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Nigerian Army soldiers patrol near the scene after a deadly gunmen attack in Yelwata, Benue State, Nigeria, on June 16, 2025.
What’s behind a surge of violence in Africa’s most populous country?
Earlier this month, Nigeria’s human rights agency reported that the country suffered more killings by insurgents and bandits in the first half of 2025 alone than in all of 2024.
That level of violence in Africa’s most populous country – and a major oil producer at that – should raise alarm bells. But experts from the country caution that there are a few ways to look at this data, which has only been kept consistently since 2024 to begin with.
First, the patterns of violence in Nigeria are shifting. For years, the largest threat in the country was the jihadist group Boko Haram and its various offshoots, which terrorized the northern reaches of the country with killings and kidnappings. But Nigeria’s security services have steadily ground them down, according to Amaka Anku, a Nigeria expert at Eurasia Group.
“Boko Haram is pretty much non-existent,” she says. “ISWAP [a local ISIS offshoot] does a few things, but that’s not the majority of where [the violence is coming from].”
So who are the perpetrators?
In fact, much of the recent increase is the result instead of violence in the central states between farmers and herders, as settled cultivators and nomadic cattle shepherds fight over valuable resources of land and water.
“A lot of what’s driven the number up is the killings in Benue state” says Anku, referring to the central Nigerian state where much of this type of violence is concentrated. Of the 606 killings reported in June by the country’s human rights agency, roughly 200 were in Benue alone.
Climate change is one of the underlying factors for the violence. The desertification of once-fertile areas of northern Nigeria has pushed herders south toward the central parts of the country – like Benue – which have seen longer rainy seasons. This has put them in conflict with farmers. There is a sectarian overlay as well: herders are typically Muslim, while farmers are usually Christian.
But there may also be a statistical anomaly in the numbers.
2024 was the first year that this data was kept, and that happened to be the first full calendar year of President Bola Tinubu’s premiership. He won power in part on a promise to rein in violence. To achieve this, the government launched a fresh security crackdown, while some state governments have even explored doing deals directly with criminal groups.
“Sometimes, the government is trying to negotiate with the bandits,” Aliyu Dahiru, a Nigerian journalist who reports for Human Angle, told GZERO. “It will give them money and say, ‘OK, let’s negotiate. You’ll stop attacking this particular location and we are going to stop attacking you.”
There’s just one problem, per Dahiru: there is no single leader of all Nigeria’s violent groups. The government may strike a deal with a head honcho, or the military may even kill one, but more groups will just spring up in their stead, says Dahiru, and the cycle continues.
“While you’re attacking [one] group, another one is getting more sophisticated, attacking more villages,” says Dahiru. “Before you know it, it’s a typical issue in that region.”
As a result, the uptick in 2025 may in fact be a reversion to the mean after a particularly successful year rather than an unprecedented spike.
Will this hurt Tinubu politically? The next election is just over 18 months away, and the most pressing problem for the president right now isn’t security, but rather skyrocketing inflation. Nonetheless, if current trends continue, violence could well become a defining electoral issue again , says Anku, meaning Tinubu will have to confront the problem again very soon.
“It ends up getting a lot more attention closer to an election, because you can whip up a lot of fear over it, right?”
Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu looks on after his swearing-in ceremony in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 29, 2023.
Nigeria’s Rivers State in crisis after Lagos declares emergency rule
What prompted the move? Tinubu acted after an explosion rocked the Trans-Niger Pipeline this week, disrupting $14 million worth of daily crude oil production. The incident is still under investigation, but Tinubu accused Fubara of failing to act against gangs responsible for similar attacks in the past months that have been used to “bunker” or steal oil for sale on the black market.
However, critics argue that Tinubu’s real motive is to seize control of the oil-rich state, especially as Fubara belongs to the People’s Democratic Party, the main national opposition party to Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress. Fubara was already engaged in a power struggle with his predecessor, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, and political opponents were threatening the governor with impeachment.
The Nigerian Bar Association called Tinubu’s move “unconstitutional,” and the PDP is refusing to recognize the state of emergency. It maintains that Fubara is still governor and that Tinubu has no constitutional authority to remove him, and it has called on the country’s National Assembly to overturn Tinubu’s decision.
A closed fuel station is seen near Nigeria's oil hub city of Port Harcourt
Nigeria goes dark
The lingering power predicament: Nigeria is the leading oil producer in Africa, and the 9th largest producer in the world, but the power supply is erratic at best. The grid failed at least four times in 2022, and less than half of Nigerians are even connected to it. Instead, most families and businesses rely on petrol and diesel generators. But prices for those fuels have doubled since the government slashed subsidies in May, and many Nigerians are now struggling to find affordable alternative sources of power.
The government promised to redirect the $10 billion annual fuel subsidies towards improving the power grid. Instead, President Bola Tinubu, facing outrage and a cost of living crisis, announced he would improve the energy supply by allowing state governments to build their own power plants. While more power plants will alleviate shortages, they wont be built overnight.
President Tinubu's subsidy slashing was an unpopular step that was seen as necessary to stabilize Nigeria’s economy in the long term, and it’s won him plaudits from investors and the IMF, raising hopes of more investment in Nigeria. And the decision to decentralize the power supply could also jumpstart stumbling economic growth.
But for now, with the Tinubu administration unlikely to revisit the subsidies decision, average Nigerians are in the dark and paying the price.
Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu waves at a crowd during his swearing-in ceremony in Abuja.
Hard Numbers: Nigerian inauguration, North Korean heads-up, Moscow drone attack, El Sal presidential conviction, Indian dam selfie fail
5: On Monday, Bola Tinubu was sworn in as Nigeria’s fifth president since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. “The Godfather,” whose election victory is still being contested by the opposition, has promised to end costly fuel subsidies but must also tackle an ailing economy and rampant insecurity.
12: North Korea gave Japan a 12-day window (May 31-June 11) to prepare for the launch of its first military spy satellite. Tokyo responded by threatening to shoot down anything North Korean that enters its territory.
8: On Tuesday morning, residential blocks in Moscow were attacked by eight drones. Authorities blamed Ukraine for the first strike on civilian areas deep inside Russia since the start of the war. This comes less than a month after two UAVs were shot down over the Kremlin, which Moscow then claimed was an attempt to kill Vladimir Putin by Kyiv or Washington.
14: El Salvador's exiled former President Mauricio Funes was sentenced in absentia to 14 years behind bars for negotiating with gangs. Current strongman President Nayib Bukele has been accused of the same crime, but friendly lawmakers ousted the attorney general who was investigating the allegations.
2 million: A government official in drought-prone central India was suspended after ordering that 2 million liters (440,00 gallons) of water be drained from a reservoir to retrieve his smartphone. The device, which the official dropped while taking a selfie, was found but was beyond repair.