By Malik SAMUEL

On Friday, February 6, when Lakurawa fighters visited seven villages in Kebbe Local Government Area (LGA) of Sokoto state, it was a stark contrast to a month earlier when the group ran helter-skelter, facing an existential threat following the U.S. 2025 Christmas Day bombing. The Kebbe trip targeted villages that the group had hitherto not extended its influence over.

For Dando Sibu, the group’s northwest Nigeria head, and his team that trip was a follow-up to earlier messages sent notifying the communities of the group’s intention to visit.

The Kebbe visit marked a remarkable recovery and regrouping for a group that a month earlier was only prevented from leaving Nigeria for Niger Republic by a resolute blockade of routes by Nigerian security forces. It also shows how resilient jihadi and violent extremist groups are, especially when responses to the threats they pose are sporadic, reactionary and not consistent.

As of February 1, this year, residents of Gidan Madi and Magoho communities in Tangaza local government areas of Sokoto State reported the presence of Lakurawa fighters. While local vigilante in Gidan Madi were able to repel their arrival twice, the group managed to kidnap once person. In Magoho, the group faced less resistance, prompting fighters to establish a sort of permanent presence there. A source reported an encounter with them in the community.

“They asked a community leader that I was walking with who I was and why I was there. Before we arrived at the location where they were seated, I had told the community, in case they asked, to tell them that I was there as part of efforts to bring infrastructure to local communities. I was there for an assessment. ‘So, he’s an engineer’, they said and we said yes”, the source explained.

As more communities in the northwest report the resurgent presence of fighters, Lakurawa appears to have weathered the storm wrought by the temporary U.S. pressure, that resulted in the deaths of over 150 fighters.

 Nigeria’s least understood terrorist group

For years, the popular narrative has been that Lakurawa arrived in Nigeria around 2018 on the invitation of community leaders to protect them from bandits. This narrative has been widely shared by both researchers, journalists, government officials and the international community. The same has been said of the group’s affiliations, with many claiming the group is an extension of the Islamic State Sahel Province, an argument that seems to have gained international acceptance, especially as the U.S. airstrike in Sokoto, which hit the group’s camp, claimed to have been aimed at Islamic State fighters.

Another school of thought posits that that Lakurawa is linked to the al-Qaeda affiliate, JNIM. This lack of consensus about its affiliation has also fuelled the speculation that the group may not be singularly aligned to any specific jihadi group, as it may be comprised of fighters from different jihadi sects.

It is understandable to see where the arguments and confusion come from – there has not been much research specifically dedicated to unravelling what exactly Lakurawa is.

Pending research report by this author reveals that Lakurawa’s presence in Nigeria predates 2018 and goes back more than a decade, with the sect’s journey to Sokoto beginning from Mali to Borno through Lake Chad and then to Niger and Kebbi states. While in Borno, the group teamed up with Boko Haram under late Abubakar Shekau. By the time it arrived Kebbi in 2017, community leaders in Sokoto had invited people from Niger Republic to protect their communities from rampaging bandits crossing over from neighbouring Zamfara. Lakurawa’s appearance in Sokoto in late 2018 coincided with the presence of these other men from Niger Republic tasked with the protection of communities.

From interviews with Lakurawa members, community members and leaders, including four of the nine community leaders that took the decision to hire gunmen from Niger Republic, Lakurawa is Al-Qaeda linked and is different from those invited from Niger to protect communities. The community leaders insisted that they knew every one of the 100 men they invited  because these men, paid a monthly stipend of N30,000 by the communities, lived within, from where they went on daily patrols to the forests to take on bandits.

Problems arose between the communities and their armed protectors when the men started robbing community members, rustling their livestock and harassing people. The major problem, however, was when they started disrupting marriage proposals because the women they were interested in were already engaged to other men, with some on the verge of getting married.

In Gidan Madi, one of the eight communities the men were deployed to, one of them met a girl and said he liked her. She turned him down, saying she was already engaged and close to getting married. On the day of the wedding, they came and disrupted the ceremony. While the community tried to resolve the problem, the groom was traced to his rice farm and killed. This completely broke the relationship between the community and the men.

The decision was taken by the same community leaders that invited them to disengage their services and to ask them to leave. This was around 2018. The men moved into the forest, from where they attacked communities. It was around this time that Lakurawa arrived Sokoto from Kebbi State.

How Lakurawa drew attention of security forces

The group’s presence in Nigeria had largely been under the radar, particularly in Sokoto, because they did not attack communities. Their arrival coincided with communities in Tangaza and Gudu falling out with the men they hired from Niger Republic, who had turned around to perpetuate the same problem they were recruited to curb. When Lakurawa members arrived in communities, it was first to preach about jihad.

To get the people’s buy-in, they promised to protect them from attackers. Lakurawa fighters went after these armed men, endearing itself to the communities. Sometimes, they would capture these men in the forest, bring them to the communities and kill them in the presence of community members. So, when Lakurawa asked for Zakat from the communities, people gladly obliged because in addition to being mandated in Islam, the people saw Lakurawa as a group that was keen to propagate Islam through jihad and the implementation of Sharia.

It shied away from attacking communities, focussing on attacking bandits, security forces and the armed men hired from Niger Republic by the communities. This explains why communities tolerated the group when it exerted some control on people’s lifestyle – how to dress, how to use mobile phones, what traders could sell, etc.

