasons why ‘one-chance’ remains a growing menace that needs urgent attention, as residents increasingly experience horrific ordeals.

“Public transportation is not adequately provided in the FCT, which is principally a working city with a lot of workers with limited public transportation arrangements. The need for transportation is extremely high, and those who cannot afford to use the registered taxis will now have to depend on less expensive rides, making them more vulnerable to criminals. Until we address public transportation needs in the FCT, I’m afraid to say this challenge will remain with us,” Kabir told HumAngle. 

Some victims of one-chance incidents revealed that their horrifying experiences have pushed them to use alternative and, to a certain extent, safer modes of transportation, like ride-sharing apps for commuting within the capital city. 

Mardiya Umar, another victim of the one-chance crime, told HumAngle that even though ride-sharing apps have their share of challenges, they offer a much safer alternative compared to on-the-spot taxis, which are mostly used for one-chance operations in Abuja. 

“[Ride-sharing apps] are not completely a haven; it is just something we are trying to explore, but I will say that it is safer, and right now, I don’t even care about the exorbitant prices.  If I can afford it, why not? If I can’t afford to be somewhere at a particular time, I’d rather stay in my house because the trust issue is still there,” Mardiya said. 

The extortion spree

For Precious, the horror was far from over.

After inflicting physical harm, the criminals ensured that her nightmare extended beyond just that. They were not merely looking for cash and valuables; they wanted access to her bank accounts.

Before then, the woman, a member of the one-chance syndicate, seated in the front seat, demanded her phone and bag. As she scoured through her belongings, they found her credit card. That signalled the commencement of the extortion spree.

“I had ₦27,000 cash that I made from my shop in Kagini before leaving; she then asked me how much I had in my account,” Precious recalled. 

Due to the psychological and physical horrors she was experiencing, she explained to them that she had three bank accounts but was only carrying the card for one. They ordered her to transfer all the money from the other accounts into the one linked to the available card so they could withdraw it.

Under duress, she complied, giving them access to her account and transaction PIN.

As they continued the journey, one of the criminals got out at multiple locations to withdraw cash from her account. She remembers them saying, “This money never do. E be like say this girl get money.” 

Helpless and trapped in the backseat, she had no way to resist. 

A desperate plea for help

As the one-chance criminals continued their crime spree stretching through the night, Precious’s phone rang — it was her fiancé calling to query why she hadn’t reached, as the customer was still waiting for her. Her fiancé was in the shop when she left for Garki and promised to come back as soon as possible so that they could go home together.

“They gave me the phone and told me to tell him I had been kidnapped. They demanded that I tell him to transfer ₦200,000 or they would take me to Kaduna,” about four hours away in Nigeria’s North West.

The moment she spoke, he suspected something was off and asked if she was okay. She had barely responded before they took the phone from her, demanding a ransom from him, threatening to take her to an undisclosed location where they could extract even more money if he didn’t comply. 

Her fiancé begged them, told them he didn’t have the money and that the bank network was bad. But they just kept repeating, “Na you no bail am o.”

About 30 minutes later, Precious’ fiancé sent money into the account as instructed, and the criminals withdrew the amount before letting her go. The horrifying seven hours left her disoriented, alone, and vulnerable.

“I wasn’t aware that they were on the Abuja-Kaduna highway until they dropped me in a nearby bush. I had to trek out to the express,” Precious said. 

Vehicles sped by, none stopping to help her. It is a dangerous stretch of highway, and no driver wants to risk falling victim to another crime. She kept walking until she found a vehicle that brought her back to Abuja.

Between trauma and a flawed system

At the centre of one-chance and car break-ins in Abuja, victims juggle between overcoming trauma and the lack of effective law enforcement response to track criminals, either through car registration linked to phone numbers, Bank Verification Number (BVN), or National Identity Number in the event of such crimes.

After enduring physical abuses (especially for one-chance victims), financial losses, and psychological trauma, some victims told HumAngle that they don’t even report the incidents to security operatives due to the hurdles they are likely to face. Even those who report barely get help.

Mary Akwu is one such victim.

She entered a one-chance vehicle along the Gwarimpa expressway and was beaten by the criminals, leaving her with a swollen face. When she visited the police station at Games Village in Garki the following day, the officers told her that the crime happened outside their jurisdiction, so they referred her to the Wuye division. 

