north-east

Bello Gambur dreads going to the stream before 2 p.m. 

Every morning, he leaves home with a herd of over 30 cattle, with his staff slung across his shoulders as they head into the bush. For about five hours, he watches them as they graze, rest, and wander, but none can drink. The only stream in the community lies just a short walk away, yet he must wait until 2 p.m. to take them there.

Going earlier, he says, could have deadly consequences.

All his life, the forty-year-old has lived as a herder in Mararaban Bare, a small community in the Numan Local Government Area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria, where his ancestors migrated and settled a long time ago.  

Over the years, the herders lived in peace with their host community, but in 2017, violence broke out over water. The clash claimed many lives, and several properties were destroyed. In October, security operatives stepped in to quell a similar incident. 

So, Bello doesn’t mind his herd enduring hours of thirst if it helps keep the fragile peace.

He leads the cattle to the stream when most locals have finished using it and are back at their homes. Bello and the other herders go there between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to prevent coming in contact with the locals who visit the stream every morning to bathe, wash, and fetch water for domestic chores.  

The rationing also requires the locals to leave before 2 p.m. 

However, this arrangement has not ended the clashes between the groups, as locals believe it does little to address deeper grievances.

Tension keeps building 

“Irrigation farmers use the water from the canal to farm. And other community members drink the water, the cattle also drink from it, so this is a problem,” Alphonsus Bosso, a 55-year-old farmer and resident of Mararaban Bare, told HumAngle.

He said the tension is unlikely to end soon, especially with the dry season approaching. This competition for access to the stream intensifies during this period.

Alphonsus said a lasting solution would be to provide the herders with their own water source “because we no longer co-exist”. In some other Adamawa communities, humanitarian organisations have already supported the creation of alternative water sources, which have helped ease similar tensions, a model yet to reach Mararaban Bare.

“We used to have canals that served as water sources for our cattle, and we barely used the stream until the canals began to dry up,” said Muza Alhaji Shenya, a 37-year-old herder in the area. He linked the recent drying up of water bodies in the area to industrial expansion, particularly the construction of embankments to store water for sugarcane plantations. HumAngle saw some of these embankments during a visit.

However, environmental experts say the problem extends beyond industrial activity.

Hamza Muhammed Usman, the Executive Director of Environmental Care Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in Adamawa State that promotes a climate-friendly environment, food security, and peacebuilding, explained that prolonged dry spells, erratic rainfall, and deforestation, among other factors, are responsible for the shrinking water bodies in the state.

He said that overgrazing by livestock and human activities such as excessive farming on the same location and mining reduce vegetation cover, which disrupts the natural flow of water into its channels and bodies, especially in local government areas such as Numan, Fufore, some parts of Madagali, Maiha, Gombi, and the southern zone. 

Hamza also noted that migration and growing birth rates in the affected areas have increased the competition for water. “There are people from Borno, Gombe, Taraba, and other places trooping into Adamawa for greener pastures. This leads to overdependence on the limited resources,” he said. 

‘They pollute the water’

Locals insist that sharing the water with the cattle is unhealthy. 

“The cattle are polluting the water with mud and urine,” said Silas Simon, the community leader. “We dilute the water with alum when we want to consume.”

Even this treatment becomes difficult during the dry season, which starts in October. 

During the season, the herders in Mararaban Bare are left with two options: lead their cattle to the local stream or trek six kilometres into Bare, the nearest village with multiple water sources. The journey takes about six hours, making the local stream the closest option for many.

One herder, who treks to Bare to avoid being attacked by locals, said his cattle often drink water once a day, mostly in the afternoon, and sometimes, in the evening while returning to their settlement. There, water is provided for them in small containers, but much priority is given to the calves since the water is not enough. 

“The cows are getting thinner; their health has deteriorated over the years,” he said. “Every water source is drying up.”

“If we can have alternative water sources, then we won’t go to the stream for water where the people drink from,” Muza said. 

There is a borehole in Mararaban Bare, but it barely functions. 

Silas noted that if the borehole was functional, locals would use it as a water source and leave the stream for the herders, which would reduce the clashes.

“The borehole barely works. If it ever pumps water, it ceases at any time, so one has to wait for hours before the water runs again. Sometimes, people queue up from morning to evening and get unlucky because it ceases anytime,” he said. 

‘No agreement’

Several meetings have been held between the locals and herders to resolve the conflict, but no lasting agreement has been reached apart from a temporary water-use arrangement. Silas said tensions remain high, as youths from both groups often act as the main instigators during clashes.

“We do not wish to provoke anyone; we are only after the welfare of the cattle,” said Alhaji Ngala, the chairperson of herders in the community. He also noted that farms have taken over grazing routes, leaving them with “no freedom”. 

“If we can have access to grazing routes and enough water supply, then our minds will be at peace,” Ngala told HumAngle. 

Hamza, the climate-friendly environment advocate, urged the government to invest in solar-powered boreholes as a way of promoting clean energy and sustainable water supply across communities facing similar challenges. He also called for stronger conflict-resolution mechanisms across the state.

“Water scarcity is not just an environmental issue but a driver of insecurity, because in a place where there is tension, certain groups can take advantage of the situation to infiltrate such communities and cause problems,” Hamza said. 

Although the state government has collaborated with civil society organisations to adopt measures like afforestation, small-scale irrigation projects, and awareness campaigns, among other initiatives, to address the recurring clashes over water and limited resources. Hamza noted that many communities still lack the technical capacity and financial support to sustain these interventions.

“Some of the measures, like afforestation and proper waste management, are not owned properly by the locals,” Hamza said. 

He further called for integrated water resource management and inclusive governance to protect watersheds and prevent further land degradation. “Degraded lands can be restored through rotation. Herders should not graze on the same spot for more than five years, and farmers should do the same,” he said.

He also stressed the need for interdependence; farmers relying on cow dung as manure, and herders being granted access to reserved grazing areas.

In December 2014, an incumbent president lost a re-election bid for the first time in Nigeria’s history. 

It was a time characterised by widespread anguish and anger at how insecure the Nigerian life had become. Boko Haram, the extremist insurgent group fighting to establish what it calls an Islamic State, had intensified its violence, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions more, and abducting hundreds of teenage girls from school. Bombs were also being detonated in major cities at an alarming rate. For Nigerians, the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan simply had to go. And so Muhammadu  Buhari was voted in with unflinching hope that things would get better. That hope quickly turned into disillusionment and, in some cases, anger as things began to take a different turn than was hoped for.

Today, July 13, the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, passed away at 82, signalling the conclusion of a significant political chapter. As tributes from dignitaries continue to emerge and headlines reflect on his ascent and legacy, HumAngle analyses the impact of his presidency on the lives of Nigerians beyond the halls of power, in displacement camps, remote villages, and troubled areas.

An examination of the security legacy

During his time in office from 2015 to 2023, Nigeria faced increasing violence on various fronts: the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, a resurgence of militants in the Niger Delta, and the rising threat of terrorism and conflicts between farmers and herders in the North West and Middle Belt. 

Buhari’s administration initiated multiple military operations, including Operation Lafiya Dole, Operation Python Dance, Operation Safe Corridor, etc., yielding mixed outcomes and levels of responsibility. While some campaigns succeeded in pushing back armed groups, others faced criticism due to evidence of excessive force, extrajudicial killings, and displacements within communities. Non-kinetic counter-insurgency operations such as the Operation Safe Corridor, which was launched in 2016, also came under heavy criticism. Though the programme was designed for Boko Haram members or members of similar insurgent groups in the northeastern region to safely defect from the terror groups and return to society, HumAngle found that civilians were finding their way into these programmes, due to mass arbitrary arrests prompted by profiling and unfounded allegations. The International Crisis Group also found that, beyond innocent civilians being forced to undergo the programme, other kinds of irregularities were going on. 

“The program has also been something of a catch-all for a wide range of other individuals, including minors suspected of being child soldiers, a few high-level jihadists and alleged insurgents whom the government tried and failed to prosecute and who say they have been moved into the program against their will,” the group said in a 2021 report. At the time, more than 800 people had graduated from the programme.

The programme also did not – and still does not – have space for women, and HumAngle reported the repercussions of this.

During Buhari’s reign, terrorists were also forced out of major towns but became more entrenched in rural communities. The former president launched aggressive military campaigns against them, reclaiming villages and cities. Boko Haram retreated into hard-to-reach areas with weaker government presence, operating in remote parts of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. In these areas, the group imposed strict rules, conscripted fighters, and punished dissenters, often with brutal force.

A HumAngle geospatial investigation also showed how insurgency wrecked hundreds of towns and villages in Borno state. Many of the rural settlements were overrun after Boko Haram lost urban ground under Buhari’s watch.

Even with significant investment in security, a large portion of rural Nigeria remains ungoverned to date. As the former president failed to curb the forest exploits of Boko Haram, the terror group expanded control over ungoverned spaces, particularly in the North Central and North East regions. In Niger State alone, terrorists took over communities in Shiroro, Rafi, Paikoro, and Munya LGAs, uprooting thousands and launching multiple attacks. The lack of accessible roads and communication infrastructure made rapid response nearly impossible, allowing the terrorists to operate with impunity.