This control soon turned into outright criminality, where people were forcefully dispossessed of their belongings, especially livestock. The group moved from collecting zakat to outright seizures of properties. Those who resisted were subjected to punishment, including abductions and killing. Gradually, attacks became indiscriminate, with whole communities targeted by fighters for being uncooperative. Consequently, the Nigerian military in November 2024 announced the presence of a “new terrorist group” in Northwest Nigeria. By January 2025, the Nigerian government had designated Lakurawa a terrorist organisation.

Despite the official acknowledgement of the presence of Lakurawa, there was no real sustained efforts from the government to deal with the challenge the group posed, as focus was more on the rampaging banditry. Most of the efforts against Lakurawa had come from community security actors popularly called Yan Sakai.

However, with the abduction of the Deputy Speaker of the Kebbi State House of Assembly on 31 October and the 21 November Papiri abduction of more than 250 students and teachers in Niger state, the Nigerian military ramped up operations targeting group’s camps in Sokoto and Niger states. While the Kebbi State Deputy Speaker was abducted by Lakurawa, the Papiri school abduction was carried out by the Sadiku-led Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad faction of Boko Haram. Some of the students were, however, kept in Lakurawa’s Borgu camp in the state, which further exposed the group’s presence in the state to security forces.

How many Lakurawa fighters have been killed?

Based on tracking of the group, including information from sources around it, Lakurawa has suffered serious casualties in the last three months, from December 2025 to February 2026.

As part of efforts to locate the students and also deal with violent actors that have dominated Niger State, security forces on December 3, 2025 attacked Lakurawa’s camp in Borgu, resulting in the death of 46 fighters and forcing the group’s Nigeria head, Amir Tajudeen, to flee to the neighbouring Ngaski forest in Kebbi State. A week later, from December 9 to 10, vigilante members in Birnin Yauri killed 11 fighters in one of the most successful attacks by local vigilantes.

Around this period, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Christian genocide narrative and threat of military action in Nigeria had created global headlines, bringing back debates about the effectiveness of U.S. interventions in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. On December 25, 2025, the U.S., and later the Nigerian government, announced that it had carried out strikes targeting ‘Islamic State’ fighters in Sokoto. Trump’s justification of the strike as an effort to protect Nigerian Christians was ironic, given that not only is Sokoto state overwhelmingly Muslim, but both the perpetrators of violence and their victims in Northwest Nigeria are overwhelmingly Muslims.

Leaving the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a group known to openly targeting and calling for the targeting of Christians as part of its campaign in the northeast of Nigeria and the Lake Chad, to target a group un-affiliated with the Islamic State in a different region was a clear case of mis categorisation of conflict or violent actors.

Nevertheless, the U.S. strikes proved successful, with group sources claiming more than 150 fighters were killed as a result of the strikes.

The impact of the strikes was such that Lakurawa considered fleeing from Nigeria, through Niger Republic to Chad. The attention that followed the strikes, including the deployment of Nigerian security forces in different communities in Sokoto state, made this attempted escape a difficulty. From January 2 to 17, 2026, security forces killed 55 Lakurawa fighters during this failed escape. The attacks against this foiled escape took place in different communities in Sabon Birni local government area of Sokoto State.

What next for the fight against Lakurawa?

There appears to have been some quiet in the offensive against Lakurawa, as the group has continued to regroup, reinforce its ranks with the recruitment of bandits, expand its predatory reach against civilians and foster its warped governance on communities.

Lakurawa received reinforcements from Mali in early January this year, brought by the group founder, Amir Habib Tajje. In the same vein, more than 200 bandits from Katsina were successfully recruited to the group in February through a local resident in Gidan Madi, Sokoto state. To mitigate future losses, Lakurawa has opened another camp in Gudu Forest, still in Sokoto State. This is to avoid the concentration of fighters in a single camp, as shown by the impact of the U.S. strike. The Gudu camp is headed by Isa Bello, popularly called Abu Yazid, a trusted lieutenant of Dando Sibu, the group’s northwest Nigeria head. Sibu heads the Tangaza forest camp.

The fight against terrorism has now largely shifted to the northeast, where ISWAP and JAS continue to wreak havoc. Since Gen Christopher Musa assumed office as defence minister, the Nigerian military has conducted strategically focused attacks against ISWAP, typified by the successful overrunning and destruction of the group’s camps within the famed Alagarno forest, otherwise called Timbuktu. The Timbuktu operation, led by the popular Special Force commander, Col Ishaya Aliyu Manga, gave Nigerians a peek into the barbarity, yet, ingenuity of ISWAP, with pictures and videos emerging showing underground storage facilities and detention centres entirely made up of iron.

As focus is redirected towards the northeast, authorities must not lose sight of the northwest and northcentral, with the latter likely to become the most dangerous region, given the possibility of connecting the north and south with insecurity. With Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the Sahel al-Qaeda-linked group now operating in northcentral Nigeria, it is only a matter of time before it operationally links up with Lakurawa, given their ties to al-Qaeda.

Malik Samuel is a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa-Nigeria. Before joining GGA, he was a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, specialising in the Boko Haram conflict in the Lake Chad Basin Region.