Nigeria, 79,323 dead in six years, a toll that chills the blood

Introduction: a figure beyond comprehension

A report released amid relative indifference

A new report released on July 1, 2026 by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa puts the number of people killed in terrorism-linked violence in Nigeria between 2020 and 2025 at 79,323, while 34,773 civilians were abducted over the same period, according to Punch Newspapers. The document, titled "Four Times Boko Haram? How the World Misreads Nigeria's Violence," was publicly presented in Jos, in Plateau State.

This figure, staggering as it is, has struggled to break through international media attention, largely absorbed by other crisis zones. It is precisely this relative invisibility that makes this testimony necessary: some tragedies, for lack of sufficient coverage, end up becoming statistically abstract rather than humanly real.

Why I choose to bear witness here

I do not claim to have lived through this violence, nor to personally know the victims of this tragedy: my role here is to relay, with the rigor such a subject demands, a documented report that deserves far more attention than it is currently receiving in Western media.

I take this responsibility to relay seriously, because media silence around a tragedy of this scale is, in itself, an additional form of injustice toward those who have paid its price.

I cannot claim to feel what Nigerian families affected by this violence are living through, but I refuse to let this figure slip into the silent indifference of international news.

A daily average that is staggering

Seven attacks and thirty-six deaths every day

According to the report, the documented violence over these six years amounted to an average of seven attacks and thirty-six deaths per day, a sustained pace that turns an abstract annual statistic into an unbearable daily reality for the populations affected. More than 42,000 of the recorded victims were innocent civilians, according to the same data.

The precise breakdown compiled by the Observatory shows that 42,033 of those killed were civilians, while 37,290 deaths involved members of the security forces and the armed groups themselves, a split that illustrates the scale of the conflict across the entire spectrum of Nigerian security.

"Fulani" armed groups identified as the main culprits

The report notes that militias categorized as "Fulani terrorist groups" killed 44% of all civilians recorded, four times more than the combined killings attributed to Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), according to the same findings.

This data upends the dominant media perception that still too often associates Nigerian violence with Boko Haram alone, when the documented reality reveals a far broader fragmentation of the armed actors responsible for these killings.

Reducing Nigerian violence to Boko Haram alone, as part of international coverage still does, amounts to a dangerous oversimplification that masks the true scale of the problem.

Mass abductions, an organized criminal industry

Nearly 35,000 civilians abducted in six years

The report documents 34,773 civilians abducted over the period studied, with "Fulani terrorist groups" and "unidentified terrorist groups" responsible for 43% and 49% of these abductions respectively. These figures confirm that kidnapping has become a genuine, structured criminal industry rather than a marginal phenomenon.

According to Human Rights Watch, a separate report by intelligence firm SBM Intelligence also found that 2,938 people were abducted in the Northwest region alone between July 2024 and June 2025, more than 60% of incidents recorded nationwide.

From community attacks to documented sexual violence

The Observatory's report states that 75% of civilians killed died during attacks on entire communities, including raids on farming villages involving abductions, sexual violence, and destruction of property, a reality that goes far beyond the notion of a single, isolated terrorist attack.

This communal dimension of the violence, which strikes entire villages rather than isolated targets, partly explains why internal displacement within Nigeria remains so massive and persistent in certain regions of the country.

Raids that destroy entire villages, with documented abductions and violence, should never be pushed to the back pages of international news, regardless of the geography where they occur.

A geography of violence that keeps spreading

The Northwest, the historic epicenter of banditry

According to a video analysis covering the period from May to June 2026, northwestern Nigeria, particularly the states of Katsina and Zamfara, remains the epicenter of bandit violence, with repeated killings, abductions, and raids against local farming communities.

The Northeast, meanwhile, continues to face renewed jihadist pressure, with the states of Borno and Yobe recording major incidents including school abductions and attacks on security personnel.

A worrying spread toward the center and south of the country

The North Central zone, including the states of Kwara, Niger, Plateau, and Benue, is becoming an increasingly dangerous security gap, while abduction cases have also been reported further south, in Oyo State, according to Reuters, blurring the traditional geographic boundaries of this insecurity.

This geographic spread of violence, beyond historically affected areas, illustrates the relative failure of security strategies to contain a phenomenon that keeps adapting and shifting across Nigerian territory.

Violence that keeps spreading geographically, rather than being contained, sends an alarm signal that Nigerian authorities and their international partners can no longer afford to ignore.

Nigeria's security efforts, between successes and limits

Official figures pointing to real mobilization

For 2025 alone, the Nigerian army reported 1,023 rescued abduction victims and 305 bandits neutralized in the states of Sokoto, Katsina, Kebbi, and Zamfara, according to a year-end tally relayed by allAfrica. Nationwide, more than 13,500 terrorists and criminals were reportedly neutralized over the same year.

These results, real as they are, clearly are not enough to stem a phenomenon whose scale, as documented by the new report, far exceeds the current operational capacity of Nigerian security forces, despite their measurable efforts on the ground.

Terrorism sharply on the rise despite the efforts

According to the Global Terrorism Index cited by The Guardian, terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria had fallen to 392 in 2022, their lowest level since 2011, before surging to 750 in 2025, the largest increase recorded worldwide that year.

This resurgence, following a period of relative improvement, illustrates the fragility of security gains achieved and the worrying resilience of Nigerian armed groups against the military operations conducted against them.

Isolated military successes, real as they may be, are not enough to mask an underlying trend that remains, unfortunately, one of expanding rather than receding violence.