HumAngle found that, under Buhari, Nigeria lost many forest areas to terrorists, especially in Niger state. In areas like Galadima Kogo, terrorists imposed taxes, enforced laws, and ran parallel administrations. The withdrawal of soldiers from key bases emboldened the terrorists. This shift from urban insurgency to rural domination underscores the failure to secure Nigeria’s vast ungoverned spaces. Analysts who conducted a study on alternative sovereignties in Nigeria confirmed that Boko Haram and other non-state actors exploited the governance gaps under Buhari’s administration to expand their influence, threatening national security.

Perspectives from areas affected by conflict

For individuals beyond Abuja and Lagos, Buhari’s governance was characterised more by the state’s tangible influence than by formal policy declarations.

In Borno and Yobe, civilians faced military checkpoints and insurgent violence. School abductions like the Dapchi abduction and many others were recorded..

In Zamfara and Katsina, the president’s silence on mass abductions often resounded more than his condemnations. In Rivers and Bayelsa, the Amnesty Programme faltered, and pipeline protection frequently took precedence over human security.

What remained unaddressed

While some lauded his stance against corruption, numerous victims of violence and injustice during Buhari’s time in office did not receive restitution or formal acknowledgement of the wrongdoing. The former President remained silent during his tenure, as significant human rights violations were recorded. The investigations into military abuses, massacres, forced disappearances, and electoral violence either progressed slowly or ultimately came to an end.

Police brutality was a major problem during his tenure, leading to the EndSARS protests that swept through the entire nation in October 2020, with Lagos and Abuja being the major sites. The peaceful protests sought to demand an end to extrajudicial killings and extortion inflicted by the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). For two weeks, Nigerians trooped into the streets with placards and speakers, memorialising the victims of police brutality and demanding an end to the menace. The protests came to a painful end on the night of October 20, when the Nigerian military arrived at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos and fired live rounds into the crowd of unarmed civilians as they sat on the floor, singing the national anthem. It is now known as the Lekki Massacre. Though the government denied that there was any violence, much less a massacre, a judicial panel of inquiry set up to investigate the incident confirmed that there had, in fact, been a massacre. 

No arrests were made, and activitsts believe some protesters arrested then may still be in detention to date.

Five years before this, on December 13 and 14, the Nigerian military opened fire on a religious procession in Zaria, containing members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), killing many and leaving others wounded. The incident is now known as the Zaria Massacre. HumAngle spoke to families of some of the people who were killed and children who were brutalised during this time.

Though these massacres have all been well documented, there has been little to no accountability for the aggressors or compensation for victims and their families. 

“My life became useless, losing three children and my husband to soldiers for committing no offence…I have never gone three days without my husband and all my children. This has affected my last-born, who is now in a psychiatric facility,” Sherifat Yakubu, 60, told HumAngle. 

“I feel a great wrench of sadness anytime I remember the injustice against my people, and I don’t think the authorities are ready to dispense justice,” another victim told HumAngle in 2022, highlighting the gap and lack of trust in the system created by the absence of any accountability after the incident.

Key achievements 

Beyond the headlines, Buhari played a crucial role in establishing a framework for centralised security authority. Choices regarding law enforcement, military presence, and national security circumvented local leaders and established institutions, exacerbating conflicts between the central government and regional entities. This centralisation continues to influence Nigeria’s democratic journey, disconnecting many experiences from those who are supposed to safeguard them.

Buhari rode into power on a widely hailed anti-corruption campaign, a promise honoured with the swift implementation of the already-proposed Single Treasury Account (TSA). By 2017, the programme, which consolidated up to 17,000 accounts, had saved the country up to ₦5.244 trillion. Buhari’s Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) eliminated over ₦54,000 ghost jobs, and Nigeria reclaimed ₦32 billion in assets in 2019. Under the same administration, Nigeria got back $300 million in Swiss-held Abacha loot. 

From 2.5 million MT in 2015, rice production rose to four million MT in 2017. In an effort to deter rice, poultry and fertiliser smuggling, the former president closed Nigeria’s land borders on August 20, 2019, a move believed to have bolstered local food production significantly. His government’s Presidential Fertiliser Initiative also produced over 60 million 50 kg bags, saving about $200 million in forex and ₦60 million yearly.

Infrastructural achievements under the late president include the completion of the Abuja-Kaduna, Itakpe-Warri and  Lagos-Ibadan railway projects, as well as the extension of the Lagos-Ibadan-Port Harcourt rail line. Notably, his government completed the Second Niger Bridge and the Lekki Deep Seaport.

Fatalities from Boko Haram reduced by 92 per cent, from 2,131 deaths in 2015 to 178 in 2021. Under the same administration, over a million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were resettled, and 13,000+ hostages, including some Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls, regained freedom. The same government acquired 38 new aircraft and Nigeria’s first military satellite (Delsat-1).

In 2021, the Buhari government signed the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), restructuring the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission (NNPC) into a commercial entity and setting the stage for significant transformation in the country’s oil and gas sector.

Confronting the past may be the path forward

The passing of a president demands more than mere remembrance or the crafting of political narratives. It should create an opportunity for national reflection. As Nigeria faces fresh challenges of insecurity, displacement, and regional strife, Buhari’s legacy presents both insights and cautions. 

As official tributes accumulate, Nigerians reflect not only on what Buhari accomplished but also on what remains incomplete.

Earlier this year, Ya Jalo Mustapha stayed with her two sons, Ali and Bor, in Njimiya, a village in Sambisa Forest, Borno State, North East Nigeria, an area under the governance of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). 

In Njimiya, as in other villages under its control, ISWAP’s authority is absolute — enforced through rules, fear, and constant surveillance.

One day, Ya Jalao’s sons went out and never returned. No one could say where they had gone or whether they were alive. In the weeks that followed, rumours spread that some men from nearby settlements had been seized by the military during raids.

Such disappearances are not uncommon in Borno State, where years of insurgency have blurred the lines between civilians and suspects. In one well-known case, 42 men from Gallari village were arrested by the military on suspicion of being Boko Haram members and detained for 12 years without trial; only three were recently released. Other times, the insurgents also abduct and forcibly recruit young men. 

In October, five months after their disappearance, Ya Jalo’s daughters-in-law remarried Boko Haram terrorists. 

Stranded with her four grandchildren, Ya Jalo knew she could not remain in Njimiya. Her eleven-year-old granddaughter, Magana, was next in line to be forced into marriage. “A suitor was already chosen for her,” Ya Jalo told HumAngle. “I was at the risk of losing her, too.”

Staying in the villages is rarely a sign of loyalty. For most families, it is because they risk execution if they flee, while staying at least allows them to eat from their farms.

Every day brought a deeper fear for Ya Jalo. She worried that her grandsons would slowly absorb the teachings of the insurgents. With no schooling except the sermons of Boko Haram, the risk of their indoctrination weighed heavily on her.

She kept her plan secret until the morning of her escape. That day, Ya Jalo informed neighbours that she was visiting a relative in a nearby settlement with her grandchildren. That began the three-day trek to Bama town. They travelled through bush paths, walking mostly at dawn and dusk until they reached the camp. 

“The journey was full of risks and uncertainty,” she said. “Even the children don’t know where we’re heading.” They eventually arrived. 

A different kind of struggle

For families fleeing Boko Haram-held villages, arriving at the Bama IDP Camp feels like stepping out of a nightmare. Many come with the hope that they are walking into safety, a place where food, shelter, and healing will finally be waiting. 

But what they find is a different struggle altogether. The displacement camp has exceeded its capacity, with hundreds of people living there. In early 2025, the government relocated about 3,000 persons to Dar Jamal, a small fraction that barely reduced the camp’s congestion. 

New arrivals, like Ya Jalo, often sleep in the open because no shelters are available. Since she was with children, Ya Jalo moved in with a relative who lives nearby. 

At the camp, individuals are required to register with the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), which forwards the information to ZOA International. The organisation provides breakfast and lunch for five days and a cash token of ₦11,450 per person for three months. 

However, there is no provision for education, healthcare, and psychosocial support.  

Several others who are fleeing their homes for refuge at the camps are confronted with this reality. “We thought this would be a place to rest, but it is only another kind of struggle,” Hajja Kura lamented. She fled Zarmari in October, another Boko Haram stronghold, in early July to the Bama displacement camp.

The absence of proper shelter and long-term care leaves many returnees questioning whether their escape was worthwhile. Some, disillusioned, quietly return to their villages, where the danger of insurgents still lurks.

Children at risk

In Bama, Ya Jalo’s fears for her grandchildren continue in new ways. She often worries about how years of exposure to insurgent preaching may have shaped their minds.

“The children are like wet clay,” said Abba Kura, a community leader at Bama. “Whoever holds them first will shape them. In many of those villages, it was Boko Haram who held them first.”

