Nigeria - often called the “Giant of Africa” - is Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million citizens. While travel brochures talk about vast lands and incredibly diverse people, its modern challenges - insurgency, corruption, religious violence, and separatism - are rooted in a century-old legacy of colonial rule and uneven power distribution.
Nigeria’s borders were drawn by the British in 1914 through the merger of the Northern and Southern Protectorates. Colonial administration favored indirect rule through northern emirs, while southern regions received more Western education and economic development. This created long-term structural inequality. By the time of its independence in 1960, Nigeria was not so much a nation but rather a framework of competing regions.
Historical and Political Context
Post-independence politics deepened regional mistrust. Economic grievances reinforced ethnic divides. Oil revenues from the Niger Delta flowed to the federal government, leaving producing regions underdeveloped.
The Biafra War
In 1967, the Eastern Region - dominated by the Igbo peoples - declared independence as the Republic of Biafra. The name Biafra was taken from the “Bight of Biafra,” a coastal region of the Gulf of Guinea historically associated with southeastern Nigeria. Federal forces, supported by British and Soviet logistics and aircraft, imposed a blockade that led to mass starvation. By early 1970, Biafra surrendered. The war ended, but the scars remain.
Since the war, Nigerian politics has operated on an informal rotation of power between the north and south to preserve stability. The north fears that a southern-dominated government would marginalize Islamic interests and divert resources. Oil wealth - concentrated in the southern Niger Delta but controlled federally - remains the core dispute.
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The Challenge of Safeguarding Nigeria’s Border
The Boko Haram Insurgency
Nigeria’s most severe security challenge emerged in 2009 with Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist movement rooted in Borno State. The group’s campaign of bombings, abductions, and village raids has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than two million people. Boko Haram later splintered, with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) becoming the dominant faction. The Nigerian military, despite multiple offensives, has failed to decisively defeat the insurgency.
In central and northern Nigeria, overlapping ethnic and religious tensions have led to recurring violence. Security operations in affected regions often involve indiscriminate force.
Regional Consequences and International Involvement
Nigeria’s instability carries regional consequences. It shares porous borders with Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin - states already dealing with jihadist threats and weak governance. China and Russia maintain a growing presence, supplying arms and pursuing energy contracts.
Nigeria’s military on the other hand - called to deploy in hotspots across the country - is overstretched. Many soldiers rotate continuously through combat zones without adequate rest or resupply. Its tendency to withdraw under attack - “dislodging” is the common expression - leaves hard-to-replace equipment behind, which is then either torched because it is unserviceable, or looted, researcher Malik Samuel has pointed out. The fact that reinforcements and air support can be slow to arrive only deepens the military’s morale problem.
Military Operations
- South-South (Niger Delta): Missions targeting oil theft, sabotage, and protecting natural resources.
This multi-front posture strains personnel and logistics. Both interests overlap. involvement will focus on protecting civilians or securing access to oil and regional resources remains uncertain.
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Governance and Economic Challenges
Nigeria’s governance challenges amplify its security problems. Oil accounts for more than 80 percent of export earnings, but theft, mismanagement, and subsidies drain revenue.
Recent Border Incidents
At least 34 people died in Benin near Nigeria's border on Saturday when a contraband fuel depot exploded into flames, sending up a black cloud of smoke into the sky and leaving dozens of charred bodies at the site, a government official said. When Boko Haram Islamists raided a remote village on Nigeria's northeastern border with Niger last year, frightened and confused residents fled into the bush to escape the marauding attackers. Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has approved the closure of all land borders ahead of this weekend's regional elections, after a similar move was made before national polls last month, a statement said Wednesday.
The Situation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
A rising tide of deadly attacks this year by jihadist gunmen on displaced people returned to areas of northeastern Nigeria - declared safe by the authorities - has thrown into question the sustainability of the state government’s resettlement policy. In September, more than 60 civilians were killed when insurgents of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS) - better known as Boko Haram - attacked the military base and village of Darul Jamal on the Nigeria-Cameroon border. Darul Jamal had become the showcase home for 3,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had been living for a decade in an overcrowded camp in the nearby town of Bama. It was part of the Borno State government’s ambitious “stabilisation” strategy that has seen the return of more than 170,000 IDPs to their home areas over the past few years.
Darul Jamal was targeted by the Aliyu Ngulde faction of JAS, based in the adjacent Gwoza Hills/Mandera mountains. The speculation is that it was punishment for the passing of information to the military by IDPs and vigilante groups on the movement of insurgents in the bush.
When Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum visited Darul Jamal the following day to offer his condolences, he urged the former IDPs to stay and rebuild - a refrain he has repeated on other occasions this year at scenes of similar atrocities.
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But without adequate security - and systematic economic support to the newly returned IDPs - the “Reconstruct, Rehabilitate, and Resettle” pillar of Borno’s stabilisation strategy (one of nine pillars) looks decidedly shaky.
“[The policy] requires the government to answer more elaborately the question of what’s to be done around security,” explained Anietie Ewang of Human Rights Watch. “You can’t just return people and expect them to face whatever is out there.”
