By Rekpene Bassey
Nigeria’s security crisis is no longer confined to battlefields in the northeast or crime-ridden highways in the northwest and the North Central. It is unfolding in forests. Forests everywhere.
Across the country, vast stretches of green belts and woodland originally designated for conservation, national parks, agriculture and environmental protection have evolved into sanctuaries for armed groups involved in terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, illegal mining, logging, and other organised criminal activities.
From the remnants of the Sambisa Forest in Borno State to the sprawling Kamuku, Kuyanbana and Rugu forest complexes of the northwest, and from the forests surrounding Niger State to the fringes of the Federal Capital Territory, down to the dense rainforests of Cross River, these spaces have increasingly become zones where the Nigerian state exercises only limited authority.
The transformation has been gradual but profound. Forest reserves, once viewed as ecological assets, are now central to the geography of insecurity.
Nigeria possesses more than 1,100 gazetted forest reserves and several national parks. Many are poorly monitored, lightly governed and sparsely populated. Over time, they have provided armed groups with what modern insurgencies and criminal enterprises require most: concealment, mobility and distance from state governance and surveillance.
As military operations intensified against terrorist and bandit groups in parts of the northwest and northeast, many fighters simply relocated rather than disappeared. Security analysts describe a pattern of displacement rather than elimination. Pressure in one area frequently pushes armed actors into another, where forests offer refuge and opportunities to regroup.
The result is a security ecosystem in which violence has become increasingly decentralised.
President Bola Tinubu recently stated that security forces had neutralised approximately 13,000 terrorists within the past year and that terrorism-related deaths had declined significantly compared with a decade ago.
Those gains are substantial and should therefore not be discounted. However, the persistence of insecurity in rural communities suggests that the challenge has evolved rather than ended, casting doubt on the President’s statement.
The forests have become the connective tissue of that evolution. In parts of Borno State, farmers report paying levies to insurgent groups before cultivating land.
In sections of Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto States, bandit groups have imposed restrictions on farming, collected taxes and exercised forms of authority that ordinarily belong to government institutions. In some communities, residents encounter armed groups more frequently than state officials.
The implications extend beyond security. Agricultural production has been disrupted across large swaths of rural Nigeria. Schools have closed. Villages have been abandoned. Transportation corridors have become vulnerable to ambushes and kidnappings.
Local economies have contracted as residents flee areas perceived to be under the influence of armed groups.
At the centre of the problem lies a convergence of three structural weaknesses.
The first is geography. Nigeria’s forests provide natural defensive advantages for non-state actors. Dense vegetation limits visibility, complicates surveillance and allows fighters to disperse quickly after attacks. Security forces often find themselves conducting operations in difficult terrain against opponents who possess intimate local knowledge.
The second is the country’s extensive and porous borders. Stretching thousands of kilometres across difficult terrain, Nigeria’s frontiers with Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin remain challenging to monitor comprehensively.
Security experts have long warned that these routes facilitate the movement of weapons, fighters and illicit goods. Armed groups increasingly exploit the overlap between remote border regions and forested areas, creating corridors that enable mobility and complicate enforcement efforts.
The third is the gradual erosion of state presence in many rural communities. Where government institutions are weak, armed groups often fill the vacuum. They impose taxes, regulate movement, settle disputes and exercise coercive authority. What begins as insecurity can eventually evolve into a parallel system of governance.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply one of military force. It is a question of territorial control. For decades, forest reserves have largely been treated as environmental assets.
Increasingly, however, they must also be viewed through a national security lens. Areas such as Sambisa, Kamuku, Rugu, Kuyanbana, Alawa, Falgore, and Cross River National Park have acquired strategic significance comparable to that of traditional conflict zones.
The federal government’s proposal to establish and deploy 130,000 armed forest guards represents a recognition of this reality. If effectively implemented, such a force could strengthen state presence in vulnerable areas and improve intelligence gathering. But recruitment alone will not be sufficient.
Forest security must be integrated with technology, local intelligence networks and sustained economic recovery programs. Communities displaced by violence require incentives to return to farming.
Border surveillance must be modernised through the use of drones, sensors and real-time intelligence sharing with neighbouring countries. Criminal financiers and kidnapping sponsors must face more consistent investigation and prosecution.
Most importantly, security operations must be accompanied by governance. History suggests that military victories are rarely durable when governments fail to establish lasting administrative authority over contested spaces.
The ultimate measure of success is not the number of militants killed or arrested. It is whether farmers can safely cultivate their land, children can attend school, and communities can live without fear.
Nigeria’s forests are no longer merely environmental reserves. They have become strategic terrain in a struggle over sovereignty itself.
The country’s future security may depend less on what happens in its cities than on whether the state can re-establish authority beneath the forest canopy.
For years, the forests, our green belts, have served as refuges for those challenging the authority of the Nigerian state. The central question now is whether they can once again become spaces governed by law rather than fear and/or remain green belts and borders of blood. The answer may determine Nigeria’s security trajectory for a generation.
*Rekpene Bassey is the President of the African Council on Narcotics and a Security Specialist.
