North-East

The year was 1975. 

On a quiet afternoon in Bare, a farming community in Numan Local Government Area of Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, Clement Coleman sat beneath a neem tree with an old friend. Alhaji Sadiki, a herder from the nearby village of Sabewa, had come to visit.

Clement had recently bought two calves, and he believed that Sadiki was best positioned to raise them. There were no contracts to sign, no witnesses to summon. By the end of their conversation, he handed them over to Sadiki. At the time, this was not unusual in Bare. It was the system.

Farmers routinely bought a handful of calves and entrusted them to herders they knew. In return, the herders were given access to farmland within the community, land they could not cultivate themselves because of their nomadic life and the demands of managing large herds. Farmers, in turn, worked those fields on their behalf. 

It was an arrangement built on mutual dependence. At harvest, farmers handed over the yields to the herders. When they needed money or access to their cattle, they turned to the herders to whom they had entrusted their animals. Over time, the cattle multiplied. Farmers who never grazed a single animal came to own sizeable herds. Herders, meanwhile, secured steady food supplies through farms they did not till themselves. Risks were shared, and so were rewards.

That afternoon, Clement and Sadiki sealed their agreement with a handshake.

The pact that fed generations 

For years, the system worked with remarkable ease.

Clement recalls how Sadiki managed the cattle as though they were his own, alerting him whenever one fell ill. “One time, the cows entered someone’s farm and destroyed their crops. Sadiki told me, and I went to the farmer and covered the loss in cash,” Clement told HumAngle. 

A decade on, by 1985, his herd had grown to four cattle. By 1990, it had increased to six. The herd continue to multiply. 

“They were healthy and big. I considered myself a rich man back then,” he recounted. 

The cattle became a financial lifeline. One time when Clement was short of funds and needed to pay for his children’s education, he went to Sadiki and one of the big cows was sold. He paid his children’s fees and used the balance to support his household. He continued to use the system for years to support his family. 

Others relied on the same system.

Buba Sarno, a lifelong herder in Mararaban Bare, never had time to farm. Yet, for four decades, each harvest season, he received about 25 bags of rice and 30 bags of maize. It was simple. All he did was seek land for free and reached an agreement with a local who tended to the farm on his behalf. If the farm required manual labour or fertiliser, Buba sorted it through the farm attendant. “With time, I also cultivated soya beans and other crops, and my family never had to buy food,” Buba told HumAngle. 

Magaji Yakubu, another herder in Mararaban Bare, told HumAngle that he combined grazing with both rainy season and irrigation farming, relying on locals to manage his fields. “I cultivated rice, guineacorn and soya beans,” Magaji noted. Like Sadiki, he tended farmers’ cattle.

The same arrangement played out in Bwashi community in Adamawa’s Demsa Local Government Area, where Theophilus Tapu built his livelihood around it. The 80-year-old farmer is a father of 10 and grandfather of over 40 children. He is considered an accomplished cattle rearer in his community, but Theophilus never led a herd to graze. Instead, he bought young male calves, handed them to trusted herders, and sold them at maturity. 

“I sold them to sort my needs and purchase more young ones, then hand them back to the herders,” he told HumAngle, adding that when some of the herders were migrating, they would hand over his herd to him, and he would entrust it to a new batch of herders. 

The cycle sustained him for over 60 years. 

By 2000, he had lost count of his herd. He explained that his relationship with the herders thrived to the extent that he didn’t have to follow them to the market; the herders sold the cattle and brought him the proceeds. 

It was, in every sense, a shared economy rooted in trust.

From trust to tension 

The trust began to fracture in 2017. 

That year, violence broke out between farmers and herders in several communities in Adamawa State, with Numan and Demsa among the hardest hit local government areas. What had once been isolated disputes escalated into deadly clashes, displacing communities and destroying livelihoods. 

Despite government intervention and multiple peacebuilding efforts, the violence has persisted for almost a decade. 

At its core, the conflict is about land and water. Farmers have accused herders of encroaching on farmlands. Herders, in turn, said grazing routes had been taken over.

In Bare, the turning point came in 2017, when a confrontation between a farmer and a herder spiralled out of control. “The herder took his cattle to the farm, and when the owner of the farm confronted him, things got out of hand, and they started fighting,” Jackson Amna, the District Head of Bare, told HumAngle. 

What began as a verbal confrontation that day turned into full-blown violence, leading to deaths and displacement. The clashes now follow a pattern, according to locals; they subside during the dry season and resurface when farming resumes with the rains. 

HumAngle has extensively covered the conflict in Bare and Mararaban Bare.

With each recurrence, trust erodes further. 

The long-standing system, in which farmers entrusted cattle to herders and herders relied on farmers for farm produce, is steadily collapsing across Numan and Demsa. Even though a few farmers still hand over farmland to herders, the District Head of Bare explained that it is rare. 

“During the 2017 conflict, some herders ran with people’s cattle and have not been seen to date,” Jackson said. “My herd was also taken away by the herder I entrusted them with, so I won’t give my cattle to somebody who can run away with them.”

Strained lives

The consequences have been profound.

When clashes between farmers and herders continued in Bwashi, Theophilus’ relatives urged him to retrieve his cattle from the herder he had entrusted to them. He noted that most herders had already started leaving the area at that time. 

“They [herders] were considered our enemies, and we could no longer trust them, but I knew some of them were good, but my people wanted me to do nothing with them,” he said. 

Theophilus succumbed and took over his cattle from the herder.

Not long after, thieves stole the animals he had struggled to manage himself. The old farmer doesn’t have a single cow to call his own. “I lost everything,” he said. “I’m very poor now, and survival is hard.” 

Theophilus had a well-planned retirement. He was to stop farming in 2024 and live off his herd, but now he says his entire life has been altered, and with many mouths to feed, he had to go back to the farm that yields little. 

Things didn’t change only for the farmers. In 2019, two years after the conflict began, the man who had given the farmland to Buba Sarno in Mararaban Bare told him never to set foot on the land again, so Buba migrated with his herd and family to Lamurde, a nearby local government area. In Lamurde, he tried to rent land for farming but couldn’t get any. 

“I went to a hill and established a farm there, but unfortunately, the soil is not good, and the land is not fertile, so my crops didn’t yield,” he said. 

Like Buba, several other herders who once lived in Bare have been displaced to settlements such as Sabewa, Ubandoma, and Mararaban Bare. However, since they are not indigenous to those communities, they told HumAngle that farming has become restricted as locals have taken over their lands and broken the pact that existed between them for generations. 

Magaji Yakubu, who lost his farmland at Mararaban Bare after locals took charge of it, has also retired all the cattle he had been tending for locals. “Feeding has become very hard for my family and me since the conflict began,” he stated. As someone who had access to large harvests in past years, Magaji said navigating a new life without owning farmland or grain is difficult. 

For Clement, the loss is both economic and deeply personal. Sadiki, the man he trusted for decades, disappeared with his cattle during the 2017 crisis. Although his phone rings occasionally when he dials it, no one has ever responded. Clement says he is not sure whether the man is dead or alive.

“Some say the herders around here migrated to Cameroon for safety due to the recurring clashes. We also heard that some have moved to other states. I’ve looked for Sadiki everywhere I can in the past nine years and haven’t seen him,” he said. 

He had planned to fund his children’s education by selling cattle. Without them, those plans collapsed. Even if Sadiki returns, Clement believes the relationship might not be as usual. 

“Right now, I believe he intentionally ran away with my herd,” he said. 

Searching for solutions

Efforts to restore peace continue, but progress remains slow.

The Justice, Development, and Peace Commission (JDPC), a faith-based organisation affiliated with the Catholic Diocese of Yola, has worked for decades to address the crisis. According to Jareth Simon, JDPC’s Project Manager in Adamawa State, land and water were the initial triggers, but new pressures have emerged.

“The one that is glaring to us now is the climate-related issues,” he said. “We’ve also seen where there is an increase in population, leading to more people wanting to cultivate more land.” Additionally, Jareth noted that displacement caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in the region has further intensified competition for resources. 

While most of Adamawa’s 12 LGAs have been affected by the farmers-herders crisis, Jareth said that JDPC’s engagements have identified Demsa, Numan, and Yola South as the hardest hit areas. “This is as a result of the number of cases that have been reported,” he said. 

To mitigate the crisis, JDPC’s approach focuses on community-led solutions, bringing together local government representatives, religious leaders, women, and persons with disabilities. Currently, about 415 stakeholders in conflict-prone areas are engaged in this initiative. 

“These are people who cut across the local structures at the local government level. That includes the local government representative and religious leaders from the Muslim and Christian associations. We have women’s representation and persons with disabilities,” he said. 

Jareth explained that people meet at least once a month to discuss issues related to peaceful coexistence, social cohesion, and community protection, and to identify local actions to mitigate them. “We don’t dictate to them. We only strengthen their capacity, and they themselves identify the leadership structure,” Jared said. 

In some communities, such as Namtari in Yola South, the approach has helped reduce clashes. “We have programmes for children like Peace Clubs, and we also have the one that targets adults using informal education and informal approaches,” he added. 

But challenges remain, particularly around funding and sustainability. “So we’ve seen where we’ve intervened, and then the projects have to end, but you also see that there is an increased need for you to also go out and support, and the funds are limited,” he said.

Jareth said that government authorities should set up and maintain multiple community-based interventions. “Because one of the gaps we’ve noticed is that from the community to the local government, from the local government to the state, there seems to be some gaps sometimes even in terms of information sharing,” he said. 

Government interventions to resolve the farmers-herders conflict across Nigeria have struggled over the years. For instance, the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) scheme, introduced in 2019, was derailed by mistrust and controversy and later suspended by the former President Muhammad Buhari’s administration. 

Another intervention, the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), remains largely unimplemented. It was initially introduced to “create a peaceful environment for the transformation of the livestock sector that will lead to peaceful coexistence, economic development, and food security…” 

The Plan, whose first phase execution was budgeted at ₦120 billion, has not been actualised. 