After meeting with the Divisional Police Officer at Wuye, she was asked to visit a hospital and her bank before they could proceed with the case.

When she returned the next day, the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) assigned to the case told her that she needed to make some payments to cover the running cost of the investigation, but since she didn’t have the money in her account due to the incident, he told her to go and work for some months to gather the amount needed – she left without help from the police, only with the physical and mental scars of the incidents.

Since then, Mary has been caught up in traumatic rollercoasters. She told HumAngle that the experience from that incident made her scared of everything.

“I had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” she said. “I would scream in my sleep at night. I was scared of going anywhere. Everybody seemed like they were going to hurt me. I avoided every male figure around me. Unconsciously, I was traumatised. I got a job and had to quit because of how the man was talking to me. I didn’t trust him.”

They transferred ₦530,000 from her account, most of which belonged to her church group. When she reported the incident to the church, her pastor notified the church’s head of security, who advised them to move the case to the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Abuja.

On getting there, the FCID informed them that they would write to the initial IPO at Wuye to transfer the case. Before then, they also requested some payments be made to ‘facilitate’ the process. 

“We paid, and they told us they were going to work on the case. They called me like two times to get the bank details and some other things. Since then, I haven’t heard from FCID and the IPO. Even the suspect whose account the money was traced to was unreachable,” Mary told HumAngle. 

Aside from the cash, the criminals went away with her jewellery. 

“I haven’t recovered anything. I’m still working on balancing my life,” she said. 

Security experts like Kabir believe that greater synergy and less territorial behaviour among public security managers would allow government agencies and private sector players to combine their cybersecurity strengths and better support efforts to combat these crimes.

“The public security cybersecurity capability is extremely weak, and its refusal to integrate the non-security cybersecurity component that we have is also a huge challenge. We have the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy, where we have parastatals like the Nigerian Communications Commission and Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency that have enormous capability to support the sector, but because of the territorial nature of our public security managers, they don’t see these players as capable of supporting them,” he said. 

“So, what they are trying to do is to raise their capabilities independent of this other existing one, and because of that, you now see a huge gap, and it’s affecting virtually everything cyber-related in the country.”

Emmanuel Onwubiko, the National Coordinator of the Human Rights Writers of Nigeria, added that one-chance operators are exploiting existing loopholes within certain government agencies to execute their plans and unleash violence on citizens.  

While calling for the installation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) for improved intelligence across the FCT, Onwubiko said synergy between the police, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), and other security forces will help fight the crimes of one-chance and car burglary.

“It is important that the government examines the state of the FRSC because it has collapsed. The licensing management system has collapsed. All kinds of people are driving without properly registered information somewhere because the FRSC cannot even produce licences swiftly,” he noted.

On the recurring complaints that police officers often demand money from victims before investigating their cases, Josephine Adeh, the FCT Police Public Relations Officer, told HumAngle that the command maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards unprofessional conduct.

“Incidents of one-chance robbery in the FCT have been reduced to the barest minimum,” she said. “The current Commissioner of Police has employed extensive and strategic tactics to effectively combat one-chance activities within the FCT. These proactive measures have yielded positive results, as evidenced by the significantly low, often non-existent reports of such incidents in recent times.”

The police spokesperson added that the FCT Command works closely with victims of one-chance robberies who come forward to report their cases, insisting that no one is ever asked to pay before their complaints are addressed. 

“The Command remains committed to providing professional and compassionate support to all victims of crime,” she added.

But for Precious, Mary, and the many others who have suffered at the hands of one-chance and car break-in syndicates, the trauma runs far deeper than financial loss. While some bruises have faded with time, the psychological scars linger. And as long as the criminal networks continue to exploit gaps in the system and prey on unsuspecting commuters, the sense of fear and vulnerability remains, a heavy price for simply trying to get home or to work. 

No fewer than 115 persons have been reported killed after a devastating flood submerged several communities in Mokwa in Niger State, North-central Nigeria.

Communities are still struggling from the impact of the severe flooding, which is believed to have been triggered by torrential rainfall and structural failures in some areas. The disaster, which struck the region on the morning of Thursday, May 29, has claimed over 100 lives so far. Residents of the area told HumAngle that the death toll is nearing 150 even as officials work to rescue more victims.

