TERRORISMKachallas and Kinship: Understanding Jihadi Expansion and Diffusion in Nigeria

By James Barnett and Umar Musa*

Abstract: The multiplication and diffusion of jihadi networks within Nigeria is an important component of the broader spread of jihadi violence from the Sahel into coastal West Africa, a trend that has caused significant international concern. Yet, an understanding of the factors that facilitate or impede jihadi expansion in Nigeria, and Africa more broadly, remains limited and often unnuanced. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with non-state actors, the authors analyze how different jihadi groups, including various factions of Nigeria’s “Boko Haram” insurgency as well as so-called “Lakurawa” militants from neighboring Niger, have each attempted to expand into northwestern, central, and southern Nigeria over the past five years. In detailing these efforts, some failed and others successful, two key trends are identified. First, jihadis tend to expand into regions that are impacted by banditry (which is rampant in rural Nigeria) yet simultaneously not dominated by any overly powerful bandit leaders. The authors dub this the “Goldilocks effect” to reflect how jihadis seek areas with an ‘optimal’ level of banditry so that they can reap certain benefits from bandits without risking confrontation with powerful warlords. Second, jihadis try to expand in areas where the commanders have existing social or religious ties, and these ties are typically more important for gaining new recruits than appeals to factional affiliation per se. The authors demonstrate this through a case study of Kogi state in central Nigeria, where both Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Ansaru (an al-Qa`ida-aligned faction) have recruited from the same local religious networks.

In November 2024 and April 2025, respectively, Nigerian and international media reported with consternation the emergence of two new terrorist groups operating in the country’s northwestern and north-central states,^a known as “Lakurawa”¹ and the “Mahmuda group,”² respectively. Neither of the groups were exactly “new,” however. Lakurawa—a local Hausa term for militants from neighboring Sahel states—had been making incursions into communities in Nigeria’s Sokoto state near the Nigerien border since late 2017, while the group led by “Mallam Mahmuda” had operated in central Nigeria near the border with Benin since approximately 2020. Indeed, when Nigerian authorities arrested Mahmuda in August 2025, marking one of the country’s biggest counterterrorism successes in recent years, the country’s national security advisor linked Mahmuda to Ansaru, an early al-Qa`ida-aligned splinter faction of Boko Haram, and said that he had been active in various groups, Nigerian and foreign, for over a decade.³