Woro was not an accident: How neglect turned Borgu into a killing field, By Hussaini Abdu

I remember one of my trips to Kaiama with a group of friends a few years ago, at the early stages of the Boko Haram crisis. As we drove through the vast Borgu Game Reserve, endless forests, deep isolation, and historically bad roads, a troubling thought crossed my mind: if Boko Haram ever reached this place, it would easily make it a home. The terrain, the remoteness, and the thin presence of the state created exactly the conditions in which insurgent groups flourish. At the time, it felt like an abstract fear. After the massacre at Kasuwar Dare, Borno Local Government, and now Woro, it feels disturbingly real.

For more than six hours, from about 5:30 p.m. to midnight, armed groups descended on the rural community of Woro in Kaiama Local Government Area, sparing no one in sight. Children, women, the elderly, and young men were killed indiscriminately. Even unsuspecting travellers navigating the notoriously bad road, many of them heading to a nearby rural market, were caught in the violence. Local accounts report that the attackers arrived on more than seventy motorcycles. They reportedly called Maghrib prayers and then commenced a coordinated massacre. Houses were set ablaze, explosives were planted along the road, and ambush positions were prepared in anticipation of any rescue or security intervention. This attack was clearly not spontaneous. It bore the unmistakable hallmarks of prior planning and coordination, carried out with deliberate intent to inflict maximum harm, and it did so with devastating and tragic effect.

Preliminary local estimates suggest that close to two hundred people may have been killed. In the immediate aftermath, some victims were buried in mass graves under the pressure of fear, trauma, and the sheer scale of the killings. Even now, bodies are still being recovered, picked from scattered locations across surrounding farmlands, footpaths, and forested areas.

This development is not new. Pockets of violence have been unfolding across this axis for almost a decade, largely beneath the national radar. A few years ago, the district head of Gbere/Wawa, less than twenty kilometres from Woro, was kidnapped and held in captivity for over three months. At another point, Boko Haram attempted to attack the military barracks in Wawa, reportedly in a bid to free detained militants. Over the years, there have been repeated killings and attacks across Kemanji, Karonzi, Yashikira, and the Babanna axis. These incidents were early warnings. Yet we live in a country that reacts only to spectacular violence and analyses episodes rather than the slow accumulation of risk. The signs were there. Woro was foreseeable; it was predictable. And once again, we failed to act in time.

Only moments ago, I spoke with Comrade Chom Bagu, who described how the massacre reverberated far beyond Woro itself. He noted that people from Ganawuri in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State were among those affected. Many from Ganawuri, he explained, have long been farming in the Woro axis, part of a wider pattern of seasonal and semi-permanent migration in search of arable land in Kaiama Local Government. While I was aware of the presence of Tiv and Idoma farming communities in the area, I had not realised that Atten people were also settled there.

This detail reveals the multi-ethnic and migrant character of Borgu’s rural economy and the breadth of the devastation at Woro. This was not an attack on a single community alone, but an assault on a fragile social landscape made up of indigenous residents, migrant farmers, and travellers bound together by neglect and exposure. By any measure, the killings at Woro rank among the worst massacres in recent years, not only for their brutality, but for the chilling ease with which they were carried out.

We can deploy every available security analysis, but doing so will miss the core of the problem. What has unfolding the larger Borgu is not merely a security failure. It is the outcome of a long, cumulative failure of governance. For those of us who study violent conflict and work on prevention and response, the warning signs are unmistakable. Borgu, in Kwara, Niger, and Kebbi States, fits the pattern all too clearly. The entire region, particularly the Kwara axis, ranks among the most neglected parts of Nigeria in terms of road infrastructure, state presence, and public investment. This neglect was significantly deepened after 1991, when half of the old Borgu Local Government Area was excised and merged into Niger State. This led to a huge institutional and community fragmentation. Responsibility became diffused, coordination weakened, and intercommunal ties were strained as Borgu was scattered across three states. Over time, the region slipped further into the margins of the country.