The spokesperson of Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA), Ibrahim Audu Hussein, told newsmen that over 3000 houses were submerged. Eyewitnesses report entire neighbourhoods submerged, forcing people to abandon their homes in search of safety. 

“There are entire families that have been almost wiped out,” Farouk Mokwa, a resident of the community, told HumAngle. “There is a family of 12, and only one person is alive. There is another family of nine, and only two people have survived so far.”

Farouk himself lost his shop, which functioned as both a chemist and a stop for people looking to buy soft drinks. The shop contained three refrigerators and goods worth millions of naira, he said. 

Rescue teams and emergency responders are on the ground to locate missing persons and provide relief to affected residents. The flooding has also cut off major roads, complicating rescue efforts and making access to food and medical supplies difficult.

So far, displaced people have sought refuge in two primary schools in Mokwa, while those with relatives in unaffected communities have trooped there in search of cover.

Mokwa serves as a commercial hub in Nigeria’s north-central region and a key point for traders and farmers from the north to the south. 

In response, President Bola Tinubu has ordered swift intervention from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to support rescue operations. Residents also said the Deputy Governor had paid a visit to the area to assess the devastation.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) had issued prior warnings of potential flash floods, urging residents to take precautions. 

Nigeria faces annual devastation due to heavy rainfall, which wreaks havoc on infrastructure and is made worse by inadequate drainage systems. In September 2024, HumAngle reported how torrential rains and a dam failure in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, led to severe flooding, claiming lives and displacing millions of residents.

Two months after the Maiduguri incident, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed that in 2024, Nigeria saw one of its worst floods in decades, with significant deaths leaving 1.3 million people affected across 34 out of 36 states.

Currently, the number of residents displaced by floods in Nigeria has reached 1.2 million, with over 1000 deaths, according to NEMA.

The worsening flood crises highlight the urgent need for improved drainage infrastructure and long-term disaster management strategies to protect vulnerable communities. As relief efforts continue, affected families are in dire need of temporary shelter, clean water, and essential supplies.

Musa Murjanatu, 40, was once a thriving trader in Niger State, North-Central Nigeria, where terrorists have taken roots for clandestine operations. As a prosperous merchant known for food supply in the Bassa area of Shiroro, Murjanatu has not only lost her home, but also her economic power, wallowing in penury in a displacement camp.

With almost two decades in the consumer goods business, she had built a reputation as a hard-working woman who could transform modest capital into a flourishing enterprise. Her home, a large compound in Bassa,  was always filled with the laughter of family members and relatives who often visited. Three years ago, everything changed.

“I left my home in Bassa due to terrorist attacks,” Murjanatu said. “Whenever they attack us, we run uphill and return two or three days after they have finished committing their atrocities. When it became unbearable, we fled, leading to our displacement. Some fled to Erena, we came to Kuta, some to Gwada, Charagi, Ilori, Gunu, and some are currently in Minna.”

Her once-thriving business was reduced to ashes when terrorists stormed Bassa, shooting sporadically, setting homes ablaze, kidnapping residents, and looting whatever they could. She fled with only the clothes on her back, walking for days alongside other survivors to reach Kuta, where a temporary displacement camp had been established in a central primary school.

“I arrived in Kuta without my belongings because I had just taken my bath when they invaded our community. I only had a wrapper on when we started running. When we reached Gurmana [a 10 km distance from Bassa], people were kind enough to help us with clothes to cover up properly. Then we got help and came down to Kuta,” she revealed.

The lives of Murjanatu and thousands of other women and children have been flipped by the escalating wave of terror attacks by armed groups in the agrarian communities in Shiroro. In the past three years, she has lost count of the number of close and distant relatives claimed by gruesome terror attacks.

“I have lost people. My brothers and their children were slaughtered; my in-laws were killed. I’ve lost over 70 close relatives and direct family members to terrorism. I sleep and wake up with a heavy heart,” she cried.

She is just one among the thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) struggling to survive in neglected displacement camps in the Shiroro Local Government Area.  

In 2020, the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA) revealed that only 4,030 people were displaced across four local government areas of the state. As of 2024, the figure has increased to 21,393.