While Jareth acknowledged the efforts of the Adamawa State government in establishing a peace commission comprising committees across the LGAs, he said there’s a need to strengthen security across the locations. “We also want to see the government come out with policies […] that help resolve some of these tensions that arise as a result of scarce resources within these communities,” Jareth stressed. 

Government interventions and community-led peace initiatives continue, but the deep scars of mistrust, competition for land, and recurring violence make reconciliation slow and fragile.

What is being lost in Adamawa is not just a livelihood, but a way of life. 

For a long time, people in Bultu-Briya have lived in anguish; their environment seems to be at war with them, and they spend most of their lives fighting back. Climate crises like desert encroachment is eating deep into the community, killing fertile lands, and uprooting trees and homes. Drought has brought a plague to the land, drying up rivers and wells in the locality and across many communities in the Yusufari Local Government Area of Yobe State, northeastern Nigeria.

The climate crisis has triggered food and water scarcity, forcing villagers to move to urban areas in Lagos and Abuja, while hundreds of others have migrated to neighbouring countries like the Niger Republic and Cameroon. Those who refused to leave became the victims of the climate crisis. In far-to-reach communities like Tulo-Tulo and Bula-Tura, dunes have moved so close that hundreds of families have been displaced into the shadows of despair. Thirty miles away, in Zakkari town, locals say they have not harvested in more than seven years. Farmers have had to abandon farming for other menial jobs, as famine crept into the communities.

The curious cases of terrorism and insurgency have made lives even more difficult for people battling environmental crises. Thousands have been killed and displaced in the northeastern region due to recurring attacks from terrorists subjugating communities under the influence of radical Islamist ideologies. Local and state authorities appear to have lost touch with remote villages affected by the climate crisis, transforming once-populated areas into ghost communities.

The scourge of extreme weather and ecological collapse in the region has exacerbated a vicious cycle of poverty, food insecurity, and mass displacement, providing a fertile environment for extremist groups like Boko Haram to thrive. Environmental shifts have devastated climate-sensitive industries such as farming and fishing, which support 70 per cent of the regional workforce, leaving the youth highly vulnerable to radicalisation as a means of survival, according to a study by the Growing Thought Leadership Award.

“Climate change seems to act as a threat multiplier, since it worsens every component of the cycle of issues harming the area of Lake Chad,” said Camilla Carlesi, the author of the study. “The tendency to produce suicide bombers is greater in a community defined by mass misery and joblessness than in one in which the basic needs of food, education, health, housing, and sanitation are met.”

The reporting approach

For six months in 2025, HumAngle travelled to the fringes of villages affected by drought and desertification in Yobe State. Working with local journalists in Cameroon and the Niger Republic, we tracked the stories of Nigerian climate migrants seeking greener pastures in the neighbouring countries. 

What we found shows that state authorities’ mismanagement of climate funding has left communities helpless amid harsh environmental realities. Our reporting has however triggered some positive action by the government.

Our reporting documented first-hand accounts from villagers in the affected area. Most of them told HumAngle that contaminated water sources and barren fields have led to forced migration. HumAngle also conducted cross-border reporting across the Sahel, spotlighting the lives of climate migrants who are lost in host communities. We documented journeys into Libya, Cameroon, and Niger Republic, exposing the realities of forced migration as a transnational crisis rather than a localised problem.

Using satellite imagery and land-cover analyses from sources such as NASA’s GRACE mission and Landsat datasets, we validated villagers’ testimonies by showing vegetation loss, shrinking water bodies, and advancing desert dunes. The report also blends local testimonies, expert analysis, and UN predictions to triangulate the findings. For instance, villagers’ accounts of poisoned wells are juxtaposed with UNHCR warnings about climate-driven displacement, and expert commentary from the Global Centre for Climate Mobility provides policy-oriented perspectives. 

By tracking billions of naira earmarked for climate adaptation projects and contrasting them with the absence of results on the ground, the investigation exposes governance gaps and leadership failures in the state. 

Strategy for impact

To reach a wider audience, the investigation was produced in English, French, and Hausa, across four media organisations in Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Niger Republic. 

We published on HumAngle to target policymakers in the disaster and humanitarian sectors across the Sahel. TheCable, the Nigerian online newspaper, syndicated the story to a broader Nigerian audience. Echo Du Niger published the story in French to grab the attention of the Niger Republic audience. In Cameroon, we published both online and print versions via the Guardian Post to target young and traditional news consumers. We also produced a short video explainer in English and Hausa to reach local audiences.

These distribution plans were effective in educating locals and prompting them to hold the government accountable. Following the investigation, we launched online campaigns for change in local languages. One such campaign by HumAngle’s local reporting partner, Usman Adamu, caught attention on Facebook, garnering thousands of reactions and comments. In October 2025, Usman addressed the locals’ concerns about contaminated water in their rivers and wells, which was making life even more challenging. He noted that in the past, a local from Bultu-Briya village in Yusufari LGA had called him in a state of extreme distress and panic, about their current situation, as their water source had become completely contaminated – as we reported. 

“As it stands, the residents have to travel long distances to various valleys or neighbouring villages just to find water for their daily use and consumption,” Usman said.

HumAngle’s impact-driven reporting caught the attention of state and local officials, who reached out, promising to swing into action. For months, we didn’t just rely on their promises; we followed up with calls and messages.

A flicker of hope

In December 2025, the Yobe State Government, through the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) project, handed over 10 designated sites for the construction of hybrid solar-powered boreholes across 10 oasis communities in the Yusufari LGA to cushion the effects of climate-induced crises contaminating water sources in the area.  State officials said the intervention would enhance access to clean water, support livelihoods, and strengthen environmental stability in areas severely affected by water scarcity and climate-induced challenges.

Shehu Mohammed, the ACReSAL State Project Coordinator, remarked that the initiative aligns with Governor Mai Mala Buni’s directive to focus on communities without dependable water sources and those facing severe shortages. He said the effort is part of a broader strategy to restore oases and improve the living conditions of rural households.

“Let me assure you that by the grace of Almighty God, your communities will have access to safe and clean water within the next three months. This intervention is a direct response to the governor’s commitment to addressing water scarcity and improving community resilience,” Shehu stated.

The benefiting communities include Kafi-Kere, Boridi, Gaptori, Bula Ariye, Lawan Ganari, and Bulamari, all in Yusufari LGA. They were selected based on their urgent need for sustainable water solutions. Speaking on behalf of the contracting firm, AI-Import & Export, Mohammed Ali, the project manager, assured ACReSAL and the state government of quality service delivery and timely completion of the project. He emphasised the company’s commitment to carrying out the borehole operations in full compliance with the contract’s technical specifications.

Although the project has not been completed as of the time of reporting, locals told HumAngle that the initiative has given them a flicker of hope that a good water system will be installed in their communities after decades of drinking from contaminated wells.

Help is coming

Following HumAngle’s investigation, the Yusufari LGA chairperson, Adam Jibrin, said that at the local level, his government is committed to building solar-powered water systems in communities not covered by ACReSAL’s interventions. Adam wondered why the state government refused to work with them on the ACReSAL’s solar-powered water system projects.

“There hasn’t been effective stakeholder engagement before deciding to construct the boreholes. As LG officials, we are supposed to be contacted because we are closer and more aware of the needs of our citizens,” he said.

Adam had reached out to the affected communities spotlighted in HumAngle’s investigation to understand how to intervene. He said he had lobbied for more funding to execute massive water projects in the area, but there had been delays until recently. Adam became the LGA chairperson in December 2025, after the sudden death of his predecessor, who had laid the groundwork for the water projects upon reading HumAngle’s story.

“As I speak to you, I am in Damaturu to follow up about it so that the approval will be given. But even without the approval, we look at other opportunities to see how we can support our communities,” he told HumAngle. “You know the water issue is very broad and big in Yusufari. Since I became the chairman following my predecessor’s death, we have rebuilt many boreholes to use solar power. And of all the communities we have visited, they are severely in need of the water (like in Bultu-Briya).”

In Yusufari, hand pumps were installed in many communities, but the LGA chairperson said he has directed the Department of Works to conduct an assessment to convert all of them to solar-powered water systems. Adam said that when he went to Bultu-Briya, he confirmed HumAngle’s report that water sources are causing diarrhoea and stomach pain.

“You know this is government work, and we are only doing what is possible within our means; there’s a lot of concern regarding this water issue,” he added. “I know some used to travel far to get it, while others will not get it even if they travel. For Bultu-Briya, we reached out to them a few weeks ago to construct a hand pump, but they said they don’t want a hand pump; they want a solar-powered borehole.”

He noted that, following HumAngle’s story, the late LGA chairperson had ordered someone to go to Bultu-Briya to assess the need for a hand pump, but the villagers insisted they wanted a solar-powered one. “After my swearing in, the people of Bultu-Briya have come to my office regarding the water issue. I told them that, since they don’t want the hand pump, I will mobilise funds to construct the borehole to their needs. You know, the terrain of the place is also an issue, but that will not deter us from doing what is expected.”

The local administrator made these commitments when contacted over the phone earlier in March. Later that month, however, Yusuf Abdullahi, a community stakeholder in Bultu-Briya, told HumAngle that plans to install a solar-powered water system in the village had commenced. He said engineers have recently visited the construction sites and have pledged to complete the project as soon as possible.

Amid these developments at the local level, some climate migrants who left Nigeria for Cameroon joined hundreds of refugees repatriated into the country. About 300 Nigerians taking refuge in Cameroon’s Far North, including climate migrants, have voluntarily left the Minawao refugee camp to return home. On Jan. 27, they were transported in five buses, as part of an ongoing scheme to repatriate a total of 3,122 refugees from the camp. Most of them were displaced many years ago by a hail of insurgency and environmental collapse in the northeastern region.