The devastating economic toll of insecurity

Colossal ransoms paid to kidnappers

An earlier report by Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics, cited by Vanguard, put ransom payments at roughly 2.23 trillion naira, or approximately $1.44 billion, between May 2023 and April 2024, a staggering sum that directly fuels the criminal economy of armed groups.

This financial windfall, drawn directly from families and communities already impoverished by insecurity, creates a vicious cycle in which every ransom paid potentially funds the next wave of abductions, perpetuating the cycle of violence documented by the new report.

Security forces stretched across an immense territory

Nigeria, a country larger than France and Germany combined according to the BBC, has an army of roughly 400,000 soldiers and a police force of 370,000 officers, numbers that remain objectively insufficient to effectively cover all the areas affected by this multifaceted insecurity.

This geographic dispersion of security resources partly explains why some regions remain almost devoid of any effective state presence, leaving armed groups free to operate with prolonged relative impunity.

A territory as vast as Nigeria deserves stronger international support for its security forces, rather than an indifference that only prolongs the suffering of its civilian populations.

What this reveals about the global geopolitical balance

A forgotten front in the fight against extremism

While Western attention remains largely focused on other conflict zones, Nigeria remains one of the deadliest battlegrounds in the world against armed extremism, a reality that deserves a far greater place in Western diplomatic and security priorities.

This fight against Nigerian armed groups is part of a broader struggle the West must wage against religious extremism and criminalized militias, where every area left without sufficient support potentially becomes a sanctuary for networks that extend beyond national borders.

A humanitarian emergency calling for a coordinated response

The relative silence surrounding this report contrasts with the humanitarian emergency it reveals: tens of thousands of dead and missing deserve an international mobilization equal to the documented scale of the crisis, including stronger logistical and financial support for legitimate Nigerian security forces.

This mobilization should not depend solely on Nigeria's ability to attract media attention, but on a structural recognition of the country's strategic importance to the stability of the entire West African region.

I believe the West, preoccupied with other more heavily covered crises, is making a strategic mistake by neglecting a country whose instability could have repercussions well beyond its own borders.

The ambiguous role of foreign actors in the region

An American withdrawal worrying regional partners

Washington's decision to end certain military funding programs for neighboring Somalia, a move reported in early July by Vanguard, prompted the African Union to convene an emergency meeting, illustrating the growing nervousness of regional partners over a possible broader Western disengagement from the fight against armed extremism in Africa.

This wider regional context directly sheds light on the Nigerian situation: if major Western powers reduce their security support elsewhere on the continent, there is a real risk that Nigeria too could find itself with even more limited international backing than today, against a threat that is expanding rapidly.

Regional cooperation still too fragmented

Coordination efforts between Nigeria and its immediate neighbors, notably through the Multinational Joint Task Force meant to fight Boko Haram and ISWAP, remain hampered by budgetary, logistical, and sometimes political constraints that limit the operational effectiveness of this otherwise essential regional coalition.

This regional fragmentation, combined with the documented scale of the violence, reinforces the argument that only a coordinated international mobilization, extending beyond Nigeria's borders alone, could hope to durably reverse a security trend as troubling as the one revealed by this report.

Seeing the West scale back its security engagement in West Africa, precisely as Nigeria's numbers explode, strikes me as a strategic contradiction whose human consequences could come at a very high price.

Conclusion: a figure that must remain an alarm

Refusing to let this report be forgotten

The 79,323 dead and 34,773 abductions documented by this new report are not merely another statistic: they represent a human tragedy of a scale that deserves far greater international attention than it is currently receiving in Western public debate.

This testimony, however modest in the face of the scale of the documented tragedy, aims above all to keep this figure from disappearing into the general indifference that too often accompanies tragedies unfolding far from dominant media priorities.

A call for vigilance that must endure

Vigilance on this issue should not end with the publication of this single report: it must continue in the months and years ahead, as new data does, or does not, confirm a real improvement in Nigeria's security situation.

Without this sustained vigilance, the risk remains that this chilling figure will become, like so many before it, just another statistical line quickly forgotten rather than an alarm that genuinely changed the course of events.

If this piece convinces even a single reader to keep following this story beyond today, it will have already accomplished part of its mission against a media silence I refuse to consider normal.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist for mad-m.ca. On geopolitical matters beyond the Ukraine-Russia and Middle East axes, my acknowledged bias remains pro-Western: I believe the stability of regions like Nigeria matters directly to global security and deserves greater Western attention.

I have never set foot in Nigeria, and I have no personal contact with the victims or Nigerian authorities cited in this testimony. My analysis relies exclusively on documented reports and verifiable journalistic sources.

What I don't know, and my method

I cannot independently verify every figure put forward by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, and I note that some counting methodologies are the subject of debate among different monitoring organizations.

My method consists of cross-referencing several independent reports and journalistic sources, systematically flagging the origin of each cited figure rather than presenting a single number as an indisputable truth.

Sources

Primary sources

79,323 killed, 34,773 abducted in Nigeria in six years – Report — Punch Newspapers, July 1, 2026

World Report 2026: Nigeria — Human Rights Watch

'We want our children back': Nigeria's kidnapping nightmare spreads south — Reuters, June 5, 2026

Secondary sources

Brutal and emboldened: how Nigeria's bandit crisis spun out of control — The Guardian, June 1, 2026

Ruthless Bandits: How Nigeria ignores early warning signs, pays dearly — Vanguard News, January 25, 2026

Nigeria: Significant Gains Against Banditry — allAfrica, January 7, 2026