The effect is visible across the camp. When HumAngle visited, ten-year-old Modu Abbaye recalled lessons he learned in the forest. “Boko Haram are kind,” he said. “They always preach to us not to cheat people, to be kind, and not to insult others.”

Even though the group killed his parents and his friend’s father, a schoolteacher, Modu still speaks of them with a child’s innocence. He has never attended a formal school and insists he never will because “it is forbidden”.

“I don’t want to go to school,” said Modu. He lives with a relative at the camp.

Due to the absence of structured education and psychological support at the camps, many children remain caught between conflicting identities, victims and vessels of the very ideology that uprooted them.

“Children growing up in displacement camps or conflict zones suffer disrupted education, delayed development, and persistent anxiety. They often struggle to imagine futures beyond survival,” said Mohammad Usman Bunu, an educator at Future Prowess School for displaced and vulnerable children in Maiduguri.

For Ya Jalo, that future feels uncertain too. As she watches her grandchildren adjust to life outside of their hometown, she is haunted by the same questions: what kind of lives will they build without their fathers and mothers, and will they ever know peace again? Her thoughts often drift to Ali and Bor, the sons who vanished months earlier.

“I also came here to wait for news of my sons,” she said. “I feel closer to them in Bama. I believe they are with the military, and one day I will be reunited with them.”

In Borno’s camps, stories like hers echo everywhere. Families are displaced, divided, and still holding on to hope that the war has not taken everything from them.

Ngomari Costine has a terrible reputation. The area, in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, is filled with delinquent youth popularly referred to as Marlians, named after a controversial Nigerian musician whose songs and style they imitate. 

Groups of young people in flashy clothes and elaborate hairstyles gather in front of shops and on benches outside houses in the area. But it’s not their dressing that worries residents; it’s what lies beneath: gangs ready to turn violent at the slightest provocation.

The same issue plagues Gwange 2, another densely populated neighbourhood where hundreds of teenagers roam the streets at almost every hour. Their presence alone sends jolts of fear down the resident’s spine; their actions do far worse than that. 

“Almost every day, there is a gang violence incident,” said Zanna Abba Kaka, the District Head of Ngomari Costine. “This made our community a highly unsafe place to live in.” 

The aftermath of the heydays of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s North East, particularly in Borno State, which is the epicentre of the violence, has left behind a generation of young people who have become psychologically accustomed to violence. 

When the insurgency began to wane and relative peace returned, new forms of insecurity started to take root. The easy availability of light weapons, coupled with limited education and shrinking economic opportunities, pushed many young people into drugs, theft, political thuggery, and the violent street gangs that now dominate several neighbourhoods.

Much of this violence, according to Zanna, stems from political manipulation. “These thugs regard themselves as employees [of the politicians] and they do as they wish.”

The consequences are visible in everyday life. In Gwange 2, community leader Alkali Grema recalled one day at the front of his house when an 18-year-old boy attacked his peer with a knife and slashed his neck before others could intervene. 

“It happened so fast,” he said. This was a reprisal attack and just one out of many. Unfortunately, the victim lost his life. Alkali said he had witnessed so many instances where the gangs wielded dangerous weapons; “shiny and can be as long as the length of an adult’s shin.”

‘Unity for Peace’

As such incidents became more frequent and brazen, the authorities began to act. Investigations traced the flow of these weapons to the city’s Gamboru Steel Market, prompting several crackdowns. But when blacksmiths were banned from producing them openly, many quietly moved their operations underground.

In 2019, a different approach emerged. The non-profit International Alert, known for its peacebuilding work, launched the Hadin Kai Domin Zaman Lafia (Unity for Peace) project with support from the US Embassy’s Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership programme. The initiative aimed to reorient the community through peacebuilding and vocational training.

At-risk youth were identified and trained in tailoring, painting,  and embroidery. To foster a sense of belonging between the disarmed youth and other members of the community, International Alert engaged local entrepreneurs to facilitate the training.

The non-profit also organised dialogue sessions between community leaders and young people. Gradually, results began to show. The programme inspired community-driven initiatives like sanitation and improved school enrolment for vulnerable children. 

“We were able to enrol more children in Gomari Costine Primary School than ever before,” Zanna said. “Sometimes the school accepts them without us paying for registration or other charges.”

A thug’s turnaround

Thirty-nine-year-old Sani Umar has spent most of his life in Gomari Costine. He grew up underprivileged, without formal education or marketable skills, and for 15 years was one of the most feared political thugs in the area. He led a group called “A dakatar da Mutane”, roughly translated as “People must be stopped”.

Sani was one of the 150 youths who participated in the Unity For Peace initiative. “During the programme, I learnt tailoring and ventured into the tailoring business, but it wasn’t moving well because people don’t really bother much about making clothes in this economy, so I switched to selling tea,” he told HumAngle.

These days, you will find him at his tea joint as he tends to his customers and earns an honest living. Three years ago, at this time, he would likely be at their popular gang joint in the community, where many youths like him, who were jobless, would gather to chat, argue, and fight.

While narrating his life in the last decade, Sani looked sombre, with a demeanour that screams regret, especially as he shared a particular incident that threw him into fear and isolation in 2015.

“We attacked a neighbouring community, where unfortunately, my friend stabbed an opponent who was pronounced dead,” Sani paused. “I was shaken and I had to go into hiding to avoid arrest, and I couldn’t be seen in the community, at places where I normally stay for a long time. I was very much disturbed by that.” 

The event haunted him for years, but it was not until 2019, after joining the reform programme, that he finally walked away from violence.

Women leading peace

International Alert is not alone in this effort. In Gwange 2, the Unified Members for Women Advancement (UMWA) implemented the Youth Peace Building Initiative with support from the European Union’s Managing Conflict in Nigeria (MCN) programme. The project targeted 20 gang leaders, training them to advocate for peace and reject violence.

According to Hassana Ibrahim Waziri, UMWA’s Executive Director, her team began by identifying at-risk youth and inviting gang leaders for open discussions. “We gradually introduced peace concepts before expanding to the wider community,” she said.

To win trust, they organised a mass circumcision ceremony for boys; a culturally symbolic act showing they had the community’s best interests at heart.

After weeks of training and sensitisation, the reformed youths were appointed as peace ambassadors. Among them was Hassan Kambar, also known as Go Slow. He used to be feared as the leader of one of the local gangs, “The Branch”. He joined the group as far back as 2000, working as a thug for one of the big political parties then. 

“When UMWA came, they made us realise that if we keep living this way, what future will our younger ones have? That touched me deeply, and I decided to quit,” he said.

Today, the 45-year-old serves as a chairperson in the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) and earns a living as a carpenter.

Their transformation has had ripple effects. Ahead of the 2023 elections, some former gang members carried placards urging voters to reject violence. Others formed night-watch committees to guard their communities.

Many now dream of joining the police, army, or civil defence, determined to serve the same society they once harmed.

Peacebuilding also took a local turn. In Maiduguri, respected elders known as Lawan traditionally mediate disputes under a symbolic shed outside their homes. This same model was adopted in Gwange 2 and Ngomari Costine, where elders and youth now meet regularly to discuss issues.

“At first, the community leaders were afraid. They did not want to be involved with these boys, but they are our kids, there’s nothing we can do,” Dr Hassana. 

She explained that UMWA’s approach focused on changing mindsets as much as behaviour, as this goes with educating them that violence doesn’t equal strength as perceived by the gangs, rather it is about the capacity to organise and live peacefully with people, to move forward and foster development.

“We target the mindset… even though we do not give skill acquisition training, some of them reach out to us for recommendations when they want to join forces to do better with their lives,” Dr Hassana said.

Measuring change and facing limits

Community leaders who spoke to HumAngle said gang violence has declined noticeably. “Around 2020 and 2021, we used to get such cases every day, not only in this area but in Maiduguri generally, but it has reduced,” said the District Head of Ngomari Costine.

Yet the progress is fragile.

Zanna, who mobilised the youth to participate in the Unity for Peace programme, noted that only about 150 participants joined — far too few for a city the size of Maiduguri. Many young people remain outside the reach of these projects.

The sustainability of the programme poses another obstacle. While the programmes briefly expanded to London Ciki, Polo, and nearby communities, other hotspots such as Dala and Kaleri continue to struggle with gang activity.

And there is no system in place to ensure that these skills are transferable to the teeming upcoming youth. As much as the beneficiaries may want to help their community, they can only engage one or two people whenever they get a job.

According to UMWA, its Youth Peace Building Initiative lasted just one year due to limited funding. “Ideally, such projects should run longer to make the changes stick,” Hassana explained. 

Like most NGOs, both groups rely on donor grants. As funds shrink, their reach contracts, and the continuity of their work becomes uncertain.

A fragile peace

With non-governmental organisations stepping back, local authorities have become the last line of defence. Cases of conflict are now referred to the Lawan or CJTF chairmen, who attempt mediation before involving the police.

But sustaining peace comes at a personal cost. In Gwange, Lawan Grema said the absence of UMWA’s support has made his role harder. “Sometimes I remove money from my own pocket to settle small disputes,” he said. “People are no longer motivated to keep the peace.”