Umar Muhammad Mustapha had just stepped out of the mosque when he heard someone say an explosion had gone off in the Maiduguri Monday Market area on the evening of March 16. He panicked and asked when. “Just a moment ago,” someone replied, “while we were praying.” 

Immediately, Umar began dialling his nephew’s number as he rushed toward the scene without first returning home. “The phone kept ringing, but he did not answer. A few moments later, it prompted ‘switched off’,” he recalled.

That was when the panic deepened. 

“I began dialling those whose shops were close to ours.”

Umar sells gabgab at the market. His nephew, Muhammad Ibrahim, makes the local incense while he sells it. The 27-year-old has been with Umar since he was nine. 

As he moved through the city that Monday evening, his thoughts raced ahead of him. “I began to imagine the condition in which I would meet him,” Umar said. “Is he alright? Is he alive? Is he dead? Is he injured? And how bad his injuries might be.”

They both work at the market, but that day, Umar stayed at home. 

That night, at around 7 p.m., three explosions simultaneously rocked parts of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital in northeastern Nigeria, including the Monday Market, the Post Office area along Ahmadu Bello Way, and the entrance of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH).

As he hailed a tricycle to rush to the market, Umar was restless. “I felt as though the keke was not going fast enough and kept urging the driver to go faster,” he said. 

From the market to the ward

Before he reached the market, Umar’s phone rang, and Muhammad’s name was displayed. But when he answered, a different voice spoke. “Come to the emergency ward of General [State Specialist Hospital],” the person said.

In that moment, uncertainty gave way to reality. “An explosion occurred; he was affected,” the person continued. “He was brought to the hospital. You are the last person he talked to, so we are reaching out.”

The blasts at the market and the Post Office were especially devastating. The two locations sit minutes apart. Traders had closed for the day and were heading home when the first explosion tore through the Elkanemi junction, near the market.

In the immediate aftermath of the first blast, many people scattered and ran towards the Post Office area. Muhammad was among them. At the time Umar was trying to reach him, he had already escaped the market blast. In the confusion, he could not hear his phone. As he ran towards the Post Office area, another explosion went off. 

It caught him, and he sustained injuries to his chest and legs. 

When HumAngle visited the hospital on Tuesday, March 17, Muhammad could not speak, only nodding when spoken to. Umar said he was scheduled for surgery later in the evening. 

Other survivors also carry similar stories.

Mohammed Babagana Bukar had just bought a pair of shoes for Eid al-Fitr, which is in a few days, with money he earned as a porter at the market. When the blast happened, the 15-year-old said, “We panicked and began running towards the Post Office when another one went off, close to where the flyover is being constructed.” 

He was brought to the hospital by a stranger. “He carried me as I could not walk.”

Fantami Modu didn’t escape the first blast that rocked the market; he was injured.

“It affected my leg,” the 40-year-old said. “We were brought to the hospital by the police.” Fantami sells clothing materials and earns about ₦7,000 daily. It is what he uses to feed his family.

Now, he cannot work. Beside him, his brother, Babagana, said they are contributing to support the household until he recovers.

According to the Borno State Police Command, 23 people were killed, and 108 were injured in the multiple bomb blasts. No terror group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Nigerian Army said they were “carried out by suspected Boko Haram terrorist suicide bombers”. 

“Preliminary information further indicates that the terrorists may have deployed multiple suicide bombers into Maiduguri with the intention of carrying out coordinated suicide bombings at crowded locations,” Lieutenant Colonel Sani Uba, Media Information Officer of the Joint Task Force North East Operation Hadin Kai, said in a statement.

At the State Specialist Hospital, where victims were first rushed to, HumAngle counted 13 survivors on admission. The hospital is less than two kilometres from the scenes. Of these 13, 11 were males and two females, with varying degrees of injuries to the arm, leg, and chest. 

Nurses at the hospital said at least 40 people were brought to the emergency ward that night, with many later referred to the UMTH. Only 14 survivors were eventually admitted, but one died on arrival. 

UMTH was also targeted that night. An explosion that went off at the hospital’s entrance. Although no civilian casualties were recorded, sources said that a suspected suicide bomber, who tried to enter the hospital on a bicycle before he was stopped by security operatives, died in the incident. 

A city remembering fear

For some residents, the events revived familiar anxieties. 

“We had just broken our fast and were waiting for a tricycle to return home when we heard the explosion close to the Monday Market,” Sulaiman Muhammad, a resident, recounted. “Less than 20 minutes after, we heard another one from the Post Office area. In panic, we scattered.”

He did not go to the scene. “It is dangerous,” he said. “I remember in one explosion like this inside the market at the peak of the [Boko Haram] insurgency, another explosion went off immediately people gathered to help victims.”

Now, those memories are resurfacing. “People are in panic,” he said. “We had begun to experience relative calm until the past few days.”

Sulaiman has sold shoes at the market for more than 20 years. He believes the attacks will affect business. “As you can see, no one is out [to sell],” he said. 

These incidents are part of a broader pattern of escalating violence.

The explosions came barely 24 hours after terrorists attacked a military base in Kofa, a community close to Ajilari on the outskirts of Maiduguri, on March 16. Joint security operatives repelled the attack, leaving many terrorists dead. 

However, before then, there had been attacks by terror groups across Borno State, including assaults on rural military bases and resettled communities like Ngoshe and Dalwa. Also, on Dec. 25, 2025, a suicide bomber detonated at a mosque in the Gamboru Market area of Maiduguri. Five people were killed, and 35 others were injured.

Taken together, these incidents point to what observers describe as a violent resurgence. HumAngle has reported that the terror groups operating in the region have undergone several technological shifts that have aided their expanded attacks and operations, including the use of artificial intelligence and drones.

For Umar, the incident has narrowed into something smaller, more personal.

Muhammad, he said, loves to read.

“He would read verses from the Qur’an after his morning prayer. And after breakfast, he would head to the market. And by evening, he would return home. He would read in the evening too, before going to bed.”

When asked what he hopes for, Umar paused.

“I would have hoped for more security or for more vigilance,” he said. “But what would an empty hope solve? Authorities know what to do. They would act properly if they intend to.”

“If they rebuild and you return, we will kill you.” 

That was the threat Abubakar Dalwa received before fleeing to Maiduguri, Borno State’s capital in northeastern Nigeria, on the night of March 8. Abubakar was sitting in the compound of his home in Dalwa, a recently resettled community in Konduga, a few kilometres from Maiduguri, with his children and wife. The children slept curled together on a plastic mat while his wife tended a pot over the fire. It was during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, and she was preparing the meal they would eat before dawn.

Then the gunfire came in rapid succession around 10:20 p.m. The children woke up as Abubakar and his wife rushed them inside the room. Moments later, someone began knocking impatiently on the door.

“Open this door,” the person shouted. Abubakar’s wife clung tightly to him. He stepped outside and opened the door. About ten armed men stood in the darkness. Most wore military camouflage. Others were dressed in black uniforms. Belts of ammunition hung across their shoulders, some trailing toward the ground.

“They told me, ‘Get out and leave for Yerwa [Maiduguri],’” Abubakar recalled. The terrorists said they had come to burn the buildings. “They told me the buildings belonged to the government,” he added. “They said their fight was with the government, not us.”

Abubakar did not argue. By then, it was nearly midnight. He gathered his wife and children and fled into the darkness. “We left without taking anything,” he said.

Behind them, the town burned, and three people were killed: a man, a woman, and her baby. The man’s daughter survived but was shot in the leg. She was later taken to the Maimalari Cantonment Hospital in Maiduguri.

By 2 a.m., Abubakar and his family had reached the city. Soldiers received them at a military checkpoint. They were displaced again. 

The assault on Dalwa was not an isolated raid. On the same night, another attack was unfolding hundreds of kilometres away in Kukawa. A member of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) stationed there said the terrorists attacked around midnight.

“They killed our men, including our Commanding Officer, carted away weapons and vehicles, burnt one building,” he said.

The seizure of weapons and vehicles during these attacks has become a recurring feature of recent raids across Borno, weakening security formations in rural areas and forcing some forces to consolidate around larger bases closer to Maiduguri.

How the attacks unfolded

In Dalwa, the attack lasted about an hour. A frontline member of the NFSS said the terrorists entered the town after overpowering the security units stationed there. “We knew they would overpower us from the first sounds of their gunfire,” he said.

Many of the terrorists carried heavy weapons, including PKT machine guns capable of sustaining rapid fire; others carried rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

The terrorists strategically positioned themselves in Dalwa. “They went from house to house,” the NFSS member said. “They ordered residents to leave the town.” Then they began setting buildings on fire.

Security officers attempted to resist the attack. They sought reinforcements from Maiduguri, but the vehicles sent to support them ran into buried landmines. Two soldiers were killed in the explosions. “And so we retreated,” the NFSS member said.

According to the volunteer security operative, the attackers approached Dalwa in coordinated groups. One group blocked the road leading to Damboa. Another positioned itself at the entrance of the town near a cemetery on the outskirts. A third group advanced directly into the town to engage the security forces.

“They came through the eastern side,” he said. “That used to be the original Dalwa before the first displacement.”

The security volunteers estimated the number of attackers to be between 80 and 100. Most of them arrived on foot, while others rode on motorcycles, they said.

During the March 8 attack, only about 20 soldiers were stationed in the town. Volunteer forces, including members of the NFSS, CJTF, and repentant terrorists known locally as “the hybrid”, numbered fewer than 100. Five days before the raid, surveillance drones had spotted terrorists gathering in nearby areas. “We anticipated the attack,” the NFSS member said.

But anticipation did not stop it. “The attacks keep increasing,” he added. “More than the previous year.”

In Kukawa, the insurgents used similar tactics. A CJTF member stationed there said the attackers arrived in three coordinated groups. One advanced toward the military base. Another waited on the outskirts of the town. A third group positioned itself along the road leading to Cross Kauwa to ambush reinforcements. He claimed that more than 200 fighters participated in the assault.

“They came mostly on foot,” he said. “They were all wearing military camouflage.”