As of June 2024, a total of 1.3 million residents have been displaced across the North-Central and Northwest regions of Nigeria, as data from the International Organisation for Migration’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has shown.

The data encompasses over two thousand households in the states of Benue, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Sokoto, Zamfara, and Niger who have been displaced by either communal clashes, terrorism, or kidnapping, among other issues.

While the reasons for the displacements vary considerably across the affected states, the report indicates that terrorism, in the form of killing and kidnapping, is the causal factor of the displacement of thousands of people in Niger State. 

The forgotten souls

The Kuta IDP camp, located in the headquarters of the Shiroro LGA, is now a sanctuary for thousands of displaced women and children from Bassa, Allawa, Manta, Gurmana, and other communities ravaged by insurgent attacks. What was initially set up as a temporary shelter has become a permanent residence for many, with no clear path to resettlement.

The displacement crisis in Shiroro LGA is as much a humanitarian tragedy as it is an economic and social disaster. Many of the displaced seeking refuge in the central primary school in Kuta lack access to basic amenities, such as food, sanitation, and medical services, which are woefully inadequate.

It was only recently that the Niger State governor, Umar Bago, revealed that plans are underway to build permanent structures in each of the affected areas and close down the temporary ones presently occupied by displaced persons. The proposed shelters will also serve as temporary homes “pending when the insurgency will end in the affected areas”.

When HumAngle visited the camp in March this year, the conditions were dire—overcrowded classrooms, insufficient food supply, and inadequate medical care. Sources revealed that they have been abandoned without any state intervention for over six months now.

The desk officer in the central camp, Yusuf Bala, revealed that when the camp was initially set up here, there was a rapid response from both the state and local government. Now, things are different.

“They sleep in classrooms. Due to the excessive heat we are experiencing, we have decongested the camp. Some are leaving the camp. We have about 734 households [women] here in this camp. We have 1,113 children, 204 men, because most of them are on the move. We are managing over 2,000 displaced persons here in this camp.

“Currently, the situation is dire. There are issues, and we no longer receive food and medical supplies. These interventions have stopped coming in. We have written to the local and state governments. Since the beginning of this year, nothing tangible has come into this camp from the state ministry of humanitarian affairs. It has always been unfulfilled promises,” he said.

Bala, who has been managing the camp since 2019, added that until recently, when the erstwhile commissioner of health visited the camp with some heart doctors from Greece to conduct checkups and brought some food items and medical supplies to support them, “interventions don’t come in regularly.” 

“As you can see, we are in fasting period, and nothing has been brought to the camp,” the desk officer said. “We only have a classroom designated as a clinic. The plain truth is we only have a mattress in it; there are no medical supplies. The personnel only attend to minor cases  and give out prescriptions to those who can afford to buy the medication.”

Ahmed Almustapha, a son of the late district head of Rumache, killed by terrorists, also confirmed that displaced widows and orphans in the camp have been abandoned. “Children are hungry, women are traumatised, and there is no end in sight to their suffering. These people feel completely abandoned,” Almustapha said.

“There are a lot of widows now taking care of their children by themselves without any support. Some have to beg to be fed. We don’t even know what the government is doing. We have lost a lot, and there is nothing that is being done about it.”

“As I speak with you now, I can’t remember when they last brought food for our people in the IDP camp here. We are appealing to the government to do the needful and come to our aid,” he noted.

Raising 12 children single-handedly

In one corner of the camp, under the shade of a classroom, sits 67-year-old Hauwa Zakari Mashuku, a grandmother who now shoulders the responsibility of raising twelve grandchildren. One of her children is among the hundreds slaughtered in numerous midnight raids in their homes.

For Hauwa, in the slightest of thoughts, this insecurity is something that wouldn’t last, but it has been eight years since she visited her community. The best she can do is to give a mental picture of how things were in the past.

“My husband and his brother were kidnapped while they were running to safety. When they attacked our village, I jumped into a river to protect my life, even though I couldn’t swim. As we speak, I have high blood pressure all from this insecurity,” she revealed.

With no source of income and limited intervention, Hauwa is overwhelmed by the burden of providing for her grandchildren. “Our businesses have collapsed. The grains we had in the village before running away have either been stolen or set ablaze. How can you have peace of mind?” she lamented.

