| A look at ambushes on Nigerian security forces by insurgent groups between 2019 and 2025. Nigeria’s frontlines have quietly become kill zones, where soldiers and security personnel are routinely outmanoeuvred by enemies who know the terrain, study their patterns, and exploit their vulnerabilities. The data in this report documents a sustained campaign of ambushes against Nigerian forces between 2019 and 2025 and what it reveals about the country’s wider security crisis. We have recorded 1,007 fatalities from ambushes in this period, including 454 soldiers, 329 other security personnel such as police, CJTF, NSCDC and vigilantes, and 224 insurgents. Military deaths peaked in 2020 with 174 fatalities, coinciding with intensified operations by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Fatalities declined after 2021, but renewed ISWAP activity from early 2025 indicates a return to its earlier operational tempo and exposes weaknesses in Nigeria’s counter-terror strategy. Geographically, the violence is concentrated in the Northeast and Northwest, with Borno accounting for more than 60 percent of recorded ambushes as ISWAP consolidates its presence in the state and the Lake Chad basin. In the Northwest, escalating banditry since 2020 has turned Zamfara into an epicentre of violence and Katsina into a major hotspot, while parts of Niger, Benue and Kogi in the Northcentral, and isolated incidents in Abia, Delta, Imo and Rivers, illustrate a widening theatre of conflict. |