The fighting lasted about three hours. After the terrorists withdrew, the commanding officer of the base, Umar Farouq, pursued them with a convoy, which was later ambushed, and most of his men were killed.

A pattern of attacks on rural security

The recent attacks on Dalwa and Kukawa are part of a broader pattern. Across Borno State, terrorists have increasingly targeted military bases, convoys, and resettled communities, often ambushing reinforcements and seizing weapons and vehicles during the attacks. Security volunteers say these raids are gradually weakening smaller rural security formations and concentrating forces around larger garrison towns closer to Maiduguri, leaving many outlying communities increasingly exposed.

The incidents suggest a deliberate campaign by terrorist groups, particularly the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Their strategy appears to involve weakening security forces, isolating rural communities, and driving civilians out of resettled towns. These attacks are occurring against the backdrop of a significant government policy.

Over the past years, the Borno State government has implemented a resettlement programme to close camps for internally displaced persons and return families to their hometowns.

The resettlement schemes started in 2020 when the state government began rebuilding homes, schools, clinics, and public facilities in previously abandoned communities as part of what was described as a transition toward a “post-conflict recovery phase”. Thousands of displaced residents have been moved out of camps in Maiduguri and returned either to their original communities or to nearby host settlements considered relatively secure.

But the recovery effort depends heavily on movement. Contractors, labourers, and materials must travel from Maiduguri into rural areas. That movement has increasingly become a point of vulnerability. Roads leading to resettled communities have suffered damage or been mined, isolating towns and delaying military reinforcements. When security forces attempt to respond, they often encounter roadside bombs or ambushes along the routes connecting rural communities to larger bases. Military installations themselves have also become targets. Such attacks on bases allow terrorists to seize weapons, vehicles, and ammunition that can be used in subsequent operations while weakening already thinly stretched security formations in rural areas.

On March 5, terrorists attacked a military base in Konduga, burning several buildings. A member of the Nigerian Forest Security Service (NFSS) told HumAngle that several soldiers were killed, and vehicles and weapons were stolen. Two days earlier, on March 3, the insurgents attacked Ngoshe, a town under the Gwoza Local Government Area (LGA) that had been resettled since 2020. The attackers first targeted a military base before spreading through the town and setting houses ablaze. Local sources and survivors said the attack lasted several hours and forced thousands to flee. Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, condemned the attack on March 6, describing it as a “heartless assault on helpless citizens” and directing security agencies to rescue those abducted.

Earlier attacks followed a similar pattern.

On Feb. 14, terrorists attacked a military base in Pulka, about ten kilometres from Ngoshe. On Feb. 5, another attack targeted a base in Auno along the Maiduguri-Damaturu road, according to a military source who asked not to be named. Several soldiers were killed, and vehicles were taken.

On Jan. 28, about 30 construction workers were killed in Sabon Gari in Damboa. The same day, terrorists attacked an army base in the town, killing nine soldiers and two members of the CJTF. A military base in Damasak was also overrun by terrorists, who killed seven soldiers, captured 13 others, including their commanding officer. 

Earlier incidents also targeted reconstruction efforts and security infrastructure. On Dec. 25, 2025, a suicide bomber detonated at a mosque in the Gamboru Market area of Maiduguri. Five people were killed, and 35 others were injured. On Nov. 17 of the same year, workers fled after terrorists stormed a construction site in the Mayanti area of Bama. In the same town, terrorists attacked the Darajamal community in September last year, killing at least 63 people, including five soldiers, and burning about 24 houses.

On Nov. 20, the attackers invaded a CJTF base in Warabe, killing eight people and leaving three others missing. On Nov. 14, terrorists ambushed a military convoy along the Damboa-Biu road. Two soldiers and two CJTF members were killed. Brigadier General M. Uba, the Brigade Commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, was abducted and later killed.

HumAngle has previously reported that terror groups have undergone several technological shifts that have expanded their attacks and operations, including the use of drones. Despite the violence, the resettlement programme continues. On Jan. 28, the Borno State government received about 300 Nigerian refugees from Cameroon and resettled them in Pulka. The government later received 680 more refugees on Feb. 8.

Why are the attacks happening?

Umara Ibrahim, a professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Maiduguri, said the attacks may be aimed at constraining the government’s resettlement efforts.

“Because their movements are observed and monitored, and perhaps challenged, it is not in their interest for resettlement to proliferate,” he told HumAngle during a February interview.

The attacks also serve a logistical purpose.

“Some of their tactics include ambushing and carting away weapons and supplies from peripheral bases in unfortified areas,” the professor said. “It also includes attacks on bases, especially in places where backup might take time to arrive.”

As attacks on rural bases continue, residents and volunteer security operatives say the shrinking presence of security forces in some outlying communities is raising fears that large parts of rural Borno may again become vulnerable.

Many of these families, now fleeing towns like Dalwa, had already experienced displacement. Some years ago, insurgent violence forced them to abandon their homes and seek refuge in camps around Maiduguri. When the government announced resettlement plans, they returned. They rebuilt their lives slowly. Children went back to school. Farmers returned to their fields.

Now they are running again, and the promise of returning home is once again slipping out of reach.

Audu Danbaba is in his fifties but trudges like someone in his eighties. He walks carefully, sometimes raising his hands as if they were scales calibrating his body’s equilibrium. 

As he emerged from his house on Feb. 25, he moved with visible effort –  his feet swollen –  counting each step as if needles were being pressed into the soles of his feet. With a laboured exhale, he eased himself down onto a mat that faced his home. The house, made of mud bricks, is located in Nassarawa village, Gwarzo Local Government Area (LGA), in Kano State, northwestern Nigeria.

Audu cannot remember the exact date when the armed kidnappers pulled him from his house, but he does know that it happened roughly two months ago, maybe a little longer. “I spent about 40 days with them, and now I’m in my fourth week since I was released,” he told HumAngle.

Audu’s ordeal is a window into a calculated and expanding kidnapping economy that has quietly taken root in the Gwarzo LGA. Kidnapping in Kano is fuelled by informant networks, strengthened by a porous border with Katsina State, and maintained by a ransom cycle that is systematically draining the little resources left in the poorest communities of the northwestern region.

Late at night, he was lying down when he heard screaming. The attackers had already entered his home and were beating both of his wives and children. He rushed outside and asked what was happening. They told him directly that they had come for him. To protect his family, he surrendered.

“Here is where they tied my hands and started beating me with the butt of a gun on my legs,” Audu recalled, gesturing toward the spots he said still ache. “Then they pushed me forward, beating me and shoving me until we had walked a long distance through farmland and crossed a road.”

Audu could not recall how long they had trekked with him because he was barely conscious as they dragged him. His sense of measurement also appears faulty, as he confuses miles and kilometres several times while narrating his story.

And so they kept pushing him. 

“It was on the road that I noticed security operatives on patrol, as though they had received a tip and were following us. I tried to lift my head, and they struck me with the rifle butt and pinned me down. I couldn’t speak. We stayed like that until the patrol passed, then they pulled me up and kept beating me as we walked,” he added. 

What Audu described, the systematic beating of victims after abduction, has emerged as one of the most disturbing features of the kidnapping crisis in northern Nigeria. After reaching the forest, he said he was tied alongside another man who had also been abducted. The torture continued with such ferocity that the other man died a week after he was abducted. 

“After his death, his corpse lay there with me for two days before they took him away,” he said. 

Different clips showing how abducted victims are tortured by their abductors have recently been circulated online. One footage featured a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) being tortured repeatedly by his abductors while pleading for help. In another widely shared video, three women were shown being struck as the abductors pressured them to urge their families to pay a ransom.

Another harrowing case is the testimony of a man published by a local media outlet in Zamfara, Maibiredi TV. The man narrated that his abductors burned one of his hands using molten rubber during ransom negotiations to force his family to speed up payment. Only two of his fingers remain. 

What is happening in Gwarzo?

At least five Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Kano share borders with neighbouring Katsina State, namely Rogo, Tsanyawa, Shanono, Gwarzo, and Ghari (formerly Kunchi). While Tsanyawa and Shanono have suffered the most attacks, Gwarzo is particularly vulnerable. The town’s western and northern borders are adjacent to Katsina’s Malumfashi and Musawa LGAs, which have been heavily impacted by terrorist activities for a long time. 

The dense and ungoverned forests in these regions provide terrorists with continuous cover for their operations. From there, locals say, they flow into Gwarzo.

Locals say that the first recorded case of kidnapping occurred on Dec. 14, 2025, when terrorists on motorcycles attacked the Kururawa community in the Lakwaya district of Gwarzo. They invaded the home of an elderly man known locally as Yakubu Na Tsohuwa and abducted him. His eldest son, Badamasi, was injured while attempting to stop the assailants from taking his father. Within the same week, a second kidnapping incident was reported.

Gwarzo’s security crisis did not start in December 2025. In January 2024, police operatives arrested Isah Lawal, a 33-year-old man from Giwa LGA in Kaduna, during a clearance operation in Karaye LGA along the Kaduna-Kano border. He confessed to fleeing a terrorist camp in Birnin Gwari due to internal gang violence and expressed his intention to establish a new camp in the Gwarzo-Karaye forest. This arrest, which was largely unreported at the time, served as a warning that the authorities did not adequately heed.

The Gwarzo-Karaye forest corridor, straddling Kano’s border LGAs and stretching toward Katsina’s ungoverned zones, had already been identified by displaced armed factions as a viable new territory. 

The December 2025 attacks followed a pattern that exposed how openly these groups now operate. Around 20 armed men were spotted in Danjanku village in Malumfashi LGA, heading toward the Kano axis, according to sources. The attack on Zurum Mahauta in the Gidan Malam Sallau community came at midnight on the same day.

To address the growing threat, the Kano State Government deployed forest guards to monitor the woodland areas around Gwarzo. These guards serve a dual purpose: overseeing the reforestation efforts critical to the state’s climate change response, and functioning as an early-warning layer for security threats emerging from the forest.