For these communities, the calm that has returned is hard-won but fragile. Without steady support, the cycle of neglect and violence that once defined them could easily begin again.

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

Journalists and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have joined forces to seek justice for 42 men arbitrarily detained and tortured by the Nigerian military in Borno State, North East Nigeria.

During an advocacy meeting organised by HumAngle and Amnesty International in Maiduguri, the state capital, on Wednesday, Oct. 22, civic leaders and media practitioners took a step to spotlight an investigation that opened a can of worms on the gross violation of human rights.

The survivors were present at the meeting to share first-hand accounts of how they endured years of torture, abuse, and brutal treatment in detention. They were accompanied by some of their relatives, who waited over a decade for their return. 

One survivor lost his sight while in detention, another lost an ear, and the other bore scars all over his body. Their stories cast a sombre mood over the room, as participants and advocates reflected on how to achieve transitional justice for the victims.

Usman Abba Zanna, the HumAngle reporter who investigated the case for months, detailed how he followed a lead from local sources and made several visits to Gallari, a rural community in Borno’s Konduga Local Government Area, to verify claims of military invasions and arbitrary arrests.

“In a conflict situation like this, there are so many cases of violation of humanitarian laws and war crimes by state actors. These men were the breadwinners of their families, and the military just arrested all of them,” Zanna narrated to the audience, stating that the arrest happened immediately after the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction in April 2014.

“When I went to Gallari, I met a 16-year-old boy who told me that they had arrested his father. He was now saddled with all the responsibilities of the family, including caring for her grandmother, who cried until she became blind. He travels far away to work and raise money to fend for his younger ones,” he added. 

In his remarks, Isa Sanusi, the Country Director at Amnesty International in Nigeria, reiterated the organisation’s efforts in documenting human rights violations amid insurgency and armed violence in the region. He said the organisation’s recent partnership with HumAngle is another move to seek accountability.

“One of the issues that we consistently talk about is the issue of accountability. Many people believe that the only way to bring peace is just to say that schools are being rebuilt and people are being forced to return to their communities,” he said, urging stakeholders in the meeting to take necessary actions.

“So many people are always asking: How are we going to have accountability, and how is it going to work? This is the reason we’re here. Amnesty International and HumAngle are partners in making sure that we seek accountability in this case.”

Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu, HumAngle’s Managing Editor, corroborated this sentiment, saying: “Journalism and advocacy are some of the most effective tools with which to correct the ills in society. Through the gathering today, we are merging both so that the suffering of people like the Gallari men and all other victims of enforced disappearances can have their stories heard. This is in the hopes that targeted advocacy towards stakeholders will elicit positive action from them.”

The raid that led to the arrests shattered the civilian community, leaving children, wives, and the elderly in displacement, poverty, and forcing some to remarry or assume breadwinning responsibilities prematurely.

Ten years later, in 2024, HumAngle revisited the incident, documenting the fate of the forgotten men. Three of them were released following our investigation a few months later. When we visited them after their return, we found an even more disturbing revelation: 37 of the 42 men detained had died gruesomely in detention, and those still alive carry their grief and scars around.

Before his arrest 12 years ago, Ahmadu Gujja was a strong man in his mid-20s and his family’s breadwinner. Life in Gallari, his village, was simple and fulfilling. He farmed, reared animals, and has supported his widowed mother and seven younger siblings since his father’s death. 

Gallari is a community of the Shuwa Arab tribe in Konduga Local Government Area (LGA) of Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. The remote village lies along Damboa road, 28 km away from Maiduguri, the state’s capital, 12 km from the nearest military base, and 98 km away from Chibok LGA. 

In 2014, a tragedy struck. For Gallari, it meant near extinction. For Ahmadu, it meant losing everything overnight. He had just married his second wife and was eagerly expecting the birth of a child from his first wife when the tragedy unfolded.

When HumAngle met Ahmadu, the weight of the memories of that day was almost unbearable. Blind now from injuries and neglect suffered in detention, he struggled through tears to recall what happened.

“I can never forget the day,” Ahmadu started.

On Thursday in April 2014, one week after the 276 school girls in Chibok were abducted by the infamous Boko Haram group, soldiers in a convoy with the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) drove past Gallari without incident. Villagers, including Ahmadu and his neighbour Abubakar, remember seeing them. 

But the following morning, everything changed. Around 9 a.m., soldiers and CJTF members surrounded the village, herding men, women,  and children into a square. 

Ahmadu had barely woken. He was waiting for his wife to finish cooking and to heat water for his bath, a daily routine for Ahmadu before taking his herd to graze. Instead, he was stripped alongside 41 other men. Among them were two strangers, one from a neighbouring village who had come to the market, and another who cut trees for a living. 

“They gathered everyone in the village. They asked if we were Boko Haram. We told them no, but they wanted us to say yes,” Ahmadu recalled.

The soldiers picked all 42 men, tortured them in front of their families, and hauled them away in military trucks to Dalwa, a nearby village. “Some had their ears cut off, others were stabbed. I myself was tied with ropes and beaten by soldiers and members of the CJTF,” Ahmadu recounted the horrors of that morning. 

Before transporting them further, soldiers interrogated the men about the abducted Chibok girls, whether they had seen Boko Haram passing through or witnessed the girls being taken. “We told them we saw nothing, that we don’t know Boko Haram,” Ahmadu told HumAngle.

That same day, the men were moved to Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri. The conditions there were appalling, he recounted.

“The cell was very tight, with no good toilet. We could only defecate in a bucket. There was not enough water, and the food was not enough,” Ahmadu said, adding that their hands were tied tight from behind for as long as he could remember.

They were given pap in the morning, maize for lunch, and semovita at night. Soldiers continued to interrogate them, demanding that they confess to being Boko Haram members.

“We suffered to the extent that if we were hiding something, we would have confessed,” he said.

For one week, they endured torture, including being tied up and left under the scorching sun from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., given just a bottle of water and a biscuit. Within days, three of the men had died due to hardship, untreated injuries, and the unbearable living conditions.

Years of darkness 

After a week at Giwa, 39 survivors from Gallari were flown with hundreds of other detainees to a military detention centre in Niger State, North Central Nigeria. The conditions there were even worse. Their clothes were stripped, and their trousers cut short. They were forced to sleep on bare floors. Water was scarce. It was simply depressing, Ahmadu recounted. 

“They gave us water in a teacup, and it was not daily. Sometimes we spend a whole day without water. They gave us tea with bread, but without water, we couldn’t eat. Sometimes, we drank our urine,” he recounted.

The first year was especially deadly. Ahmadu said many detainees died from hunger and suffering. “We have witnessed several cases of dead bodies disposed of in the cell. I did not have the count, but many Gallari men died within that period,” Ahmadu told HumAngle.

It was in Niger that Ahmadu began to lose his sight, first from a head injury during interrogation, then from months in darkness. “They kept us in a cell for one year without seeing the sun. When they later brought us out, they told us to look at the sun. That was when my eyes began to hurt,” he recalled. “I first lost vision from the right eye, then one year later, I lost the vision of the left eye. Turning me completely blind in a protracted year.”

For years, he suffered without treatment. Doctors in the prison said they had no specialist, and he was denied access to outside care. 

After six years in detention, a court declared Ahmadu and others innocent. But instead of being released immediately, they spent more years in detention. 

“The court said we were not guilty, but we still stayed,” he said.

For more than 11 years, Ahmadu did not hear from his family. “I gave up because I had lost everything. I had stopped thinking about home because it only reminded me of memories I had missed and would never get back. I missed my two wives and the unborn child I left,” he said. 

The isolation drove him to despair. At one point, he contemplated suicide. Ahmadu started shedding tears from the eyes he could no longer see with when he recalled the memories.

A shattered homecoming

In 2024, the detainees declared innocent were moved to Mallam Sidi, a rehabilitation centre in Gombe State in the country’s North East, where they underwent social reintegration activities. That same year, HumAngle compiled a list of the 42 men from Gallari who had been arrested and remained untraceable to their families. We submitted the list to the Nigerian army, asking for their whereabouts. HumAngle never heard back. 

But in April 2025, Ahmadu and two brothers from Gallari — Mohammed and Hashim Garba — were freed and reunited with their families in Maiduguri. “Out of the 42 men from Gallari, only five survived. And out of the five, only three of us were released,” Ahmadu told HumAngle. “The other two, Maina Musa and Isa Usman, remain in custody, waiting for court hearings.”

The military transported them to the Maryam Abacha Hospital in Maiduguri. They were received by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which offered them food and asked about their problems. But no medical care was provided. The military then told them to call their families or find their own way home.

For Ahmadu, returning home after 12 years was devastating. His first wife, pregnant at the time of his arrest, had died with her unborn child from grief and trauma. “She was not eating; she vomited up any meal we made her to eat,” Ahmadu’s mother recalled.

His second wife had been abducted by Boko Haram, bore four children for a fighter before fleeing, and when she heard the news of Ahmadu, she tried to reunite with him. But he refused.