To understand the toll of these attacks on communities, earlier this year The New Humanitarian visited the towns of Damasak, Gamboru Ngala, and Monguno in northern Borno, Dikwa and Bama in the east, and Gwoza to the south.
We interviewed more than 50 former IDPs who had been resettled from camps in the state capital, Maiduguri. For a better insight into the insurgency, we also spoke with ex-JAS fighters who had recently surrendered to the army.
The IDPs all stressed their feeling of vulnerability. All of them knew someone who had been either kidnapped or killed by the insurgents - some of them family members. With only threadbare protection from a seemingly indifferent military, there was a profound sense that they were on their own. “We can rely only on God”, was a common refrain.
Experiences of Resettled IDPs
Nguro Soye lies just outside Bama, roughly 70 kilometres from Maiduguri. It was resettled in 2022 with IDPs from Maiduguri’s Dalori II camp. When The New Humanitarian visited a few months after their arrival, the residents spoke of the constant harassment they faced from JAS at night - despite the presence of a military detachment only a few kilometres away. That threat appears to have only increased.
“Most of us have regretted coming,” said Fatima Mohamed, who arrived in Nguro Soye with her husband and teenage sons. “In Maiduguri, we stayed peacefully, but here there is no security. Everybody is thinking of leaving - and many have - because Soye at night … You lie in bed listening, wondering what will happen.”
Military Strategy and Challenges
Much of Borno’s countryside has been depopulated by the 15-year insurgency. The army switched to a “super camp” strategy in 2019 after losing a series of remote outposts, concentrating its forces in fortified bases in key towns. The drawback is they have offered little challenge to the consolidation of jihadist control over the wider terrain.
Yet, until recently, the military felt it had the upper hand - an optimism shared by the state government. An estimated 160,000 former JAS fighters and their families had deserted for amnesty and resettlement through the so-called “Borno Model” between 2021 and 2024. The stabilisation strategy, enthusiastically backed by the UN Development Programme, had looked set to rebuild state authority and legitimacy.
But the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which is distinct from JAS and the largest and most sophisticated of the insurgent groups, is still very much present. It has worked out how to overpower the military’s bases, with a devastating attack in September on Banki being the latest.
Timeline of Attacks in Borno
The following timeline is based on interviews with resettled IDPs in Borno, cross-referenced where possible with public reporting. The entries without sourcing should be treated as anecdotal.
- 20 October: Ambush on troops at Kashimiri village, near Bama.
- 10 October: Coordinated night attack on military positions in Ngamdu, Kaga district.
- 19 September: ISWAP overruns the military base in Banki.
- 26 June: IED attack on the Maiduguri-Damboa road.
- 25 June: JAS kidnaps two people from their farm in Nguro-Soye, 85 kilometres from Maiduguri.
- 21 June: A suicide bomber detonates her device in a crowded market in Konduga, 25 kilometres southeast of Maiduguri.
- 15 June: JAS robs people looking for firewood outside Dikwa, 90 kilometres east of Maiduguri. Three people also kidnapped from Shuwari, on the outskirts of Maiduguri.
- 12 June: Nine people kidnapped by JAS in Gwom, northeastern Borno.
- 22 May: JAS attacks base in Gajibo, Dikwa district, but repulsed.
- 12-13 May: Coordinated ISWAP raids against towns of Marte, Dikwa, and Rann.
- 4 May: IED attack on Damboa-Maiduguri road.
- 4 April: ISWAP attacks the military post in Izge, Gwoza district.
- 19 March: An IED attack kills four people in a passenger vehicle outside Biu, southern Borno.
- 18 March: JAS attacks Kaleri, on the outskirts of Maiduguri.
- 25 February: JAS kidnaps three IDPs looking for firewood on the outskirts of Maiduguri.
- 19 and 17 February: ISWAP attacks the super camp in Gajiganna, 43 kilometres from Maiduguri.
- 15 February: JAS kidnaps farmers in Malari, Konduga district.
- 25 January: JAS kidnaps six men looking for firewood in Gongulo, Jere district, 35 kilometres from Maiduguri.
- 24-26 January: Major assault by ISWAP on the army base at Malam-Fatori, near the Niger border.
- 23 January: JAS kidnaps three men from Maiduguri’s Munna area.
- 19 January: ISWAP attacks Marte, in northeastern Borno.
- 16 January: JAS attacks a military camp in Mafa.
- 12 January: ISWAP kills at least 40 farmers and fishermen in Dumba.
- 4 January: ISWAP attacks the military base in Sabon Gari, Damboa, in retaliation for the earlier killing of an ISWAP commander.
- 1 January: JAS kidnaps three men from Nguro-Soye out looking for firewood.
In April, Zulum made a shock announcement that the state authorities were “losing ground” to the insurgents, and that attacks and kidnappings were occurring “almost on a daily basis without confrontation”.