Nearly all the major roads cutting across this vast territory are designated as federal roads, effectively placing them beyond the practical reach of state governments and local authorities. The consequence is paralysis. Roads are left to decay, emergency response times lengthen, security operations slow to a crawl, and entire communities are left dangerously exposed. In this region, distance is no longer measured in kilometres but in hours, vulnerability, and risk. Woro, the epicentre of the recent massacre, lies less than forty kilometres from Kaiama, the Local Government headquarters in Kwara State, and roughly thirty kilometres from New Bussa, the headquarters of Borgu Local Government in Niger State. Yet these short distances translate into journeys of at least two hours from both ends due to the catastrophic condition of the roads.

The Kaiama–Wawa/New Bussa road was last paved, badly, if I must say in 1987. Within three years, it had already failed. Since then, it has endured more than three decades of abandonment. In 2018, the federal government awarded a contract for its reconstruction to Gilmor. What was meant to be a four-year project has now dragged on for eight years. By most accounts, only about 10 kilometres out of just 67 kilometres were completed before the contractor abandoned the site, reportedly due to funding constraints. For the last four years, the road and the people who depend on it have remained in limbo.

Yet roads alone do not explain the massacre at Woro. To understand what happened, we must also abandon the lazy habit of lumping all violence in Nigeria into a single category. Disaggregating violent groups is not one of our strengths; too often, it’s one-size-fits-all. In reality, the Borgu Game Reserve and its surrounding communities host a complex constellation of armed actors, Islamist insurgents, bandit groups, and varying formations with overlapping but distinct objectives. The Mahmuda group, frequently mentioned in recent reports, is only one among several. Others, including Lakurawa, Ansaru, and lesser-known factions, have operated in this zone for years. Some use Borgu as a transit corridor, others as a sanctuary, and still others as a recruitment and settlement zone. Some of these groups have been present for close to a decade, long enough to move beyond hit-and-run attacks and begin embedding themselves socially and economically.

The geography of this part of Nigeria makes this possible. The old Borgu Local Government Area is geographically larger than any single state in present-day Nigeria; the region remains one of the most sparsely populated areas in the country, with an estimated population density of about fifteen persons per square kilometre. Vast forests, game reserves, porous boundaries, and weak administrative oversight combine to create ideal conditions for concealment, mobility, and insulation from state surveillance. Through coercion, religious messaging, economic inducement, and the manipulation of local grievances, some of these groups have succeeded in recruiting a few locals, particularly from neighbouring communities in Niger state.

As tragic as Woro is, it demands more than condemnation and official visits. It demands a national reckoning with how development failure becomes a security threat, and how roads can be important security infrastructure. Until Borgu is treated not as a distant periphery but as a strategic heartland requiring sustained development, coordinated governance, and long-term security investment, Woro will not be the last name Nigeria is forced to mourn.

In the immediate term, Nigeria must make more effective use of existing security assets in the area, including the military barracks in Wawa, less than thirty kilometres from Woro, and the Air Force base in New Bussa. These facilities should not exist in isolation from unfolding threats in their immediate hinterlands. Better coordination, rapid deployment capacity, and intelligence-led operations are essential if such installations are to serve their intended deterrent and protective functions.

Beyond this, security operations must increasingly rely on air support, surveillance, and modern monitoring technologies to track the movement of armed groups across difficult terrain and forested corridors. The geography of Borgu makes purely ground-based responses slow and ineffective. Nigeria must urgently revisit its policies on wildlife conservation and forest reserves. What were once protected ecological spaces have, through neglect and poor regulation, become sanctuaries for armed groups. Conservation cannot be pursued in isolation from security realities. Without a framework that integrates environmental protection with territorial control and community safety, forest reserves will continue serve as spaces governed and exploited by violent actors.

Hussaini Abdu is an Abuja-based international development and humanitarian specialist.