Dahir Hashim, the Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, told HumAngle that the guards were recruited to tackle both challenges simultaneously: “Managing the forests because of their critical role in halting desertification, and providing rapid alerts whenever security threats are detected.”

HumAngle spoke to Abdullahi Hamza, who leads the team managing one of the forests in Mainika, Gwarzo. He is cautiously optimistic about the project, saying: “This initiative by the government has delivered results; at least for now, we have gone many days without a security incident inside Gwarzo, though there may be areas we are not yet aware of.”

There are two forests in Gwarzo. One is known as Dajin Katata, where the forest guard Musa Muhammad previously worked. 

“There were constant criminal incidents in that forest; the fear eventually led the previous government to fell the trees to deny criminals cover,” he told HumAngle. 

Musa was later reassigned closer to home in Mainika. He does not hide his discomfort with that decision. The felling of Dajin Katata, he said, was ecologically damaging — those trees were a bulwark against the advance of the desert. But he has made his peace with the logic behind it. 

“Security comes first,” he said. “You must be alive to breathe the shade of a tree.”

Kidnapping the poor for ransom

Why was Audu a target for abduction in the first place? By every visible measure, even within his own village, Audu is not a wealthy man. His mud-brick house sits among the more neglected on the street, unrepaired and unremarkable. 

He told HumAngle himself that shortly before his abduction, he had tried to sell his farmland out of financial desperation, but the offer he received felt so insulting that he walked away from the deal.

“The land was worth between three and a half and four million naira, but they offered me two and a half million naira. I felt disrespected, so I refused,” he said.

Then came a coincidence that, in hindsight, feels like anything but.

Around the same period, the Kano State government began disbursing outstanding allowances owed to former ward councillors across the state. Audu’s son, Anas, had served as a councillor between 2020 and 2023, which placed him among the beneficiaries. The payment, amounting to roughly ₦6 million, was not made quietly; the state government publicised it widely. Photographs were taken at the government house. Screenshots of bank alerts began circulating on social media, shared by recipients whose names and faces were now attached to a specific, traceable sum.

The publicity became something else entirely.

“Many people had their eyes on that money,” said Mallam Saidu, Audu’s neighbour. “There is a strong suspicion that it was this payment that drew the kidnappers to Danbaba’s house that night.”

Audu suspects the same. He says his captors told him, as they held him, that someone had directed them to him. They did not tell him who.

“They showed me about five people from a distance,” he said. “I could barely lift my head to look, and when I did, I didn’t recognise any of them.”

Later, during ransom negotiations, Audu says he kept hearing one side of a phone conversation — someone telling the kidnappers that they should push his family harder to bring more, insisting they had the money and should produce it.

Across northern Nigeria, kidnapping has evolved from opportunistic crime into a sophisticated industry, and at its operational core lies a network of human intelligence that security agencies have struggled, and often failed, to penetrate or counter.

Kano has witnessed a surge in kidnapping and criminal operations aided by local informants and snitches within the state’s localities. This development seems to have inflated security threats in local communities. Musbahu Shanono, for instance, is originally from Faruruwa in Kano but works in Lagos, in Nigeria’s South West. 

When HumAngle spoke with Musbahu in 2025, he described the creeping anxiety that now accompanies what should be an ordinary homecoming – the fear of informants making him a stranger in his own community.

“Now I only come at night,” he said. “No one should know I’m around. Not even my friends. Not until I’m sure it’s safe.”

According to security authorities across northern Nigeria, kidnappers conduct detailed advance planning before armed teams execute raids at vulnerable hours, overwhelming lightly protected targets and transporting captives deep into remote forest hideouts.

In 2021, the Zamfara State government announced the arrest of more than 2,000 suspected informants. The following year, the state went further to enact legislation prescribing life imprisonment for anyone found to have aided kidnapping operations or other criminal activity in the state.

Yet the problem has not abated. Security authorities across Nigeria acknowledge that informant networks remain one of the most intractable elements of the crisis, embedded in communities, operating in plain sight, and extraordinarily difficult to root out. 

Even Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, then-Chief of Defence Staff, Christopher Musa, admitted publicly in 2024 that informants were being used not only to identify and track targets, but to actively misdirect security forces pursuing terrorists.

“They make the troops go elsewhere, and when they get there, they meet nothing,” Musa said.

The price of coming home

Now Audu is back. But his return has cost his family everything.

“They only released me after we paid ₦8 million and three motorcycles,” he recalled.

The family sold whatever they could find. The farm that he had refused to part with for two and a half million naira, the offer he had walked away from as an insult to his dignity, went for only ₦1.8 million in the end due to desperation. 

“Then we went around asking for help – some people gave us gifts, others gave us loans,” said Anas, his eldest son. Today, after his father’s release, the family is saddled with a debt of approximately ₦4.5 million and has no clear idea where to begin repaying it.

Audu carries the weight in his body as much as in his finances. “Even after I returned, everyone who saw me broke into tears at the state I was in,” he said. “Doctors have examined me and given me medication, but the pain in my body has not stopped.”

His deeper anguish is the problem he cannot solve: how does a man who had nothing rebuild from less than nothing? “We sought help from every direction and found very little,” Anas added. “We are still appealing to the government, even if it is just to help settle the debt, because everything we had was consumed by this ordeal.”

For the remaining residents of Nassarawa and the villages clustered along Gwarzo’s edges, the haunting question is not about debt. It is about prevention and how to protect themselves from the fate that swallowed Audu before the kidnappers come again.

At the start of every school day, Martha Ayuba marks the attendance register of her class of about 50 pupils in Nassarawo Primary School, Jimeta-Yola, in Adamawa, northeastern Nigeria. The 38-year-old is the class teacher of Primary 3B. With a pencil in hand, she calls out names from the register. Each pupil answers, “Present, Ma”, before she ticks the box next to those who are “present” and crosses those who are “absent”.

Her worn attendance book is stuffed with handwritten names, erased marks, and faded ink. A leaking roof threatens to soak its pages, and a scurry of termites could erase weeks of work. Marking attendance is not just a routine; it’s a promise of accountability, and it appears on the report card at the end of each term and in the school’s database. 

However, across Nigeria, this ritual of paper and pencil is increasingly out of step with the country’s emerging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), a national effort to build interoperable digital identity, payments, and data systems that serve citizens at scale.

Nigeria’s education system faces a tragic paradox: millions of children remain out of school, yet even those who attend often lack basic record-keeping and support. According to UNICEF, one in four primary-school–age children in Nigeria (about 10.5 million children) are not enrolled in school. In rural areas of Adamawa State, for instance, years of conflict and poverty have made schooling precarious.

At Nassarawo Primary School, Martha juggles teaching and attendance record-keeping duties. 

“There was a time when rain fell, and the register got wet,” she recounts. “I lost almost an entire term’s record, and no one could tell how many students were in class during those periods. I had to get another register and start afresh. Imagine if I didn’t have a backup?”

Several schools in Nigeria, including some public tertiary institutions, still rely heavily on manual recordkeeping, as Olubayo Adekanmbi, the CEO of Data Science Nigeria, notes. 

For Martha, that means precious minutes of class are spent on paperwork. This drudgery breeds frustration. “I know these kids by heart,” she says, “but we have to write it down. Otherwise, next year the next teacher won’t know what happened to them.” She keeps one copy at school and one at home, fearing theft or damage. Yet neither copy can travel with her if the children move to a different school or state. Even a single register lost in a fire or flood can erase months or years of history.

Why paper recordkeeping fails

Manual registers not only burden teachers; they distort national planning.

In Nigeria’s basic education subsector, school funding, teacher allowances and student support programmes all hinge on accurate attendance and enrolment data. Each child “counts” not just for classroom pride but for allocation of resources. For example, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) earmarks School-Based Management Committee (SBMC) funds (for feeding programmes, sanitation, and learning materials) based on pupil numbers. In 2024, UBEC disbursed SBMC – School Improvement Programme support funds to 1,171 schools in all 36 states. 

If Martha’s register fails to reflect every student, such support might not reach deserving children. A missing name in the data could mean missed school meals, missing textbooks, or even being excluded from government scholarship programmes. Hence, school officials cannot adjust to “changing patterns in attendance” or identify which children need support.

Beyond individual schools, the absence of reliable data hampers policy and planning. At best, education officials compile annual school census figures, but these are months old and riddled with errors. Many rural schools report at a snail’s pace, if at all, because principals must physically carry piles of handwritten forms to local government offices. 

Recognising this gap, Nigeria has begun transitioning toward a national Education Management Information System (EMIS) built on District Health Information System Version 2 (DHIS2). An overview of the UNICEF-supported says Nigeria is “moving from fragmented, manual processes to a unified, digital platform”, aiming for “real-time, accurate data for evidence-based planning and decision-making”. 

In plain terms, that means that if Martha could click an app on her smartphone to log her attendance, higher-ups could see up-to-the-minute figures: student dropouts, teacher absences, resource gaps, and everything else. Real-time school data would highlight, for instance, which classes are short on books or which districts have the most teacher vacancies.

What Nigeria is doing

The Nigerian government has taken tentative steps toward digitisation. 

In 2024, UBEC launched a digital quality assurance platform to evaluate schools electronically. This system is designed to stream data on school infrastructure, teacher qualifications, and learning resources into a centralised dashboard, replacing laborious paper inspections. Although the platform is operational within UBEC’s inspection and monitoring system, nationwide adoption is still scaling up as infrastructure, connectivity and digital capacity in schools improve.

Similarly, the Federal Ministry of Education unveiled the Nigeria Education Data Initiative (NEDI) to build a “single, secure platform” of educational data across basic and tertiary levels. 

NEDI aims to “leverage the National Identity Management Commission’s (NIMC’s) unique identification number” – the national ID, “for accurate student tracking”. In other words, each child’s attendance and progress would be linked to a lifelong digital ID, so that Martha’s tallies could follow her students even if they moved schools or states.