IDP Camp Closures and Resettlement
In 2022, roughly 900,000 people lived in Borno’s 65 formal and 158 informal camps - with a further 1.4 million staying within the host community. For years, the Borno government has sought to close the camps. Zulum characterised them as havens of drug abuse, sex work, and aid dependency. Returning people to their areas of origin was presented as a means to restore dignity, self-sufficiency - and kickstart rural economic recovery.
Camp closures began in 2021, and he set 2026 as the deadline for all formal camps to be shuttered. The assistance NGOs could provide the returnees was restricted by a government keen to promote the autonomy of the former IDPs.
Camp life is a struggle. They are overcrowded and under-serviced, but returning people to their ancestral homes has not been strictly voluntary. Most IDPs found work in Maiduguri and developed mutual support systems. Abandoning a known lifestyle, for the unknown of rural homes most have not seen for more than a decade, is a difficult choice.
A powerful inducement to go is the state government’s one-off stipend. Male returnees receive in total $70 and women $35. In addition, there are “starter packs” of food and non-food items. It’s an incentive that runs counter to Borno’s own Safe Return Strategy - that resettlement should be safe, dignified, informed and voluntary.
Vulnerability and Security Concerns
IDPs resettled in rural towns scratch the meagerest existence. Typically, a two-kilometre-deep perimeter is deemed safe, but to earn a living - collecting firewood, or working on the farms of local landowners - they have to venture beyond that belt of land.
It’s in these spaces they encounter JAS, or its rival ISWAP. These interactions are always intimidating, but how risky tends to depend on which group the gunmen belong to.
ISWAP are harsh disciplinarians, but have banned theft from civilians, a practice known as fay’u. JAS, on the other hand, has historically been predatory. Its former leader, Abubaker Shekau, considered all Muslims who had not pledged allegiance to him as unbelievers and said it was therefore permissible to kill, plunder, ransom, or enslave them.
Recent Attacks in Plateau and Kaduna States
The attacks struck two rural communities-Kwi (“KWEE”) in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State and Damakasuwa (pronounced “da-MAK - aZwa”), a border town in southern Kaduna. To the shock of many, the attack on the town of Damakasuwa got no help from the military despite the presence nearby of a small Forward Operating Base (FOB) staffed by approximately 10 soldiers, equipped with assault rifles, a gun truck and several motor bikes.
Ezekiel Isa, a resident of Damakasua said that the army response came too late, even though the FOB is located just one kilometer from the community, he told TruthNigeria. The attackers split into three groups-one positioned near the community hall, another along the road, and the third near the youth leader’s house, he said. The assault came as a surprise as villagers were celebrating with drumming and local dances and did not anticipate any threat.
Rudeh, the respected local youth leader, was among those killed. Residents said he had long urged both state governments to establish a joint security patrol to monitor the porous border communities between Plateau and Kaduna. Some believe Mr. “Bala was always the first to respond when there was an alert of an impending attack,” said community member Mr. Simon Ayuba. “He used to organize local youths to guard the village.
Kwi, a farming village located about 20 miles southwest of Jos, in Plateau State, sits within the rocky plains of Riyom, one of Plateau’s most volatile regions. By dawn, 9 villagers were reported were dead. Three other local farmers were killed on their fields early Saturday morning. A resident, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, said the attack lasted several hours. “They came from the direction of the hills. We heard gunfire everywhere. People were running into the bushes,” he said.
Kwi lies near the border with Barkin Ladi in Plateau State, an area that has experienced repeated village massacres by Fulani Ethnic Militia related to disputes over land, grazing routes, and community boundaries.
Security officials contacted by TruthNigeria confirmed receiving reports from both locations but declined to provide further details pending ongoing investigations.
In Riyom and neighboring Barkin Ladi alone, hundreds of residents have been displaced since 2021 following similar attacks. Kaduna State, particularly the southern region around Kauru and Zangon Kataf, has also seen a surge in coordinated assaults on Christian-majority communities.
Residents of Kwi village, located about 20 miles southwest of Jos, the Plateau state capital, reported that armed men believed to be Fulani herders surrounded the community shortly before midnight. According to survivors, the gunmen opened fire sporadically, targeting homes on the outskirts before moving toward the village center.
“It started suddenly; there was no argument, no warning,” said Nanzing Dalyop, a local farmer who escaped the attack. “We heard gunshots and people screaming. Community leaders described the raid as one of the deadliest in recent months.
A few hours later, a second assault took place about 15 miles away in Damakasuwa, a Christian-majority settlement straddling the Plateau-Kaduna boundary. Witnesses said the attackers arrived on motorcycles, firing into the air to create panic before shooting indiscriminately. When the shooting stopped, five bodies were recovered, including that of Bala Rudeh, the respected youth leader of the Tsam ethnic group, also known as Chawai.
According to residents, the event was meant to mark the successful re-election of another Chawai youth leader, Bala Baba Bulus, who had recently facilitated the creation of a joint security task force between the Rigwe people in Kaduna state and the Chawai community.
“They came when we were celebrating,” said a young man who identified himself as Joshua. Rudeh was known for his advocacy on peace and rural security. Throughout the years, he had written multiple letters to local authorities urging stronger government intervention in the border communities repeatedly targeted by armed groups.
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