Since his release, Ahmadu has continued to suffer excruciating pain in his eyes and head. With no access to proper medical care, he relies only on the little drugs his mother can afford from local vendors, mostly painkillers that provide temporary relief but do not address his actual ailments.

Two months after his return, Ahmadu continues to live with deep trauma that affects his daily life. His mother, who had long lived with little hope of ever seeing her son again, was overjoyed at his release. In her happiness and out of concern for his condition, she quickly arranged a small wedding so that Ahmadu could have a companion to support him through the hardship of his blindness. 

In June, three months after he was freed, Ahmadu married his new wife. Today, the couple depend largely on his ageing mother, who struggles to provide for them from the little income she makes selling dairy milk. “My biggest fear is for my younger ones. My mother is still the one caring for me,” Ahmadu lamented.

He lives in an unfinished building under thatch that barely gives them shelter. It’s the rainy season, and everywhere is leaking in the room when HumAngle visits his home. Now blind and dependent with no livelihood, Ahmadu lives in humiliation. “Whenever it rains, we cannot sleep because the roof leaks. Before, even our goats had better shelter than this,” he said quietly.

Ahmadu lives with trauma and the weight of a lost life. He longs for justice but fears causing unrest. “If I can get my rights without causing any riot in Nigeria, I will be glad. But I don’t want anything that will cause a problem. We need a lot of help;  I need support to start a business so that I can take care of my new family,” he said.

The brothers’ ordeal

Like Ahmadu, Mohammed, 35, and Hashim, 32, were ordinary herders and farmers before the raid. Soldiers seized them alongside the other men of Gallari. Mohammed remembers the day clearly. He was sitting with his wife, about to eat, before taking his animals out to graze. Then soldiers in nearly 40 vehicles surrounded the village. 

From Gallari to Dalwa, then Giwa Barracks, and finally Niger State, the Garba brothers lived through the same cycle of torture and despair as Ahmadu.

“My friend Dahiru died in my presence because of thirst,” Mohammed said. “We could go four days without water. Some of us even drank urine to survive. By the time the Red Cross came to bring carpets and water, 37 of our people had died.”

Hashim recalled how three men died from torture before his distraught eyes within a week at Giwa Barracks. He also watched his elder brother faint under the beatings. Mohammed’s left ear was cut off, his wrists and back etched with scars from where he had been tied. Hashim, too, bore the marks of restraint and filth, his skin discoloured from months without bathing.

When the International Committee of the Red Cross intervened, conditions improved slightly, but the damage was irreversible.

Although eventually declared innocent by the courts, Mohammed and Hashim remained imprisoned. “We were told to calm down, that someday we would be released. It took 11 years,” Mohammed recounted.

At the rehabilitation centre in Gombe, where they were finally transferred, the brothers heard devastating news from home. “I heard that my wife and unborn child had died. My father, too, had died,” Mohammad said quietly. “When we were captured, my wife was pregnant. She gave birth to a dead child because of the way they took us. Later, she also died.”

Hashim’s grief was different but just as heavy. “We came back with nothing,” he said. 

“Even this phone I use was given to me by my mother. I feel shy when I see people I used to know as children, now grown up. Everything has changed while we were gone,” he said.

The brothers returned to find their family scattered and their property gone. Before his arrest, Mohammed owned about 30 cows and goats. His herd and even his house are now gone. “We only depend on our elder brother, who is taking care of our mother. We want to be self-reliant again,” Hashim said. 

Both men carry lasting scars. Mohammed struggles with heart pain and breathing difficulties. Hashim still bears deep marks on his wrists and head.

“When we first came back, I couldn’t even walk to the toilet without help. I had to reduce how much water I drank just to avoid disturbing people every time,” he said.

But beyond the physical pain is the humiliation of starting life from nothing. 

“We don’t want to be beggars. If I can have a wife, I can have someone to help me every day. But now, even marriage is far from us. Before, I married my wife with ₦100,000. Today, you need nearly a million. And I have nothing,”  Mohammed said.

Upon release, Ahmadu, Mohammed, and Hashim told HumAngle that the authorities gave them ₦50,000 cash. “They wasted 12 years of our lives. How can we recover with ₦50,000? I exhausted the money two days after my release,” Mohammed told HumAngle.

‘When we saw them, we cried’

The release of Ahmadu and the Garba brothers broke years of silence but also reopened deep wounds, especially for families who have lost loved ones forever. “When we saw them, we cried. They were unrecognisable,” a relative told HumAngle.

Other locals, like Kellu Janga, spent everything they had chasing hopes of reunion. She turned to people who claimed they could help to secure the men’s release, but those efforts proved futile. Her grief eventually cost her her eyesight, and she now depends on her grandson Abubakar for survival.

“We need the government to tell us where the rest are. We need justice,” Modu, the village’s deputy head and the only man spared during the mass arrest, told HumAngle.

Gallari’s tragedy has remained invisible, overshadowed by global attention to other incidents like the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls that led to the raid. While the world mourned those girls, Gallari’s men vanished in silence. No official explanation has ever been given. The Nigerian Army has not responded to HumAngle’s letters seeking answers.

Children who were toddlers when their fathers were seized are now teenagers, growing up without fatherly support. Some dropped out of school to fend for themselves. 

Abubakar, only ten when his father and uncles were taken, has carried the burden of raising his siblings ever since. “I just want to see my father again. If he is alive, let them bring him back. If not, we deserve to know,” he said.

‘A gross violation of the constitution’

In the North East, transitional justice has often focused on the reintegration of former Boko Haram members through initiatives such as the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration Borno Model (DDRR) programme, a counter-terrorism project aimed at rehabilitating and reintegrating surrendered Boko Haram members back into society, and Sulhu, a local peace and deradicalisation initiative. 

While these efforts aim to end violence and rebuild communities, they leave behind unresolved wounds for families whose loved ones were arrested arbitrarily and held without trial for years. For these families, justice is not about reintegration alone but also about truth, accountability, and the right to know the fate of those taken away.

Relatives of detainees interviewed by HumAngle argue that any conversation about reconciliation feels incomplete and one-sided when innocent civilians remain behind bars without trial. Their demand is simple: justice must include the release or fair trial of those held in military detention centres, alongside information about those who have died in custody. 

For them, healing cannot come from dialogue with insurgents while their own sons, brothers, and fathers languish in silence and neglect.

Aisha, one of several individuals and groups in Borno State advocating for justice and the release of their loved ones, expressed the frustration shared by many. “How can we have Sulhu with Boko Haram members who were the cause of the mass arrests, detentions, and killings? Our children, sons, relatives, and parents have been detained without trial for many years, and you want us to accept Sulhu? Release our children if you want justice for all. Our children were innocent when the military arrested them,” she said.

Aisha’s activism began with seeking the release of her own son, arrested along with other youths in a mosque in 2012. Since then, she has become a prominent voice for families whose loved ones remain in military custody.

Sheriff Ibrahim, a lawyer and human rights activist in Maiduguri, described the detention of the Gallari men as “a gross violation of the Nigerian Constitution and international human rights law.” He explained that under Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (as amended in 2011), no person should be detained for more than 24 hours or at most 48 hours without being charged in court. 

“The law is clear. Anyone arrested should either be charged within that time frame or released on bail. To hold people for over 10 years without trial is unlawful and unconstitutional,” he said.

According to Ibrahim, the fundamental rights of the Gallari men and their families were completely violated. Chapter Four of the Constitution guarantees the right to life, the right to human dignity, and freedom of movement. “These men were presumed innocent but were treated as though they were guilty without evidence. Their families too suffered years of separation, uncertainty, and economic hardship,” he added.

He further noted that survivors and families of those who died in detention have the right to seek justice and compensation from the Nigerian state. “The victims, survivors, and their families can sue the government for unlawful and unjustified detention. There were no prior charges against them, no fair hearing, and no due process. These are the most basic rights guaranteed by law,” Ibrahim told HumAngle.

In contrast to the treatment of Boko Haram fighters and innocent civilians, Ibrahim criticised what he described as double standards in the Nigerian justice system. “Former Boko Haram members who committed crimes against humanity are reintegrated into society through government programmes. Yet innocent civilians like the Gallari men were locked away for years without trial. That is clearly a misplaced priority and a failure of justice,” Ibrahim said.

To prevent such cases in the future, Ibrahim called for an independent committee of inquiry involving civil society groups, non-governmental organisations, and other stakeholders. 

“There must be transparency and accountability. If anyone is found guilty of aiding or abetting, they should face charges. But if there is insufficient evidence, then the person should be released immediately and compensated. That is the only way to restore public trust in the justice system,” Ibrahim noted. 

This story was produced by HumAngle and co-published with other media.

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

This was the Tumba Ra Ngabili market.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding Trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Restoring peace through trade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saving together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The struggle to thrive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When farming is no longer enough 

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

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

He signed up.

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

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

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

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

“The work is dangerous,” Nathaniel says.

