‘Life Has Never Been This Hard’: Women Uprooted by Violence and Terrorism in Northern Nigeria

On the evening of May 10, 2026, Jennifer Christopher had just returned from her farm in Adunu, a village in Nigeria’s Niger State, when gunfire broke through the quiet of a drizzling evening.

“It was about 7 p.m. when I heard sporadic gunshots,” Christopher, 24, told More to Her Story. Panic spread quickly through the community as residents fled toward the surrounding bush. Exhausted from a day of farm work, she ran with them.

Christopher spent hours making her way through the dark, dense bush before reaching Kafi Koro, a nearby town where she found shelter. The attack upended the livelihood she had built during four years in Adunu, where she had supported herself through farming.

In Kafi Koro, Christopher stayed with an aunt for a month. Her aunt fed and housed her, but Christopher said she was troubled by her inability to contribute to the household. She began selling wara, a local food made from soybeans, to earn what she could.

“Life has never been this hard for me until the bandits came,” she said.

When Christopher eventually returned to Adunu, much of what she had relied on for her livelihood was gone. The terrorists had taken farm produce and stolen the family’s cattle, she said. The violence also left her afraid to return to the fields.

“Going to the farm again scared me a lot,” she said.

Christopher was forced to rebuild from almost nothing. She borrowed money to start again, a debt she has yet to repay.

Her experience reflects a broader crisis across northern Nigeria, where nearly two decades of terrorism and armed violence have displaced millions and uprooted women and girls from their homes and livelihoods. 

Northern Nigeria has been gripped by overlapping forms of violence for years. In the northeast, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram launched an insurgency in 2009, attacking civilians, schools and government forces in an effort to impose its interpretation of Islamic rule. The movement later split in 2016, giving rise to the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, which remains active in the region. Farther west, particularly in states such as Zamfara, Katsina and Niger, loosely organized armed groups known as bandits have carried out mass kidnappings, village raids, cattle theft and extortion. Today, these groups continue to launch attacks that empty entire villages and communities, forcing people to flee.

For women displaced by violence, the loss of a home can also mean the loss of the farmland, livestock, businesses and informal networks on which their economic security depends. At the same time, many continue to shoulder responsibility for feeding and caring for their families.

For Martha Abraham, a mother of three, memories of the May 10, 2026 terror attack remain fresh.

“I was preparing dinner for my family, not knowing what was happening outside until my neighbor alerted me that the bandits had arrived,” Abraham said. She and her family fled, taking shelter on a nearby farm.

Abraham and her family spent the entire night lying on the ground, gripped by fear and enduring mosquito bites. The next morning, she trekked with her children to Kafi Koro in search of safety. Kafi Koro has become a refuge for residents of neighboring communities, in part because of the military presence there.

In Kafi Koro, Abraham stayed with a friend while struggling to provide for her family. “My husband and I had to sacrifice food for the children,” she said.

As the financial pressure mounted, Abraham took a job at a restaurant earning ₦10,000, roughly $7.50. The income was barely enough to meet her own needs, let alone those of her family.

For women like Abraham, displacement can mean losing not only a home, but also income, community ties and the sense of security that comes with them.

Abraham continued working at the restaurant for two months before returning to Adunu. But the fear left by the attack has kept her from returning to the distant farmland she once cultivated for income. She now relies on subsistence farming, which she says is not enough to cover her family’s expenses.

An estimated 3.7 million people are internally displaced across northern Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration and Nigerian authorities. More than 470,000 Nigerians have also sought refuge in neighboring Niger, Cameroon and Chad, according to the UN refugee agency.

Between June 1 and 14, 2026, terrorist attacks forced 1,560 people from their homes in communities in Katsina State and another 468 in Zamfara State, according to IOM displacement tracking data.

The abduction of schoolgirls has become a recurring reality in northern Nigeria. On April 14, 2014, nearly 300 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, in an attack that drew international attention.

Four years later, on February 19, 2018, 110 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State. In February 2021, gunmen abducted 279 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Jangebe, Zamfara State.

The attacks have continued. In November 2025, 25 schoolgirls were abducted from a school in Maga, Kebbi State, according to Human Rights Watch.

Schoolchildren, especially girls, have been deeply affected by Boko Haram’s campaign against Western education. Attacks on schools and mass abductions have forced closures and disrupted learning across parts of northern Nigeria, leaving many girls vulnerable to abduction, recruitment and other forms of exploitation by armed and terrorist groups.

“Girls who become disconnected from their education due to security issues don't return to school,” Stacy Kemp Ferrari, Attorney and Founder of Kemp Law Group, told More to Her Story.

Women and girls in northern Nigeria face not only displacement, but also a heightened risk of human rights abuses, including forced and child marriage, sexual violence and killings.

A June 2024 Amnesty International report documented cases in which girls abducted by Boko Haram were forced into marriages with the terrorists. Nigeria’s Child Rights Act of 2003 sets 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

“For girls, once married, displaced or forced into labor, access to education closes,” said Dr. Kwasi Konadu, a scholar of African history whose research has focused extensively on West Africa and the experiences of African women. “Some of the girls became pregnant or gave birth while in captivity, complicating their eventual return to their families and communities.”

Dr. Konadu added that the growing concern is that women and girls are increasingly being used as instruments of war, as forced wives for Boko Haram fighters, human shields, suicide bombers, spies, informants, and bargaining pieces in ransom negotiations.

Joshua Charles, founder and CEO of Frontier Dominion, said terrorist groups frequently use sexual violence, forced displacement and existing social vulnerabilities as tools to instill fear and exert control over women and girls.

Medical and psychological care are critical, added Charles. “When these services are unavailable, survivors face devastating long-term consequences, including high risk of HIV infection, unsought pregnancies, severe physical complications, and persistent social stigma that can entrench lifelong trauma,” he said.

The growth of kidnapping for ransom has placed intense financial pressure on the families of abductees, who are often forced to raise large sums to secure their release. In some cases, ransom payments are made without the abductees being released to their families. Between May 2023 and April 2024, Nigerians paid an estimated ₦2.23 trillion, equivalent to about $2.1 billion, in ransom. The amount exceeded Nigeria’s 2024 national education budget of ₦2.18 trillion. Kidnapping victims paid an average ransom of ₦2.67 million.

Another important source of income for terrorist groups is taxation, imposed through levies on farmers, livestock owners and fishers. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a splinter group of Boko Haram operating in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, also imposes taxes on communities under its influence. The group earns an estimated $191 million a year through such taxation, according to The New Humanitarian — roughly 10 times the tax revenue generated by the Borno State government. These forms of extortion remain a reliable source of financing for armed groups.

Ferrari said that legal systems often fail to protect survivors of gender-based violence even in stable environments, and that those protections can weaken further or disappear entirely in conflict settings. Without functioning legal systems, she said, perpetrators are less likely to be held accountable, allowing violence against women and girls to continue.

In 2024, U.N. Women found that gender-based violence had reached “severe or extreme levels” in 22 of 25 countries experiencing humanitarian crises.

Research published in the Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies in 2024 highlighted the vulnerability of millions of displaced women and girls to sexual assaults at internally displaced camps, denial of access to reproductive healthcare, and increased child marriage.

The displaced women and girls, forced from their homes and disconnected from their families, can no longer return due to fear and widespread destruction.