Key Points

• Residents in Nasarawa’s Keana, Obi and Doma councils identify specific forest corridors and abandoned railway tracks that armed groups use to move into Benue State.
• Kogi Governor Ahmed Ododo confirms bandit leaders displaced by military operations in Zamfara and Katsina have relocated into Kogi’s forests.
• More than 14,318 people from Kadarko and surrounding communities are now displaced, sleeping in schools, churches and marketplaces.

Chief Denen Gbongbon does not mince words when describing what he has watched unfold in his community over the past several years.

“They come in, and we see them with our eyes,” said Gbongbon, president of the United Farmers Association in Kadarko, Keana Local Government Area of Nasarawa State. “Sometimes they carry arms openly. Sometimes they come with cattle. At other times, they ride Bajaj motorcycles, three persons per bike.”

The routes, he said, are not hidden. Everybody knows them.

His account is part of a growing body of testimony from residents of boundary communities in Nasarawa State and neighbouring Kogi that is painting a disturbing picture: a web of forest paths, abandoned railway corridors and temporary camps that armed groups appear to be using with little interference to move, attack and regroup across Nigeria’s North-Central states.

The corridors, as locals describe them

According to Gbongbon, the areas of Obi, Keana and Doma local government councils in Nasarawa have served as transit points and staging grounds for years. He described a route that begins at Barkin Coaltar, cuts through Torkura and leads directly into Benue State.

The Akala forest in Obi LGA, which he said connects to Keana, functions as a major encampment area.

“They camp in Akala forest,” he said. “From there, they connect through Akeleku Sidi, Akaba, Ahume. All these communities are in Obi LGA, and there are contiguous bushes linking Kadarko where they also have camps.”

He described an additional pathway following a valley behind Agyragu, with an abandoned railway corridor serving as a key conduit. Armed groups, he said, pass between Ude and Yelwata along old rail tracks before fanning out into Benue.

“They follow the rail tracks into the Benue axis and begin to expand from there,” Gbongbon said.

Farmers in the area regularly report sightings to community leaders, who pass the information to security agencies. Gbongbon said the response has been consistently inadequate.

“It appears security is not ready to follow up,” he said. “Government is fully aware. We have written severally to the Nasarawa State Government, to the local governments, to the governor himself and to every security architecture, including the media. So how can the government pretend not to be aware?”

He added that if authorities engaged directly with community leaders, they would be willing to lead operatives to specific locations.

“If they invite us, we will come and show them everywhere,” he said.

Accusations of complicity by traditional rulers

Gbongbon leveled serious allegations against some local chiefs in boundary communities, saying the crisis partly traces to land dealings that opened the door to armed groups.

“Some Alago chiefs were accused of harbouring these people,” he alleged. “They sold land to them, land that belongs to Tiv and some Eggon farmers. After settling, they brought militias to protect the land. That is how the criminal elements came in.”

He also alleged that some chiefs have been tipping off the armed groups when security operatives are deployed. “They don’t take them to the exact location where these bandits are camped. Instead, they tip them off to go undercover,” Gbongbon claimed.

He cited the arrest of an Ardo in Kadarko in connection with killings in Yelwata in June 2025. He said more than 26 AK-47 rifles were reportedly recovered at the suspect’s camp and questioned whether the traditional rulers who appointed him had conducted any background checks.

Efforts to reach the accused traditional rulers for comment were unsuccessful before publication.

14,000 displaced, and nowhere to go

The human cost in the area around Kadarko is stark. Gbongbon said 14,318 people from surrounding communities are now registered internally displaced persons.

“If you go there now, you won’t find inhabitants. Only bandits are occupying the area,” he said.

People are sleeping in churches, marketplaces and grain stores. Some are housed in the Kadarko North Primary School compound. During the day, when market activity picks up, the displaced scatter and return at night to sleep wherever they can find space.

Sampson Akaa of Umaraye village in Keana LGA described the moment he realized the danger had not passed. His community had been told it was safe to return from the IDP camp on Jan. 26. They went home. Some residents went to the river to fish.

“My wife was the first person attacked by suspected herdsmen,” Akaa said. “Four persons were killed and one is still missing. We thought peace had returned. We didn’t know danger was still there.”

Kogi: A forest refuge for the displaced and the dangerous

What is happening in Nasarawa’s border areas does not exist in isolation. In Kogi State, authorities are grappling with a parallel problem: bandits pushed out of Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna by military offensives are finding new sanctuary in Kogi’s thick forest belts.

Kogi Governor Ahmed Ododo acknowledged the situation directly during a security briefing, saying certain bandit leaders had relocated into the state’s forests.

“We will take the fight to them in their hideouts. We will not wait for them to attack us,” he said.

Kogi Commissioner for Information Kingsley Fanwo described the dynamic in blunt terms. Intensified military operations in neighbouring states are pushing armed groups toward Kogi’s border communities, specifically through the Kwara and Niger axes into the Bassa and Anyigba areas. He called it a “hibernation cycle” in which gangs attack elsewhere and then retreat into Kogi’s forests to rest and regroup.

Security forces have launched joint air and ground operations across Kabba-Bunu, Yagba and Lokoja local government areas. Suspected collaborators accused of supplying food and logistics to armed groups have been arrested, and weapons have reportedly been recovered. In Lokoja LGA, the entire community of Ogbabon was evacuated to allow security operations to proceed.

Still, kidnappings along major corridors such as the Kabba-Lokoja road have continued to disrupt commerce and schooling. Markets in parts of Kogi West have been shut down. Schools were temporarily closed.

A regional problem without a regional solution

Security analysts who have studied the North-Central crisis say the forests linking Nasarawa, Benue, Kogi, Niger and Kwara states form an interconnected belt that armed groups have learned to exploit systematically. Sustained military pressure in one state without coordinated operations across the others, they argue, simply relocates the threat rather than dismantling it.

The point is not lost on Gbongbon, who has spent years writing letters, attending meetings and passing intelligence to authorities with little apparent result.

“We are tired,” he said. “We just want our people to go back to their farms and live without fear.”