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

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

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

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

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

Road to China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The logs are measured with tape, he adds. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laws exist, only on paper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet the logging continues.

The human and ecological toll

The scars are everywhere.

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

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

But the loss is deeper than firewood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The damage extends to wildlife.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last ride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Names with asterisks were changed to protect the sources.

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

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

Righteous deforestation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Across dying sands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The broken wall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The legacy effect

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

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

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

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

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

Reporting the crisis 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reported and scripted by Sabiqah Bello

Voice acting by Rukayya Saeed

Multimedia editor is Anthony Asemota

Executive producer is Ahmad Salkida

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting on the right side

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The funnel of fraud

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It looked like a real job’

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hausa connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That world has since vanished. 

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

Land cover change in Yusufari from 1984 to 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

The exodus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Without water, there’s no life’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sea of sand

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pressure across borders

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hostile sky, horrible land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From frying pan to fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Way forward through COP

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

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

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

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

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

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Centre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the scorching sun, away from their makeshift tent of thatch, bamboo, and a trampoline sheet used as roofing, Pwanabeshi Job* washes clothes with a three-month-old baby strapped to her back. Her two-year-old son plays nearby, while her eldest fans the burning coal to ensure lunch can be ready. Her husband was out.

Before resorting to life on the streets of Imburu, a community in Numan Local Government Area, Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, the family of five lived under a proper roof.

However, by early August, they, like many others in the Numan and Lamurde areas, grew anxious, knowing that from mid-August through September, their houses are usually flooded.

Each year, as the Benue River, one of West Africa’s largest rivers, swells, it pushes into homes and farms across Numan, where it meets with the Gongola River. The rising waters, which carved through the fertile Benue Valley, a region long prized for farming, leave communities across the area, such as Imburu, Hayin Gada, Ngbalang, Lure, and Opalo, quickly submerged. 

Some residents migrate to neighbouring communities, while others, like Pwanabeshi, gather mats, chairs, cooking utensils, clothes, and other essentials to settle on the street. There, on higher ground beyond the reach of the floodwaters, they remain for about two months. For many, this has become a way of life since 2022. 

Cycle of displacement 

Locals told HumAngle that flooding was first recorded on a large scale in Adamawa in 2012, especially in the Benue Valley. For the next decade, no incident of that scale was recorded. But in 2022, another devastating flood displaced more than 130,000 people across 153 communities. Twenty-five lives were lost, and properties were severely damaged. Heavy rains, dam spillover, and river overflow were said to be the causes of the incident.  

Flooding returned the following year. In 2023, unusually heavy seasonal rain combined with the occasional release of water from the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon led to floods that destroyed homes and infrastructure in Fufore, Demsa, Shelleng, and other local government areas.

By August 2024, communities such as Kwakwambe, Lure, and Imburu were again affected by a flood, this time linked to overflow from the Kiri Dam in Shelleng. In Madagali, floods struck due to the upstream flow of water from the Cameroonian highlands. 

Most recently, in July 2025, a violent flood ravaged communities in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, claiming lives and properties. By August, communities around the Benue Valley began to migrate after water levels rose and flooded their homes. 

A study identified the opening of dams, excessive rainfall, rising water levels, and poor drainage, among other factors, as the major drivers of floods in Adamawa State. It also noted that many residents fail to heed early flood warnings.

Lives under water 

On the streets of Imburu, affected residents like Pwanabeshi make do with thatch shelters, each separate but stretched along a street so long that it takes about thirty minutes to walk from one end to the other. They sleep, cook, and carry out domestic chores. With no bathrooms and toilets, they bathe and relieve themselves in nearby bushes, usually before dawn or at night. 

While every household is trying to continue their normal life on the streets, things are tough. The trampoline that covers Pwanabeshi’s shelter leaves gaps, so rain seeps in, soaking the mud floor and chilling the family. “The weather is cold, the mosquito nets we have are not enough, and we are many here, including children,” she said. 

Others face similar struggles. Dati John, a mother of six, keeps a plastic container in the middle of her tent to catch dripping water when it rains.

“I’ve been staying here for over three weeks,” she told HumAngle.

Within this period, Dati said that her children have fallen ill several times, but she could only afford paracetamol until workers from the local primary healthcare centre distributed drugs on Sept. 14. “My basic concern is proper shelter and drugs for our children. If we can get those waterproof tents and mosquito nets, then it’ll go a long way for all of us here,” she said.

According to Dennis Sarka, the community leader of Hayin Gada, about thirty households have been flooded in his community so far. He is unsure of the total number of affected households in Imburu, but he says they are the most affected.

The hardship in these communities goes beyond shelter. The floodwaters have also wiped out the residents’ main source of livelihood—farmlands. Talegopwa John said he lost his entire farm, unable to estimate the hectares submerged or the worth of what was destroyed.

“Some people cultivated large hectares of maize and soya beans, but the flood destroyed everything,” he said. Although the residents were informed about the looming flood months ago, they did not have anywhere else to cultivate their farm, so they clung to hope. 

“That is why I no longer cultivate rice or maize, because the rain washes them away easily. Now, I only farm millet, which can withstand the flood,” said Ramson Mandauna, a retired civil servant and full-term farmer who lives in Imburu. 

The 69-year-old said he didn’t experience flooding as a child living in the community. But over the past four years, he has lost his farmland repeatedly and has been forced to live on the streets each rainy season.

“What we need now is food and how to bring an end to the flooding,” Talegopwa said. 

For children and educators in Imburu, the crisis is not just about lost shelter or farmland; it is also about lost education. September marks the start of a new academic year, but pupils cannot attend classes because Kwakwambe Primary School, located in Hayin Gada within the Benue Valley, is submerged. Locals have nicknamed it the ‘Marine Academy’. 

Each year since 2022, the school, which has a population of about 100 pupils, has been forced to close from mid-August through September, leaving children from Imburu, Hayin Gada, and neighbouring communities at home until the water recedes and classes resume in October. 

Dennis told HumAngle that a non-governmental organisation recently surveyed the area with plans to build another school in a location that is not prone to flooding. “We have provided them with land, and we are expecting work to begin soon,” he said. 

These days, some of the out-of-school children spend their days swimming in the flooded areas.

‘Dredge the Benue River’

Agoso Bamaiyi, an environmental scientist from Adamawa State, says the overflowing of the Benue River through its tributary, the Gongola, is the main driver of flooding in the region. While climate change and global warming contribute to the rising frequency and intensity of floods worldwide, he argues that the Benue’s overflooding remains the central cause in Adamawa.

“The release of huge volumes of water from the Lagdo Dam and the fact that the Benue trough is silted so much that it cannot hold the resultant runoff anymore a major reasons,”  he stated, adding that the situation worsens each year. 

Agoso believes the suffering can be significantly reduced if the Benue is dredged and a reservoir dam is constructed. He said the dam, which could be completed within four to five years, would store excess water released from Lagdo, provide irrigation and electricity, and release water back into the Benue at a natural flow. “If this is done, the flooding caused downstream would be averted,” he said, stressing that dredging would restore the depth and banks of the river, allowing it to carry more water away from farmlands and communities.

“This will also restore year-round navigability and the economic benefits thereof,” he added. 

*Asterisked names have been changed to preserve the identity of the sources.

Behind the facade of order and cunning that the terror group Boko Haram, and its splinter group ISWAP, flaunt to the outside world, lies a dysfunctional core corroded by greed, paranoia, extortion, tribalism, fear, and treachery. 

In their enclaves, in North East Nigeria and in the wider Lake Chad region, women often bear the heaviest scars, being subjected to systemic rape and violence, which leaders dismiss as spoils of war. 

Commanders fall not only in clashes with soldiers or vigilantes but also under the bullets of comrades, who once swore to fight the same cause. 

Feuds over leadership and resources, suspicion of working as spies, or simple ambition have sparked deadly purges that have claimed more fighters than external battles with their enemies have done. In the end, the insurgents are caught in a paradox of their own making –  they wage war against the state but are slowly devouring themselves from within.

Mamman Nur

At the height of his influence, Mamman Nur was revered as one of the most learned clerics in the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). He was a charismatic leader whose voice once carried weight in the ideological debates that shaped the insurgency across the Lake Chad basin. But by the time of his death, Nur was not remembered for theology, nor for his role as a strategist. He was remembered for his bodily infirmity — broken, bleeding, and betrayed.

Nur suffered from severe haemorrhoids. The condition left him in constant agony, blood dripping from his anus. In the unforgiving world of insurgent camps, where strength and divine aura were as important as loyalty, Nur’s ailment became both a weakness and a curse. 

Fighters whispered that he had grown frail. Leaders suspected that his mind, like his body, was giving way. His decision to secretly accept ₦2 million from a negotiating team in the hope of finding treatment sealed his fate.

Nur’s health troubles coincided with shifting politics within ISWAP. The late Abu Musab al-Barnawi – favoured not for superior scholarship but for lineage as the son of slain Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf – emerged as the face of the group. He was the conduit to the Islamic State core in Syria and Iraq. More importantly, he was also a Kanuri; Nur was not.

