Footage from Nasarawa on Friday showed women, children and elderly residents walking out in long lines after fresh armed attacks, while witnesses said the true displacement figure is far higher than official accounts.
Nasarawa’s latest security collapse is no longer a rumour from the bush. It is on camera. The footage obtained on Friday shows long columns of fleeing villagers. Many carried babies, bags, and whatever they could salvage. They trekked along rural roads after fresh armed attacks.
One witness said the displaced were “more than 6,000 or 7,000”. This differs from the smaller number being circulated. The witness lamented that the families were leaving everything behind.
The chilling part is not only the scale. It is the pattern. Residents and local leaders have been warning for weeks. Armed groups move through forest corridors linking Nasarawa to Benue. They use known routes, makeshift camps, and even an abandoned railway line to strike and disappear.
Vanguard reported that communities in Obi, Keana and Doma have long been used as transit routes and temporary camps. BusinessDay quoted residents saying the routes are not hidden. The attackers are seen moving openly.
That is why the displacement figure matters. BusinessDay quoted a farmers’ leader who claimed 14,318 registered IDPs from the affected communities alone. The same report indicated that local residents had written repeatedly to government and security authorities without enough follow-through.
ACAPS, in a November 2025 thematic report, said the North Central humanitarian crisis has been driven by long-running farmer-herder tensions.
It is also affected by spillover from armed groups, weak governance, and minimal or absent state presence in many rural LGAs. Nasarawa is among the states most affected since 2013.
The Nasarawa crisis is also bleeding into the Abuja corridor. On 25 March 2026, Premium Times reported that three people were killed and several others injured in violence in the Aso A area of Maraba Gurku, Karu LGA, after a dispute escalated into reprisal attacks.
The report said police later confirmed arrests. They reinforced the area. This underlined how fragile the security picture remains around the state capital’s outskirts.
For the government, the challenge is twofold. It must stop the raids and explain why so many rural communities continue to be abandoned with little visible protection.
The state has previously denied allegations that it harbours criminal elements, but that defence sounds thin against repeated eyewitness accounts of armed men operating across boundary communities and residents fleeing in broad daylight.
If the roads are open to the attackers, the state is already losing ground.
What is emerging in Nasarawa is bigger than one attack. It is a corridor of fear. The corridor stretches across the North Central belt. Civilians are being pushed off farms. They are being forced off roads and eventually off their land.
Until security forces establish a visible, sustained presence along the forest belts and border communities, the exodus will continue. Every new village emptied on foot will look like a warning ignored too late.
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