At the state level, pilots are underway, but slow. 

A consortium led by HISP Nigeria and UNICEF is rolling out a District Health Information System Electronic Management Information System (DHIS2 EMIS) module in twelve states, including Adamawa, to “improve education planning and outcomes for millions of children”.

Local education authorities have been trained to use tablets and smartphones to enter enrolment, attendance, and infrastructure data directly into the system. In Bauchi State, for example, ministry officials held workshops for local supervisors to practice uploading school census data via mobile devices. 

Complementing government action, non-governmental organisations and agencies have jumped in. For instance, Data Science Nigeria helped launch the Gates Foundation-funded EdoCert, a digital certificate registry piloted in Edo State. EdoCert uses Sunbird, an open-source, “digital public good” to archive students’ exam results and transfer credentials online. EdoCert has since secured 1.9 million paper certificates since its launch. Its developers emphasise that the same approach could be used for attendance records. Experts point out that collecting comprehensive data could help “better track and adapt to changing patterns in school attendance” and guide the allocation of resources such as the national school lunch programme.

Meanwhile, other partners focus on connectivity. 

UNICEF’s GenU9ja initiative, local telecos, and the Federal Ministry of Education are racing to wire schools to the internet. By early 2025, more than 1,000 public schools had been connected via routers and provided with devices for digital learning, according to UNICEF. Training modules have been rolled out to thousands of teachers on basic computer skills and e-learning platforms. These efforts aim to lay the foundation for any future digital register: after all, you cannot click an app without power or Wi-Fi.

Even so, Martha and her peers remain on the front lines of a slow handover from paper to digital. 

Lessons from elsewhere

Nigeria is not alone in this challenge. Across Africa and the global south, educators have confronted broken attendance systems with creative digital fixes. In Rwanda, for example, the Ministry of Education introduced a mobile attendance app for teachers in 2025. Teachers simply log in and tap each day’s present students. The app immediately flags prolonged absences so that counsellors can intervene before a child drops out. At the end of 2025, more than 2,300 schools were enrolled in the system, and the government hopes that rapid data collection will reduce dropout rates. Rwanda’s example shows that with modest smartphones and training, even large rural systems can leapfrog paper. 

In India and Uganda, UNICEF piloted a simple SMS/voice system called EduTrac. Community monitors phone schools daily to collect attendance via interactive voice-response or text. Since school records can be altered later, EduTrac’s immutability ensures honesty: once a teacher reports numbers, they cannot be changed. In India, EduTrac covered over 15,000 schools across four states by 2015. Cluster coordinators, each overseeing about 20 schools, used it to verify reports and spot chronic absenteeism. 

The system required only basic phones and connectivity, making it ideal for remote villages. UNICEF noted that EduTrac has cultivated a culture of accountability: teachers and school heads know their numbers are being checked in real time.

What needs to change

Nigeria needs a pragmatic overhaul of its attendance system. Obaloluwa Ajiboye, an innovation governance specialist who has worked at the African Union, UNDP, and UNICEF, said one practical way to address gaps in student tracking is to assign every child a unique digital identity built on Nigeria’s existing framework, managed by the National Identity Management Commission. 

“By linking school attendance records to a single, nationally recognised ID number, each child would retain one continuous education record, even when transferring between schools or moving across local government areas,” Obaloluwa noted. He explains that this kind of consistency is central to what DPI is designed to achieve. If properly implemented, it would allow attendance data to follow the child rather than remain tied to a specific school. 

However, Obaloluwa added that such digital solutions will fail without power and connectivity. 

Although internet penetration has increased across Nigeria, about 41 per cent of the country’s population remains offline, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission. According to Obaloluwa, the government should prioritise solar panels, school internet, and devices (tablets or laptops) for teachers.

Nigeria’s GenU9ja programme shows what is possible: it connected over 1,000 schools and trained 63,000 educators in one year. Scaling such programmes nationwide, with specific funding for data systems, is critical, Obaloluwa noted. 

Additionally, Olubayo Adekanmbi, CEO of Data Science Nigeria, noted that schools like Nassarawo Primary School should be equipped with affordable digital registers that work even without constant internet access. “Many of the needed solutions already exist: for example, Sunbird (used by EdoCert) can run on laptops or tablets offline and sync later,” he added. 

Olubayo said that the attendance register should not live in isolation. “It must feed into larger platforms (UBEC reports, state EMIS). Systems should be interconnected to include open APIs so that daily attendance synchronises with the annual school census”. In practice, that means digital systems built on standards (the way EdoCert operates).

Martha believes that “if only we had a quick way to mark attendance, I could spend that time helping the kids”. Nigeria has various frameworks and local and international support to make the shift, but how long will it take to achieve?

This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.

When Catherine Bello received a text message from the World Food Programme (WFP) in August 2025, she was excited. She had been anticipating it ever since she applied for the Anticipatory Action Response (AAR), a WFP programme that provides “multipurpose cash assistance” to reduce the humanitarian impact of flooding in vulnerable communities. 

Catherine lives in the Jimeta-Yola metropolis, an area in Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria, that has experienced repeated flooding. A mother of four, she is a retired public-school teacher who now sells kunun zaki (Hausa for corn juice) to make ends meet. 

She had hoped that the ₦208,184 AAR support would help her expand her business and save more to support her family. 

However, that excitement faded when she arrived in Yola for data capture.

Officials asked Catherine to provide her National Identification Number (NIN) for verification. To her shock, the system flagged a mismatch. The name on the beneficiary list appeared as “Bello O. Catherine”, while her NIN record read “Catherine Bello”.

“It was the same NIN I gave them while filling the form,” she says. “They told me the name they saw didn’t match, so I couldn’t be captured.” 

A missing middle-name initial was enough to exclude her from receiving assistance. Instead, she was advised to reconcile her records with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

Across Nigeria, thousands of people, like Catherine, are locked out of essential services because of missing initials, misspelt names, and minor inconsistencies that trigger verification failures.

Nigeria’s digital identity system was built to include and connect millions of citizens to welfare, banking, education, and other opportunities. But for a growing number of Nigerians, the same system is becoming a barrier to accessing those services.

Identity as the backbone 

Nigeria’s emerging digital public infrastructure (DPI) rests on three foundational pillars: digital identity (NIN); digital payments and financial inclusion (Bank Verification Number (BVN) and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS)); data exchange; and verification infrastructure. 

At the centre of this system is the NIN, managed by NIMC. By late 2025, Nigeria had issued about 127 million NINs, roughly 60 per cent of the population, but millions remain unregistered or mismatched. Under the World Bank–supported Identification for Development programme, Nigeria aims to scale capacity to 250 million records and reach 85 per cent population coverage by 2027.

Digital identity is no longer optional. It is now increasingly required for SIM card registration, bank account linkage (NIN–BVN integration), social protection enrolment, scholarship applications, and access to tax and government services.

In theory, this integration promises efficiency, transparency, and inclusion. In practice, data inconsistencies, limited interoperability, and infrastructure gaps expose citizens to the risk of exclusion.

Experts warn that when people lack a valid digital ID, they can literally be locked out of basic services. Dennis Amachree, a national security analyst and former Assistant Director at the Department of State Security, notes that the rural-urban divide and the lack of enrolment infrastructure leave many, especially the elderly and rural populations, without the documentation they need to fully participate in banking, travel, and government services. 

Meanwhile, the World Bank notes that Nigeria still has “a considerable gap” in identity coverage, especially among women, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups. The global financial body observed that the lack of any recognised ID “prevents individuals from accessing critical government services, participating in the digital economy, and financial inclusion”. 

For instance, Catherine’s hope of benefiting from the welfare package was dashed; a tiny database error translated into lost hopes.

SIM-NIN linkage – Security births exclusion

Alpha Daniel, a trader in Jimeta Modern Market, faced a different but related problem.

In 2024, the Nigerian Communications Commission, the country’s telecom regulator, demanded that all mobile phones be linked to NIN or risk being shut off. In September of the same year, millions of Nigerians woke up to find their SIM cards blocked. Alpha was one of them. 

“I did everything right,” he says. “I went to the MTN shop, gave them my NIN, but after two tries, my line was still blocked.”

This was a familiar pattern. By mid-2024, telecoms reported that 13.5 million lines were barred for NIN non-compliance (8.6 million on MTN, 4.8 million on Airtel). By August 2024, Nigeria had linked 153 million SIMs to NIN (96 per cent of active lines). But that last 4 per cent represented some 6–7 million SIM connections that could no longer send or receive calls. Many complained that even after they finally registered or re-registered, their lines remained locked. 

As one subscriber with Airtel put it, “Painfully, I have done this linkage at least twice, but still the line was barred”. 

The government’s goal was to reduce phone-based fraud and make the digital economy safer, but for many Nigerians, losing a phone line means losing opportunities and even contact with relatives.

Ruth James, a graduate of Modibbo Adama University, Yola, had a scholarship application derailed when Nigeria’s ID system struck again. In early 2024, Ruth logged onto the Petroleum Technology Development Trust Fund (PTDF) scholarship portal and entered her details. The portal displayed a “NIN validation failed” message and locked her out. 

“I filled out the form perfectly,” she says. “Then it said my NIN verification failed. I kept trying different browsers, but nothing worked. There was a help icon for failed verification on the portal. I clicked and sent several emails, but there was no response.” In the end, Ruth missed the deadline and lost a chance at much-needed financial aid.

Many federal programmes, from scholarship funds to youth training schemes, now require NIN verification. Online forums are filled with frustrated applicants: Jobs Inform noted dozens of “Not eligible” errors from a NIN mismatch or “verification failed” during registration. 

These stories show how minor technical issues in Nigeria’s ID system can translate to a lack of access to education, banking, and social support, all of which are increasingly tied to digital identity. 