Nur, once seen as indispensable, was now considered expendable. Worse still, he was branded a tattler and a man too open to the prospect of peace. For many insurgents, this is a sign of weakness, not strength.

Prison of iron and cement

HumAngle gathered that ISWAP runs two categories of prisons in its Lake Chad strongholds, with the most notorious controlled by the group’s feared security arm, the Rijjalul Amni. Reserved for those convicted of major crimes—such as unauthorised possession or trading of firearms, contact with government institutions, adultery, or mutiny—the prison is a fortress of steel pillars and barbed wire, much of it stripped from telecom masts. The prison, open-roofed and welded into sections, is where ISWAP’s intelligence chiefs carry out torture, punishments, and executions. Lesser offences like marital disputes, loan default, or pornography cases are handled by the Maktabal Kazawul Mazalib, a community-level court, and do not lead to confinement.

Conditions inside the Rijjalul Amni prison are brutal, likened by one former member to a Hitler-era concentration camp. Prisoners are tortured, underfed, and often left with food that causes deadly illness. Lice infestations are routine, and survival rates are grim—about 70 per cent never make it out alive or healthy. The prison is designed not just to punish but to instil fear, ensuring strict obedience within ISWAP ranks and the communities under its control.

When Nur was accused of betrayal, he was locked inside one of those brutal prisons. His cell had no tarpaulin to shield him against the choking heat or torrential rains. The prisons serve not as holding spaces but as purgatories intended to dehumanise inmates.

One night, in 2018, Nur attempted to flee. Fighters had anticipated the move and ensured that all boats were removed from the shores before dawn. Desperate, he waded into the shallow waters of Lake Chad. By the time guards discovered his absence during morning prayers, he had barely made it 200 metres from the camp. 

A fighter later recalled spotting him, neck-deep in water, his head bobbing as he begged for rescue. He was dragged back, and his punishment was obvious.

In the law of the insurgency, attempting escape is treason. And Mamman Nur was executed some days after.

The same type of iron-barred cells held two former fighters who defected from the group and are now living in Maiduguri. They described the conditions as dehumanising. Swarms of mosquitoes and other dangerous creatures from the Lake Chad creeks made the nights unbearable, and once, a snake slithered into the enclosure and bit an inmate to death.

“When it rains, you’ll have to stand with your feet under muddy water,” said a former ISWAP prisoner. water,” the prisons remain flooded for weeks, leaving inmates inside.

“I witnessed a cellmate die from his injury,” one said. “We were then ordered to bury him without proper Islamic rites, simply because he was suspected of spying.”

A state built on fear

His fate was not unique. Since Nur’s death, thousands have attempted escape, and hundreds have been captured and executed. Punishments within the so-called caliphate rarely followed the dictates of Shariah law. They followed paranoia, envy, and impulse.

Unauthorised possession of a mobile phone or listening to a transistor radio could result in the death penalty. Fighters accused of theft were mutilated. 

HumAngle reviewed dozens of videos showing men’s hands chopped off. A man was executed for raping a woman who had travelled from Lagos to live and marry within the daulah (the territory controlled by Boko Haram/ISWAP in Lake Chad). Others were executed on allegations of homosexuality or even bestiality.

But executions were not always about morality. They were also tools of control.

A fighter told HumAngle how his shop was raided on orders of the leadership. Over ₦40 million in cash, earned from years of selling stolen and smuggled petrol in territories under insurgents’ control, was discovered. Half was seized instantly. He was accused of theft for possessing so much. Repeatedly extorted, he eventually fled and now lives in a Nigerian city, far from both insurgents and the government’s deradicalisation programme. 

A group of six fishermen loyal to Bakura, who led a Boko Haram sub-faction, lost over ₦10 million after venturing into a remote part of Lake Chad, where they caught a large haul of fish. 

They successfully transported the fish through Cameroon to Jimeta, Adamawa State. However, when the proceeds were delivered to them through a trusted courier, some fighters stormed their tent in the dead of night and seized both the money and their boat. They were accused of unauthorised fishing. Angered by the betrayal, the fishermen decided to defect.

Another defector currently living in Maiduguri said he left after ISWAP fighters confiscated his livestock. “I had cows and sheep, which I reared for over two years and was even willing to pay taxes on, but some fighters came and took everything from me,” he said.

Inequality behind the black flag

The insurgency drew young men from across Nigeria and the Sahel, lured by promises of equality under God and the dream of a just Islamic State. Instead, they encountered a microcosm of Nigeria’s worst ills – ethnic jingoism, class disparity, and systemic corruption.

Leadership remained tightly in the hands of the Kanuri elite. Non-Kanuri fighters – Buduma, Hausa, Margi, Babur, and Fulani – were relegated to cannon fodder. 

Buduma members, renowned for their expertise in Lake Chad waterways, expressed dissatisfaction over their exploitation and lack of leadership positions. Hausa and Margi fighters were routinely sent on suicide missions. Fulani recruits often defected, unable to endure the cultural and political hierarchies.

Even among the Kanuri, deep fractures existed. A caste-like system tied to dialect and ancestry meant that some Kanuris could not marry others, lead prayers, or rise in command. Fighters soon realised the hypocrisy – they had abandoned their homes, families, and futures for a caliphate that replicated the same inequalities they thought they had escaped.

Raising issues of Sharia application

In Maiduguri’s Shehu South Ward, Mustapha Abubakar, a man in his mid-fifties, reflected on how far the insurgents had strayed from the true path of Sharia. 

“Their interpretation of jihaad and the application of Sharia is quite contrary to those of general Islamic scholars,” he explained. “Islam requires three conditions before jihad can be carried out: a sovereign state, a unanimously accepted Imam, and an official flag. Boko Haram and ISWAP have none of these.”

Abubakar stressed that criminal justice in Sharia is the preserve of constituted authorities –  leaders such as a Khalifa, a Qadi, or an Alkali – not freelance militants. 

He cited the Prophet’s saying: “Whoever sees a bad thing, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then let him hate it in his heart – and that is the weakest of faith.” To him, the saying makes it clear that only legitimate authorities may “change things with their hands,” not insurgent commanders.

He outlined the distinctions between civil (mu‘aamalaat) and criminal (hadd and tahziir) justice and the narrow grounds for capital punishment in Islam – deliberate murder, adultery by a married person, and voluntary renunciation of faith. 

Listening to the radio or making a phone call, he said, could never warrant death, but at most, a judge might order light tahziir punishments, such as caning if the content was indecent. Likewise, Sharia prescribes lashes for alcohol and drug consumption and severe penalties for trafficking in substances that spread crime and “mischief in the land.”

Even running away from a state that claims Sharia, Abubakar clarified, depended on legitimacy.

 “If it is an insurgent-controlled territory where Sharia is misinterpreted, fleeing is no crime. But in a true Islamic State, refusal to pay zakat or denial of its legitimacy, for instance, can be treated as disbelief and punished with confiscation of wealth, or worse,” Abubakar said.

He said the gulf between Sharia as understood by scholars and communities and its distortion under Boko Haram and ISWAP is stark. 

Where insurgents mete out execution for radios, phones, or suspected defections, Islamic jurisprudence stresses due process, legitimate authority, and a tightly limited scope of capital punishment, Abubakar stressed. 

The splintering and the question of survival

The Kanuri-first culture has fueled defections and splinters within the insurgency. Some non-Kanuri fighters have formed factions like Bughata. Others have drifted westward to terrorist bands in Nigeria’s North West, where profit, not ethnicity, dictates loyalty.

Defections are not just driven by hunger or military pressure. Former fighters confess that more than half who abandoned the insurgency did so because of betrayal, discrimination, or extortion within the group. Hunger ranks second, and military pressure is third.

Mamman Nur’s story is less about illness or treason and more about the fragility of the insurgency itself, which became an enterprise sustained by fear, suspicion, and a culture of unrelenting violence. His fate mirrors that of other former terror merchants, whose trust in one another has been severed.

Modu Bintumi was sleeping peacefully with his wife and eight children that Tuesday when, just before dawn, they were jolted awake with the news that Boko Haram was about to raid their village in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. 

He quickly carried a wheelbarrow with some of his children inside to flee. 

“We left everything behind and fled,” he recounted, adding that they have not returned since.

The family travelled for two days before reaching Maiduguri, the state capital. “We had nothing to eat during that time. We survived by finding ways to make do in the forest. From there, we went to Mamuri before finally arriving here,” he said. 

Like many others in the community who fled that night, Modu left behind his livelihood, that is, his farms, which he described as his “main concern”. “We want to go back and check on our farms and retrieve our belongings, but I am afraid,” he added.

Modu’s life has changed since he fled. He once had a steady daily routine: waking up in the morning, eating, going to the farm, returning home to bathe, visiting friends, and praying. Now in Maiduguri, he spends most of his days lost in restless thought, reflecting on the life he left behind and the farms that once sustained him. 

