From the Southwest to Taraba, Plateau, Benue and Kaduna, a slow-motion territorial shift is underway.
Stand on the edge of many Nigerian forests today and you are no longer looking at “empty bush.”
You are looking at parallel societies.
They exist:
far beyond the last tarred road in the Southwest,
in the rugged hinterlands of Taraba in the Northeast,
across the valleys and hills of Plateau and Benue in the North-Central,
and deep inside the forests and grazing belts of Southern Kaduna and parts of the Northwest.
In all these zones, a similar picture is emerging:
the people farming the land, building homesteads, controlling the local economy — and, quietly, the territory — are often not the original indigenes of those areas.
They are:
cross-border migrants from neighbouring West African states,
long-settled mobile pastoral groups,
mixed communities whose presence the Nigerian state has neither mapped nor formally recognised.
This is not yet a conventional war.
But it is unquestionably a territorial contest, and one the state is slowly losing.
1. FROM “OUR LAND” TO “THEIR FIELDS”: HOW IT WORKS ON THE GROUND
Travel into the interior of Oyo, Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo, parts of Taraba, Southern Kaduna or rural Plateau and a striking pattern repeats:
The original landowning families are often absent from the fields.
Youths from those communities have left for Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Kaduna, or abroad.
Some elders have begun to sell or lease out family land because no one is left to cultivate it.
The people working those lands full-time, season after season, are migrant farmers and pastoral-linked communities.
Over time, presence becomes claim.
Production becomes power.
And the host community slowly becomes a customer rather than a competitor.
It is not noisy, but it is systematic.
2. NOT RANDOM – A STRUCTURED PATTERN OF SETTLEMENT
Across multiple states, security sources and local testimonies point to a repeatable pattern.
2.1 Selective Pressure on Local Farms
In many forest-edge communities:
Local farms are routinely grazed or destroyed.
Meanwhile, farms established further inside the forest — run by migrant or pastoral communities — are left untouched.
Whether this is deliberate coercion or simply “survival logic,” the effect is the same:
Local farmers lose morale and income.
Some abandon farming entirely.
Others sell or lease off their land.
Once the locals exit, replacement begins.
2.2 Building a Shadow Rural Economy
Inside the forest belts, these communities cultivate:
Tomatoes, onions, peppers and vegetables,
Yam, ginger, and grains,
Most of what they grow goes to local markets and urban belts, often through trusted women in the host communities.
The economic shift follows a consistent script:
Locals become dependent buyers.
The newcomers become essential suppliers.
Market power and price-setting gradually tilt away from the original communities.
With economic leverage comes negotiating power and informal authority.
2.3 Money, Motorcycles, and Reinforcement
Profitable seasons translate quickly into:
Motorcycles,
Mobile phones,
Informal communication and alert networks.
In any rural confrontation:
The average indigene is isolated.
A pastoral or migrant actor can summon 10–50 reinforcements from the bush in minutes.
This asymmetry of backup is one reason why many local communities in Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Benue, Oyo and parts of Taraba avoid direct confrontation, even when provoked.
They are not cowards.
They are outnumbered and out-organised.
2.4 Social Anchoring Through Marriage
In many places, migrants and pastoral settlers eventually:
Marry local women,
Learn the local language,
Have children who are automatically “of the land.”
In one generation, the outsider becomes:
A son-in-law,
A member of the ruling lineage,
A stakeholder in inheritance discussions.
The line between “host” and “settler” blurs.
Given enough time and absence of state structure, new demographics become new landlords.
3. FROM SOUTHWEST TO THE MIDDLE BELT: THIS IS NOT A REGIONAL STORY
It would be dangerously naive to treat this as a “Yoruba land” issue or a purely Southwest debate.
Patterns of quiet territorial shift through settlement and weak governance now appear in:
Southwest: Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti, parts of Osun.
North-Central: Plateau and Benue — already epicentres of farmer–herder violence and displacement.
Northwest: Southern Kaduna and surrounding LGAs.
Northeast fringe: Areas of Taraba with heavy cross-border movement and forest habitation.
In all these areas, three pillars are missing:
1. Effective rural governance
2. Genuine border control
3. Continuous state security presence inside forests
Where the state is absent, whoever can live, plant, trade, and protect themselves writes the narrative on the ground.
4. THE SECURITY DIMENSION: WHEN NORMAL LIFE HIDES HARD THREATS
Most of the people living in these forests are not criminals.
Many are simply poor, displaced, or following seasonal economic opportunity.
But ignoring the security architecture embedded within their networks is suicidal.