Government policies and infrastructure gaps

The Nigerian government is aware of these issues. In 2024 and 2025, it rolled out several projects to strengthen Nigeria’s DPI, the foundational systems that underpin services. For example, the revised National Digital Identity Policy for SIM Card Registration explicitly ties SIM-NIN linkage to curb fraud. 

The authorities also launched a NINAuth smartphone app in late 2025, which President Bola Tinubu hailed as “a milestone in our nation’s digital public infrastructure journey”. Tinubu has repeatedly emphasised that a “credible and inclusive National Identity Management System is fundamental to our national development goals”. In practice, the NINAuth app is meant to simplify identity checks for banks, hospitals, and government agencies, thereby reducing the need to manually look up each person’s NIN. However, the platform has not seen widespread adoption.

On the data side, Nigeria enacted a new Data Protection Act in June 2023, replacing the previous regulation. The new law imposes stricter rules (including special protections for children and a “duty of care” on data controllers). It was also a condition for the World Bank–supported Digital ID4D project. 

These efforts are already yielding results: linking NIN with financial systems (NIN/BVN linkage) coincided with a jump in financial inclusion from 56 per cent in 2020 to 65 per cent by 2023. However, digital experts note that Nigeria’s DPI remains fragmented. Many government platforms and private services do not fully share data, forcing citizens to repeatedly verify their identity. Network outages and limited registration centres (especially in rural areas) still slow down NIN enrollment. 

Worse, some Nigerians distrust the system after reports of lax data security. Khadijah El-Usman, a Senior Programme Officer for Anglophone West Africa at Paradigm Initiative, a digital rights group, warn that “the NIMC’s role is to secure this data. They have failed to do so”, referring to recent incidents where NIN data were allegedly sold on private websites.

Turning challenges into opportunities

Experts in digital governance say Nigeria must turn these challenges into opportunities for reform. Vincent Olatunji, National Commissioner and CEO of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), stresses that effective identity management must be built on harmonised policies, secure technologies, and inclusive systems to strengthen national digital trust. “Effective identity management requires harmonised policies, secure technologies, and inclusive systems,” he noted, linking strong governance with citizens’ confidence in digital IDs. 

Likewise, Iremise Fidel-Anyanna, Head of Application Security, Governance, and Security Operations at the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), warns that “data privacy is the foundation of digital trust,” noting that privacy and security are essential to citizens’ willingness and ability to participate in digital services. 

Chy Ameh, a digital identity expert based in Abuja, stresses the need for stronger privacy and trust protections, arguing that “to ensure the privacy and security of individual personal information, implement robust data protection measures such as strong encryption, secure authentication, consent and control over personal data, compliance with regulations, and regular audits” to distribute responsibility between both government and private actors.

Several other experts also highlight infrastructure bottlenecks and low public awareness: “Network glitches, poor connectivity, and limited registration centres impede effective ID rollout,” they note. In addressing this, experts urge large-scale outreach and education programmes to help people understand how and why to register for a NIN.

In simple terms, these experts say Nigeria needs to make digital ID registration easier by opening more NIMC centres in underserved areas and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. There should also be clear public information campaigns, in local languages, to explain what the NIN is and why it matters. To build trust, the government must fully enforce data protection laws and ensure people’s personal information is safe.

Finally, better coordination among the government, banks, and telecom companies is needed so that systems work together smoothly and people do not have to repeat the same processes.

Best practices and cautionary tales

Globally, there are lessons for Nigeria. India’s Aadhaar programme, the world’s largest biometric ID system, now covers about 95 per cent of India’s population. Aadhaar made government transfers and SIM registration much smoother, but not without controversy; it has faced numerous legal challenges over data privacy and mandatory linking. Nigeria can learn from India’s experience by building strong privacy safeguards before demanding universal linkage.

In Kenya, the Huduma Namba initiative aimed to create a single ID for all services, but was suspended by the courts in 2020. Privacy advocates there won a ruling saying that collecting biometric data (even GPS or DNA) without adequate legal protection was unconstitutional. Kenya’s case shows that inclusion programmes can backfire if citizens fear their data will be mishandled. Nigeria’s reforms, such as the new Data Protection Act and the planned changes to the NIMC Act, seem aimed at avoiding such mistakes.

In Estonia, nearly 100 per cent of adults have a government-issued electronic ID card, and all state services are accessible online. This allows citizens to vote, pay taxes, and use healthcare portals seamlessly. Achieving this took decades of investment in both technology and public trust. For Nigeria, such a level of integration is a distant goal, but it shows what’s possible if the digital ID becomes reliable and user-friendly.

Bridging the divide

Catherine, Alpha, and Ruth all share a sense of being stranded by a system that was supposed to help them. Their stories reveal that digital infrastructure failures can be as damaging as physical ones. As President Tinubu himself put it, Nigeria must “eliminate unnecessary bottlenecks and ensure that every Nigerian has access to essential services without the frustration of bureaucratic delays”.

To avoid leaving people like Catherine on the sidelines, experts say the government needs to act on multiple fronts: fix the glitches, protect people’s data, and make the system easy to use. Only then can Nigeria’s grand digital ID ambitions translate into real help for its people.

This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.

Two children he found while fleeing the Ngoshe attack clung to his hands, struggling to keep up as they stumbled across the uneven ground. Behind them, armed terrorists pursued, closing in. 

From the distance, smoke rises, and shouts echo. The children stumbled again. Solomon Ali Talake pulled them and kept running. He could not run at full speed, and yet the terrorists would kill him if they caught up. So, he made a quick decision. 

“Run that way,” he told the children, pointing toward the bush, while he turned in the opposite direction. He was spotted, however. He darted behind a tree, his chest pounding. 

For a moment, he froze there, whispering a prayer under his breath.

Some hours before, Solomon could not have imagined that his life would change so completely. He is a primary school teacher in Ngoshe, a community in Borno, northeastern Nigeria, where he spends his days teaching pupils to read and write. On the evening of March 3, his routine unfolded like it always had. He returned home from school, sat with his family in the compound, and had dinner.

Then the gunfire began.

Terrorists stormed Ngoshe that evening, attacking a military base before spreading through the town, setting houses ablaze. Reports say the attackers killed over 100 and abducted over 300 more, but survivors said the casualty is too many to count. They said the assault, which lasted for several hours, forced thousands to flee the community that had been resettled only a few years ago as part of the government’s post-conflict programme. 

“They attacked around 6:25 p.m.,” Solomon recalled.

His house sits close to the military base, so the first sounds came from there. The attackers, he said, struck the base before moving toward the community.

The military returned fire, according to Maina Bukar, another resident of Ngoshe who is now displaced in Maiduguri.  “But they were overpowered, so they withdrew.”

When residents saw soldiers pulling back from the base, panic spread through the village. Families ran in every direction, but the terrorists followed. They caught up with some people and opened fire. Others were cut down as they tried to escape.

Solomon ran towards the bush, along the path leading to Pulka. The terrorists pursued and almost caught up. He hid behind a tree, three houses away from home. The terrorists spotted him but got distracted by movements in a nearby house. They rushed in to search.

Solomon seized the moment. “I climbed the tree and hid among the branches,” he recalled. “I remained there throughout the night.” The sound of the chaos echoed through the night. 

Hours earlier, the village had been filled with children returning from school, farmers preparing their evening meals, and Muslim families preparing to break their fast.

The sounds of the attack did not remain confined to Ngoshe. Residents in Pulka, about ten kilometres away, also heard the gunfire.

“We heard it as soon as it happened,” said Muhammad Tela, a resident of Pulka.

Pulka sits close to Ngoshe, separated largely by a stretch of land and the hills of the Mandara Mountains. Both communities are towns in the Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State.

“Ngoshe to Pulka is about a 25-minute drive because of the condition of the road,” Maina explained.

The two communities are closely connected. Every Tuesday and Friday, traders from Ngoshe travel to Pulka for trade under military escort, Maina said.

On the night of March 3, however, the market routes fell silent.

A return that promised safety

For Solomon’s family, returning to Ngoshe once felt like the beginning of a new chapter.

In October 2020, the Borno State government resettled displaced people in the town after rebuilding homes, schools, clinics, and other public facilities destroyed by Boko Haram insurgents in their violent and prolonged effort to topple democracy and establish what they believe to be an Islamic state. The activities of the terror group has killed over 35,000 people and displaced millions. 

The Borno State government’s move was presented as part of a broader transition into what officials described as a post-conflict recovery phase. Solomon’s father, Ali Talake, believed in that promise.

Years earlier, when the insurgents first overran Ngoshe and neighbouring communities, he had fled across the border into Cameroon. From there, he eventually made his way to Maiduguri, where he lived inside the Federal Government College, volunteering as a security guard.

But his thoughts rarely left Ngoshe.

“My father was a farmer and a livestock rearer,” Solomon said.

When news spread that the government had begun resettling displaced residents, Ali Talake decided it was time to return. “We returned to Ngoshe on October 15, 2020,” Solomon said. Like many others, the family began rebuilding their lives there.

For six years, Ngoshe once again stood as home.

The community had access to basic facilities. “There is a clinic,” Maina said. “There are doctors and drugs.” The town also had clean water and schools.

Security presence was also significant. Residents say the formation consisted of personnel from the military and volunteer outfits like the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), Nigeria Forest Security Services (NFSS), and surrendered terrorists, popularly called “the hybrid.” Solomon said there were about 300 soldiers stationed in Ngoshe. Maina corroborated this. In addition, “there are about 400 personnel of the CJTF, NFSS, and vigilantes,” he said. Before the attack, Maina estimated, about 10,000 people lived in the community.

“They patrol the town at night,” he said of the security operatives. “They would start patrolling by 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next morning.”

Despite that, residents said they did not always feel safe.

The town had faced insecurity before. “A similar major one [attack] happened on June 21, 2025,” Solomon recalled. Like in the recent attack, the community was overrun. “They did not kill anyone or burn buildings during that attack,” Solomon said.