Her grandchildren, ranging from ages three to sixteen, spend their days in hunger, scattered across the Kuta community to gather what they can, sometimes at the mercy of handouts and the pieces of firewood they gather to sell for their survival in the camp. 

For many displaced women like Hauwa, security remains a major concern, leaving them with the fear of returning to their villages as insurgents still control vast areas. Those who have summoned the courage to return are left with difficult choices: to farm and share their crops with terrorists, become informants, or pay taxes.

The displacement dilemma

“Our children and younger generation are not in schools; they are scattered in IDP camps,” Dangana Yusuf, a displaced resident of Bassa, told HumAngle. “When illiteracy is high, it can be catastrophic. We can see how it is fuelling terrorism today.”

Among the displaced are thousands of children who have been forced out of school due to the conflict. Many have witnessed unspeakable horrors—the killing of parents, the burning of their homes, and the trauma of displacement. Without education, their futures hang in the balance.

Almustapha, a displaced local and humanitarian worker, expressed his anguish over the bleak future that lies ahead. “The thought of our future is heartbreaking,” he lamented. “Once operational, schools are now shut down due to the attacks, leaving over 10,000 children in these communities without access to education. The consequences are alarming – an uneducated generation spells disaster.”

Murjanutu also stated: “It has been five years since anyone attended school in Bassa. These terrorists have put a stop to education in our community. No one is willing to risk their child going to school and getting kidnapped. Here in Kuta, we desire for our children to attend school, but we can’t even afford to feed them. How, then, can we send them to school?”

As for Salamatu Abdullahi, another displaced mother of seven who has only spent about two years in the camp, school is not an option for now as her priority remains how to feed her children, who have been forced to be breadwinners at a very tender age.

“Five of my children have headed to a mining site to get something so that we can feed ourselves. Sometimes they get lucky, sometimes they don’t. We have lots of orphans; we also have widows currently mourning their husbands. We are here in this camp without food or a form of business,” Salamatu said regretfully, noting that, “If our children are in school, how can we survive? You can’t even study properly without food in your stomach. That is why we don’t even talk about sending them to school.”

Breadwinners have been reduced to beggars. Many displaced women in Kuta were once traders, farmers, and skilled artisans. Now, they rely on handouts. Without financial aid, they cannot rebuild their lives. 

Attempts by some to start small businesses outside the camp—selling roasted corn, firewood, or sachet water—are met with challenges, including a lack of capital. 

“I left a lot behind. I had two grinding engines; they were burnt. One of my sons is a tailor; his shop was burnt down by terrorists. I sell awara [tofu]. I fry buns up to 10 measures daily. But now there’s nothing. Whenever I remember how things were and how it is now, I feel bad,” Salamatu added.

“If I can’t get some sort of support to start a business and take care of my children, I will be happy. Above all, I wish to go back home because my home is better than living here.”

For now, women like Murjanatu and Salamatu depend on meagre food rations often distributed by the few humanitarian agencies who drop by. In most cases, they rely on handouts and the petty services they render in markets. 

“I barely get ₦1,000 ($0.65) daily to take care of myself and six children; now, I don’t know where my next meal will come from,” Murja said, with her voice laced with grief.

They told HumAngle that some children in the displacement camps spread into the market in Kuta while school activities are ongoing to pick up spilt grains—rice, maize, and millet—from the pans of sellers and bring them home for their parents to sort and prepare a meal for their hungry stomachs. “When they bring it, we then pick out the stones before cooking it. We are living in bondage,” she added.

The insecurity has had devastating effects on the displaced local population, and their current situation in the Kuta IDP camp presents a plethora of challenges, especially the abandonment and lack of access to education.

“We want to go back home and take care of our children. Living in such conditions can push a child to steal or engage in prostitution. When a young girl is hungry and her parents cannot afford to feed her, she can be easily deceived to engage in immoralities just to fill up her stomach,” Murja lamented

As the sun sets over the Shiroro Dam, casting its reflection on the still waters of the Kaduna River, these women displaced by insecurity want “to go back home and live our lives as farmers.” Until then, their silent struggles may be another forgotten chapter in the annals of history.

This is the third of a three-part investigation on the human costs of the infiltration of Boko Haram elements in Niger State. Additional reporting by Ibrahim Adeyemi.