“I had planted millet, groundnuts, beans, and other crops, but I fear that most of them have spoiled by now. I keep thinking of my valuables, and that’s why I’m looking worried and slimming,” he said, adding that fleeing has cost him around ₦5 million. 

“We need the government to help us according to its capacity,” Modu told HumAngle.

HumAngle reached out to the Borno  State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) to enquire about any response plans for the affected populations. There had been no response yet at press time.

For Falmata Ahmed, the loss cuts even deeper. Her husband has been missing since the attack. He fled moments before Boko Haram stormed in and has not returned since. Now, living alone and caring for her three children. She longs to return to her village not only to resume her life but also to search for her missing husband. 

“I am hoping to see my husband,” she said.

“We’re currently waiting for our village to become peaceful so we can return to our farms,” Falmata added. “If the situation doesn’t normalise, we’ll have to stay here. Our main desire is to have access to our farms and return to our village when it’s safe.”

The influx of displaced people into Maiduguri and other major towns has increased since the beginning of 2025 as Boko Haram’s continuous violence sweeps through villages and repatriated communities in the region. 

In August alone, the terror group attacked more than ten villages in Magumeri Local Government Area, ransacking homes. Thousands of families have been forced to flee, abandoning their ripening crops, destroyed homes, and looted communities, and are now scattered in search of safety, food, and shelter.

One of the terrorised villages is Kriwari, where Falmata and Modu fled from. Its 65-year-old head, Bulama Umara Kanami, and his three wives and 28 children, watched as the terrorists stormed in on motorcycles, firing shots and scattering the entire community. 

Bulama said “no single person remained” in the village of over 1000 households. 

Listing other villages that had been emptied, Bulama named Malabari, Borkawuri, Bulumdi, Kurumri, Sadiri, Abachari, Abchuri, Titiya, and several others. 

“We were all chased away with our children,” Bulama said.

Although traumatising, he said their ordeal in Kriwari was mild compared to what other villages experienced that day, as the terrorists launched simultaneous attacks across multiple communities in the area. At least eight people from Bulama’s village were abducted during the attack, he said. It is, however, unconfirmed if Falamata’s husband was among them.

The attacks took place in the first week of August, right at the peak of the farming season. Crops had already begun sprouting, while others were nearing maturity.

Like Modu and Falmata, Bulama’s deepest regret is abandoning his farm just as the crops ripened. “We left our beans, maize, millet, and groundnuts,” he lamented. “I cultivated a large area inherited from my parents and grandparents. Personally, I lost about ₦8 million. Still, we have faith in God, but we will also be glad if the government can help.”

Since the attack, he said, people have dispersed across Maiduguri, staying with relatives, friends, or setting up makeshift shelters in host communities. 

“Actually, my people are in a critical condition due to a lack of good accommodation. Some ran but couldn’t reach here. They were sleeping in the farm among trees, still hiding,” Bulama said. “What I want is for my people to have something to eat and have shelter. This is what I want.”

When HumAngle visited some of the displaced families in Maiduguri, the living conditions were dire. Villagers had fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Only a few, they said, had received clothes from kind residents in the host communities.

The series of violence that swept through Magumeri adds to recent attacks, including the killings of at least 60 residents in Darajamal, a community in Bama Local Government Area, just weeks after the attacks in Magumeri. These cases simply indicated sustained Boko Haram violent campaigns targeting rural villages that have been steadily uprooting communities, deepening hunger, and fuelling displacement in areas already struggling with insecurity and fragile humanitarian conditions.

According to Bulama, Kriwari, like some of the other villages, had no form of state security services like the army and members of the Civilian Joint Task Force. Even Babagana Zulum, the state governor, recently admitted that “the numerical strength of the military is not enough to cover everywhere,” leaving communities exposed with little or no protection.

For Bulama, the recent displacement is painfully familiar. “We were displaced about three times before. However, the previous times, we were able to come back and take our belongings and eventually resettled, but this time, we are afraid to go back,” he said.

Abubakar Ibrahim woke one morning in June to find his leg swelling. By nightfall, the entire limb was ballooned and throbbing, leaving the 30-year-old terrified.

“I took some drugs to reduce the swelling, but my legs continued to swell,” said the indigene of Malabu in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria.

Within weeks, rashes had turned to sores, and he realised he was facing the same mysterious flesh-eating disease that had already struck his elder brother and neighbours. 

Like many others in Malabu, he assumed the disease was a flesh infection treatable with antibiotics and bandages. He went to the primary healthcare centre in the community, where the sores were cleaned and dressed. He started to recover, describing his situation as mild, compared to others like his brother, who had their flesh falling out. 

While some residents sought help at the primary healthcare centre, others resorted to traditional herbs. Over time, Abubakar noticed the situation worsening across the community. The disease spread faster, and those affected often died within two weeks of their first symptoms. People complained of intense pain, sleepless nights, and a foul odour from the infected wounds.

An outbreak 

HumAngle learnt that the first suspected case of the disease was reported at the Malabu Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) in 2018, when a man developed swelling in his hand. Within months, rashes formed, then blisters, which turned into sores. His flesh eventually tore away until the bones became visible. He died.

“We never thought it was something that would come to affect some of us,” Abubakar said.

Soon after the man’s death, a few residents began to experience similar symptoms, starting with swelling in either their hands or legs. Many relied on the PHC for wound cleaning and dressing, which offered some relief. But as new cases appeared, conditions deteriorated. 

Residents say that a few people continued to exhibit the symptoms over time, but not in large numbers, until the recent mass outbreak in June this year, and it spread rapidly in the following month. No fewer than 67 persons have contracted the disease since the recent outbreak, according to Alhaji Sajo, a community leader, with eight deaths recorded so far.

Although adult men have been the most affected, residents told HumAngle that children have not been spared, unlike during previous outbreaks. 

“Most of the children that are currently affected are around the age of seven and above,” Abubakar stated. He added that the situation for children is worse. Unlike adults, who mostly get infected in their hands and legs, Abubakar explained that the affected children have sores covering part of their faces that continue to spread and eat into their faces. 

To contain the spread of the disease, the local health authorities identified about 28 critical cases in Malabu and have since transferred eight of the affected persons to the Multi Drug Resistance (MDR) ward at the Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital (MAUTH) in Yola, the state capital, while the other 20 declined. 

Residents told HumAngle that histology tests have been conducted by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). “They said our samples would be taken for testing in laboratories […], according to them, the disease is not cancer,” Abubakar said, adding that Malabu residents have remained restless. “We need to figure out the cause of the disease and how it can be treated.”

Dr. Dahiru Ribadu, the chairperson of the Medical Advisory Committee at MAUTH, said the patients are undergoing treatment under close observation. 

“We are taking care of them the best way we can, and they don’t pay for the drugs or meals because it’s being covered by the local government,” he told HumAngle, adding that even though the disease remains unnamed, admitted patients are responding well to treatment.

Abubakar’s elder brother was among those admitted, but he died days later. While he describes his brother’s case as critical, Abubakar has accepted fate and now tends to his own wounds at home. His greatest concern, he says, is to finally know what this disease is and how it can be stopped.

Non-contagious?

At the hospital, frontline staff are also grappling with uncertainty. Mary Jacob, the nursing officer in charge of the MDR ward at MAUTH, told HumAngle that the patients were brought in on Sept. 4. “There is no diagnosis. We are waiting for the investigation,” she said, noting that the hospital cannot give a proper account of the ailment so far, as it’s a rare one. 

The nurse suggested that the disease might be non-contagious, since many relatives caring for patients remain unaffected. However, she warned that it could spread through open wounds.

“If someone has the disease and there is another person who has a cut on their skin and they touch them, then it can be transmitted through the cut,” she said. Mary noted that one of their biggest challenges at the MDR ward is managing the deep wounds, which require large amounts of bandages and gloves every day.

While the hospital can only manage symptoms, state health officials say they are working with national authorities to uncover the cause. Felix Tangwami, the state Commissioner for Health and Human Services, suggested that the disease might be Buruli ulcer. Tangwami stressed that, while they await official results from the National Reference Laboratory, the state government, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, is taking steps to curb the spread.

Buruli ulcer is a neglected tropical disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, a bacterium from the same family that causes tuberculosis and leprosy. It often begins as painless swelling or nodules on the skin, which later break down into large ulcers that can expose bones and lead to severe disability if untreated. 

The World Health Organisation has documented thousands of cases, mainly in West and Central Africa, with outbreaks reported in countries including Nigeria. 

This wider pattern underscores why health officials in Adamawa are racing to confirm whether the Malabu outbreak is linked to Buruli ulcer. After the first samples were collected, Abubakar said that some NCDC officials returned three days later to take new swabs in Malabu. “They made provisions for some drugs and items for wound dressing at the PHC,” he said. 

In the meantime, residents are left anxious. 

“I want people to know that this disease is not just currently in Malabu alone, even though it started here. At the moment, other communities around Malabu have started recording cases, which means the disease is spreading,” Abubakar added. 

HumAngle reached out to the NCDC for details on the state of its investigation, but is yet to receive a response at the time of filing this report.