Security later improved, and the town gradually returned to normal. But residents, especially farmers, could rarely venture beyond one kilometre from the town, Maina said. “Those who go beyond that are often abducted or killed by terrorists.” 

For large-scale cultivation, people often travelled to Monguno and communities on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the state capital, such as Jakana. Adamu Zakariya, a resident of Ngoshe who had returned to Maiduguri months earlier to harvest his crops, agreed. “After harvest, we would return with the crops to Ngoshe,” he said. But this time, he decided to remain in Maiduguri because of a security job he recently got, while his family stayed in Ngoshe.

“Two weeks ago, they abducted some girls who had gone behind the mountains to gather firewood,” Maina said. “No ransom was demanded, and they were never returned. We later heard they had been married off, including a 12-year-old.”

Young boys were also at risk. “They would kill young boys who go out of town,” Maina said.

Before the recent Ngoshe attack, some residents had heard rumours. “Although we don’t know the authenticity, there were rumours that the terrorists would come to break their fast with us,” Solomon recalled. Such rumours circulated within the community and even reached security personnel. Some residents relocated. Others stayed.

The night of the violence

From the top of the tree Solomon climbed, he could see the village below. “They burnt all our houses, including my own room. I saw them,” he said. The attackers moved through the settlement, setting homes ablaze and pursuing residents who tried to escape. 

At one point, several terrorists gathered beneath the tree where Solomon was hiding. “They were arguing,” he said. He held his breath and prayed. “I asked God to cause confusion so they would not look up.”

One of the fighters suggested firing at the tree. “Let me have this gun and scatter this tree,” Solomon remembered him saying. Another replied, “No, just leave it.” A third asked for a torch to check the branches. Again, someone stopped him. The men eventually moved away.

From his hiding place, Solomon said he saw about 27 attackers moving through the area. Some carried cutlasses and knives, others held guns. He recognised rifles such as AK-47s, although some weapons were unfamiliar to him.

Maina and his family also fled towards Pulka when the attack began. 

“They came on motorcycles,” Maina said of the attackers. “Bullets were flying everywhere. The whole place was lit with gunfire.”

He arrived Pulka around 1 a.m., barefoot.

Media reports of March 6 state that a yet-to-be-identified terror group has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, testimonies from survivors revealed that the attack is suspected to have involved terrorists from both the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Jama’atu Ahlussunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad (JAS).

“Those who attacked the military base left immediately after taking vehicles and weapons,” Solomon said. They withdrew toward the direction of Pulka but veered into the bush before reaching the town.

“It was those on the mountain who attacked the community,” Solomon said, referring to JAS fighters based in the Mandara Mountains. “Afterwards, they climbed back up.”

For the JAS terrorists, residents believe the attack may have been retaliation. On Dec. 19, 2025, the Nigerian Army announced that troops of Operation Hadin Kai had killed a terrorist commander and several fighters in the Mandara Mountains the previous day. Maina said the commander was later beheaded by members of the CJTF.

“They cut the heads of some of them,” Solomon said of the soldiers killed during the recent attack. “I was told they killed about ten soldiers.”

Adamu said some former JAS members who had previously surrendered were living in Ngoshe with their families. “When those members of JAS from Ngoshe attacked the town with their colleagues, they took away some of their family members,” he said. “Especially young men and women of reproductive age.”

He added that the attackers also killed some who had previously defected from the group. Tracking and killing defectors has been a recurring tactic among the JAS terror group. In November 2025, HumAngle reported cases of former terrorists being tracked and assassinated across Borno.

“The terrorists took what they could carry from the military armoury and set what they could not carry ablaze,” Maina said.

“It was said the soldiers from Pulka drove into buried mines on the way to Ngoshe,” he said. “Two of the soldiers were my friends. One died, and the other was injured.”

The road between the towns has long been dangerous. “The terrorists dig holes along the road and bury mines inside them,” Maina said.

The use of roadside explosives has become increasingly common in recent months. In April 2025, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) planted along the Maiduguri-Damboa road killed at least seven passengers and injured several others.

Muhammad said soldiers from Pulka remained near the border and helped injured survivors reach the hospital in Pulka.

On March 6, Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, condemned the attack, describing it as a “heartless assault on helpless citizens.” The president then charged “the military and other security agencies to work urgently to rescue those kidnapped by the terrorists.” As well as “intensify their efforts to protect civilians nationwide and prevent attacks on military installations in the North East.”

At dawn, Solomon saw the attackers switch on a generator and begin the call to prayer. He realised it might be his chance to escape.

“I climbed down at 5:10 a.m. and ran,” he said. “When I heard them saying they would check trees and uncompleted buildings after burning the houses, I knew I had to leave when I got the chance.”

He hid again until about 6 a.m.

The morning after

By 7:10 a.m., he had reached Pulka, where many survivors had gathered.

“Most people came barefoot,” Muhammad Tela said. “Others carried the elderly on push carts. Some even brought the corpses of loved ones.”

Many arrived carrying whatever they could salvage: bags of clothes, goats, and small belongings gathered in haste. Others fled further: toward Maiduguri, Cameroon, and Abuja.

Media reports later suggested that about 100 people were killed and more than 300 abducted. Survivors say the numbers are difficult to confirm.

“They cannot be quantified,” Maina said. “But the people I reached Pulka with and those we met at the entrance, including women, children and the elderly, were about 2,000 from my estimation.”

Solomon saw two children being abducted while they were fleeing.

Two of Solomon’s nephews were also taken during the attack. One is 14 years old and the other is 11.

Later, when soldiers briefly returned to Ngoshe, Solomon returned as well. His father had been killed. “He was 68,” he said. From his father’s body, Solomon collected two small items: a cap and a wallet.

“They are something to remember him with,” he said. Victims like Solomon’s father were buried two days later in a mass burial.

The new fear

Recent months have seen a wave of attacks by ISWAP fighters across Borno, particularly targeting security formations.

A member of the Nigerian Forest Security Service (NFSS) said terrorists attacked a military base in Konduga on March 5 and burned several buildings. The base, located near an area known as “High Bridge,” lies close to Malari.

According to him, the terrorists killed several soldiers and took away vehicles and weapons.

Earlier, on Feb. 14, terrorists attacked a military base in Pulka. Two days later, troops launched a counter-operation that reportedly killed a commander and recovered ₦37 million. On Feb. 5, terrorists attacked a military base in Auno, a community close to Maiduguri along the Maiduguri-Damaturu road, according to a military source who asked not to be named. On Jan. 26, terrorists attacked a military base in Damasak, killing seven soldiers and capturing 13 others, including their commanding officer. Eleven managed to escape. 

Earlier, on Nov. 14, 2025, terrorists ambushed a military convoy along the Damboa-Biu road. Two soldiers and two CJTF members were killed. Brigadier General M. Uba, the Brigade Commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, was abducted and later killed. On Nov. 20 of the same year, they attacked a CJTF base in Warabe, killing eight people and leaving three others missing. And on Dec. 25, a suicide bomber detonated at a mosque in the Gamboru Market area of Maiduguri. Five people were killed, and 35 others were injured.

Terrorists have also targeted reconstruction projects.

On Jan. 28, about 30 construction workers were killed in Sabon Gari, Damboa. Earlier, on Nov. 17, 2025, workers fled after terrorists stormed a construction site in Mayanti, Bama.

Resettled communities have also come under repeated attack. On Sept. 5, 2025, fighters attacked Darajama in Bama, killing at least 63 people, including five soldiers, and burning about 24 houses. Many residents fled again.

Umara Ibrahim, a professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Maiduguri, said the attacks may be intended to undermine government resettlement efforts.

“Because their movements are observed and monitored, and perhaps challenged, it is not in their interest for resettlement to proliferate,” he told HumAngle in a February interview.

He added that such violence may also serve a political purpose. “It may be a way to counter government efforts by shaping public perception that the authorities cannot be trusted on security,” he said.

Pulka itself had once been abandoned when insurgents seized the town. After the military retook it in 2017, residents gradually returned. More recently, the government resettled refugees from Cameroon there. On Jan. 28, the government resettled about 300 Nigerian refugees from Cameroon. On Feb. 8, it resettled 680 more.

But the Ngoshe attack has revived old fears. “People don’t feel secure,” Muhammad said. “They think the community could be displaced again. Everyone is thinking about where to go.”

Communication also became difficult. For several days, residents said, there was no network across Gwoza, leaving families struggling to confirm whether relatives were alive.

Adamu’s brothers later travelled from Maiduguri to Pulka to retrieve their displaced relatives. Maina did not remain in Pulk as his parents urged him to leave immediately for Maiduguri. Still, he worries about those left behind. He believes the community needs stronger security.

In the days that followed, Solomon also travelled to Maiduguri. Though he is the seventh child in his family, he is now the only available adult son able to organise their next steps. His stepmother and siblings remain displaced. 

“I am looking for a house to rent so I can bring them here,” he said. Looking back, Solomon says he had always worried about returning to Ngoshe.

“We had no neighbouring villages,” he said. “We were surrounded by bushes and mountains.” Sometimes, he warned his family. “One day these people might take over,” he recalled telling them. Now the village has emptied again.

And Solomon, a teacher who once spent his days in a quiet classroom, is searching for shelter in a distant city while carrying the memory of a night he survived by hiding in a tree.

Christie Garba is a 38-year-old mother of seven who lives in Billiri, Gombe State, in Nigeria’s North East. She lived in Yobe State with her family before the Boko Haram insurgency hit the region. At that time, attacks had happened in nearby places, and they had not reached her community directly.

Christie and her family had stayed about four months after the attacks started, but as the violence escalated, the soldiers warned residents that the situation had become too dangerous to remain. The curfews that followed made everyday life almost impossible.

In this episode of VOV, we tell the story of how Christie and her family moved to Gombe State and how she survived starting a new business.

Reported and scripted by Sabiqah Bello

Voice acting by Rukayya Saeed

Multimedia editor is Anthony Asemota

Executive producer is Ahmad Salkida