Following one of the worst massacres committed in Nigeria in recent months, President Bola Tinubu announced on Wednesday night the deployment of an Army battalion to Kwara state, and accused "Boko Haram terrorists" of having killed dozens of "defenseless villagers."

First modification: 02/05/2026 - 07:21

The president of Nigeria ordered the deployment of the Army to an area in the center-west of the country where an attack left at least 162 dead on Tuesday, and accused Boko Haram jihadists of being responsible, as reported on Wednesday, February 4.

Armed men stormed the village of Woro, in Kwara state, and "according to the latest reports, the death toll now stands at 162, while the search for other bodies continues," said Babaomo Ayodeji, secretary of the Kwara branch of the Nigerian Red Cross. This is one of the worst massacres in the country in several months.

In response, President Bola Tinubu "ordered the deployment of an Army battalion to Kaiama constituency, Kwara State, where Boko Haram terrorists killed defenseless villagers in Woro overnight," in a "cowardly and brutal" attack, according to a presidential statement released Wednesday night.

Multifactorial insecurity

For his part, the state governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, reported 75 deaths in a video released by the local government spokesperson and stated that Woro “refused to submit to a provocative Islamic doctrine.”

Along the same lines, President Bola Tinubu praised the community and noted that, despite being majority Muslim, it refused to adhere to an extremist belief that promoted violence instead of peace and dialogue.

On Wednesday morning, Sa'idu Baba Ahmed, a member of the local assembly, told AFP that bandits set fire to shops and the town's royal palace. “At this moment we do not know where the king is,” he lamented. The police confirmed the attack, but did not give an assessment at the moment.

Kwara State suffers from multifactorial insecurity, between armed gangs (locally known as bandits) that loot villages, kidnap and terrorize inhabitants, and a growing jihadist threat, with groups active in the northwest of the country expanding their radius of action towards the south.

The Al Qaeda-affiliated Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM) claimed in October to have carried out its first attack on Nigerian soil in this state, very close to Woro.

curfews

Faced with insecurity, local authorities imposed curfews in some areas and closed schools for several weeks, before ordering their reopening on Monday.

Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq considers that the massacre is a "cowardly expression of the frustration of the terrorist cells after the campaigns" carried out by the security forces.

A few days ago, the Nigerian Army announced that it had "neutralized" "terrorists" (about 150, according to local media) in the forests of Kwara, adding that they were bandits, but without specifying whether they were captured or killed.

In another attack carried out on Tuesday in the state of Katsina (northern), criminals killed 23 civilians, according to a report prepared for the UN and consulted by AFP. This would be retaliation for recent military operations in the region, according to the Army.

Nigeria, the most populous country and main oil producer in Africa, has faced since 2009 a jihadist insurgency in the northeast led by Boko Haram and its rival, the Islamic State in West Africa, while armed criminal groups operate in the northwest and the central-north, to which local jihadist movements such as Lakurawa and Mahmuda have joined.

Investigators recently established a link between some members of Lakurawa – the main jihadist group based in Sokoto state (northern) – and the Islamic State in the Sahel (EISS), active in neighboring Niger. Kwara State is not Boko Haram's usual stomping grounds.

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