Within these unregulated spaces, intelligence sources consistently warn of:
Smuggling corridors moving fuel, drugs, contraband, and cattle,
Arms-trafficking routes feeding into conflict zones,
Kidnapping cells that can disappear into forest communities,
Informal militias capable of quick mobilisation,
Pastoral groups with links stretching into Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and beyond.
Because the Nigerian state has:
not mapped these populations,
not documented their presence,
not regulated their arms, movement or economic activities,
it cannot distinguish:
who is a peaceful farmer,
who is a smuggler,
who is a local ally,
who is a potential insurgent or kidnap cell.
That blindness is the true danger.
5. THE POLITICAL FAILURE: HOW THE STATE BUILT THIS PROBLEM
Several layers of governance failure created the current reality:
State level: Security votes rarely translate into real rural operations. Forests are treated as “too far, too difficult, too expensive.”
Local government level: Most LGAs are offices, not governments. They do almost zero active rural administration.
Federal level:
Border enforcement is extremely weak.
Intelligence and policing in forests are reactive, not proactive.
In many documented clashes over a decade, locals in states like Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Oyo and Taraba alleged a pattern where:
they are the ones arrested,
cases are transferred to Abuja,
and accused pastoral actors walk free quickly.
Whether fully accurate or not, that perception of bias has become entrenched — and dangerous.
It sends the message that:
some actors are “untouchable,”
others have no backing and should back down or move out.
That imbalance distorts local conflict-resolution dynamics and encourages assertive settlement by those who believe the state is behind them.
6. LESSONS FROM ELSEWHERE: AFRICA HAS SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE
Nigeria is not alone. Similar dynamics have played out in:
Northern Ghana – Fulani and local communities clashing around unsecured grazing and farming zones.
Côte d’Ivoire – immigration-driven demographic change reshaping land ownership patterns in key cocoa belts.
Burkina Faso & Mali – pastoral penetration and jihadist infiltration into ungoverned forest and scrub zones.
DRC – foreign and militia-linked communities embedding inside forested mineral areas.
The pattern is consistent:
> When the state retreats, another power fills the vacuum.
When locals abandon land, someone else farms it.
When forests are left ungoverned, armed actors build invisible kingdoms.
Nigeria is now living through its own version of this.
7. WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN — BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE
This is not a crisis that can be solved by social media outrage or one-off military operations. It requires deliberate, structural moves.
7.1 National Forest Census & Residency Audit
Map all significant forest settlements in:
Southwest
North-Central (Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa )
Northwest (Kaduna belt)
NorthEast, Borno, Yobe, Taraba and other hotspot states.
Register residents.
Know who is on Nigerian territory, doing what, and for how long.
7.2 Intelligence-Led Community Security
Combine local hunters, vetted vigilantes, Amotekun and equivalent outfits, and formal security agencies.
Back them with technology: drones, satellite imagery, GPS mapping, and secure communications — not just Dane guns and charms.
7.3 Youth Re-Engagement With Land
If younger indigenes permanently abandon the land, they are conceding terrain and future political relevance.
Targeted incentives for youth-led cooperatives in agriculture.
Land-bank schemes that reward actual cultivation, not speculation.
7.4 Real Border & Internal Movement Control
Enforce register-and-stay mechanisms for long-term foreign residents.
Crack down on armed, undocumented movement, not peaceful labour migration.
7.5 Rational Pastoral Reform
Gradual but firm shift away from open grazing to controlled systems: ranches, grazing reserves with enforcement, and traceable herds.
Registered cattle, identifiable owners, and legal accountability for damage.
7.6 Political Neutrality in Rural Conflicts
Security agencies must treat every group as equal before the law.
No “protected class” in disputes.
Justice must be seen to be done on both sides — or nobody will trust institutions.
● THE REAL MESSAGE: THIS IS NOT ABOUT “US VERSUS THEM”
Nigeria’s danger is not the presence of Fulani, Beninese, Togolese, Nigeriens or any other group as such.
The real danger is:
ungoverned forests,
anonymous populations,
unregulated weapons,
economic displacement,
and political blindness.
Territory is not only lost through war.
It is lost when:
citizens abandon their land,
governments abandon their responsibility,
and quiet settlers become the only functional authority in the bush.
From the forest belts of the Southwest, to the valleys of Plateau and Benue, to the rolling grasslands of Taraba and the fringes of Kaduna, the warning is the same:
> If Nigeria does not move proactively to govern its forests,
the forests will, quietly but firmly, govern Nigeria.
This is the wake-up call.
How we respond — or fail to — will decide who truly controls large parts of this country in 10–20 years’ time.
Dr. G. Fraser. MFR.
The National Patriots Movement.
