FORESTS, FORTUNE, AND POWER: THE DARK POLITICAL ECONOMY OF VIOLENCE, EXPLOITATION AND INSECURITY IN NIGERIA
Across Nigeria, the intersection of forests, fortune, and power has evolved into a shadow political economy where violence, criminal enterprise, and institutional weakness reinforce one another. Forests—once symbols of cultural heritage, biodiversity, and livelihood—have increasingly become theatres of kidnapping, banditry, and organised crime. This transformation is not accidental. It reflects how geography, poverty, governance failures, and profit incentives converge to create zones of impunity.
Nigeria’s security leadership has openly acknowledged the strategic role forests play in sustaining criminal operations. The Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, admitted that vast forest cover, weak intelligence penetration, and poor surveillance make it difficult for security forces to track and dismantle kidnapping networks operating deep within woodland areas. His remarks followed multiple mass abductions in Kaduna and the northwest, where armed groups exploited forest routes to evade capture (Reuters, March 25, 2024: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigeria-defence-chief-says-bad-intel-hinders-fight-kidnappings-2024-03-25/).
Kidnapping-for-ransom has consequently matured into a commercial enterprise. Reuters data and Nigerian security briefings indicate dozens of mass abductions annually, with forests serving as detention camps, negotiation centres, and execution grounds. In early 2024 alone, at least 68 mass abductions were recorded nationwide, underscoring how violence has become routinised and monetised (Reuters, 2024).
In response, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a national security emergency, ordering mass recruitment into the police and armed forces and approving the deployment of forest guards to reclaim ungoverned spaces. The President stated that Nigeria’s forests must no longer provide “hiding places for agents of evil,” acknowledging the territorial dimension of insecurity (Reuters, Nov. 26, 2025: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigerias-tinubu-declares-security-emergency-orders-mass-recruitment-police-army-2025-11-26/).
Alongside kidnapping, allegations of organ trafficking and ritual violence have intensified public fear. While not all claims withstand scrutiny, some cases are firmly documented. In the United Kingdom, a Nigerian senator, Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, and a doctor were convicted in 2023 under the UK Modern Slavery Act for trafficking a Nigerian man for kidney harvesting—one of the clearest legal confirmations of Nigerian-linked organ trafficking networks (The Guardian, Nov. 24, 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/24/uk-rejects-nigerian-request-to-deport-former-politican-ike-ekweremadu-jailed-for-organ-trafficking).
Within Nigeria, police investigations have uncovered disturbing evidence. In 2025, Imo State Police sealed a hotel and mortuary after discovering over 100 decomposing bodies, some with missing organs, prompting an ongoing investigation into a suspected organ-harvesting syndicate (The Independent, April 2025: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/africa/nigeria-imo-hotel-organs-kidnap-police-b2880035.html). While such cases confirm the existence of organ trafficking, international bodies such as the World Health Organization caution against conflating verified crimes with folklore-driven narratives that can inflame panic without evidence.
Ritual violence, too, occupies a historical and psychological space in Nigeria’s insecurity discourse. The 1996 Otokoto Riots in Owerri, sparked by the ritual killing of a young boy, remain a grim reminder of how belief systems, criminality, and political neglect can erupt into social breakdown (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Otokoto_Riots). Forests, because of their symbolic association with secrecy and mysticism, are frequently implicated in these narratives.
The repeated abduction of schoolchildren illustrates the human cost of this political economy. In Kebbi State in 2025, armed groups abducted students and staff from a boarding school, using forest paths to frustrate rescue operations. Since 2014, more than 1,500 students have been kidnapped in Nigeria, according to Associated Press reporting (AP News: https://apnews.com/article/9d288758bf1a57f3390c962f0a68596b). Each incident reinforces the perception that forests represent both physical and institutional abandonment.
Civil society and hybrid security responses have emerged to counter these threats. Groups such as the Nigerian Hunter and Forest Security Service (NHFSS) operate alongside formal agencies to provide local intelligence in hard-to-reach areas (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Hunter_%26_Forest_Security_Service). Anti-trafficking organisations like the Network Against Corruption and Trafficking (NACAT) work with law enforcement to expose criminal networks and protect vulnerable populations (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Against_Corruption_and_Trafficking).
Yet insecurity is sustained not only by guns and forests but by narratives. In the absence of transparent investigations and timely communication, rumours of ritual killings and organ harvesting spread faster than verified facts. Africa Check and other fact-checking organisations have repeatedly warned that misinformation amplifies fear, undermines trust in institutions, and sometimes shields real perpetrators behind myth (Africa Check, 2024).
Ultimately, the crisis reflects deeper structural failures. Poverty, unemployment, corruption, and weak judicial enforcement create fertile ground for criminal economies. Forests become operational bases not because of superstition but because governance thins out where the state retreats.
Nigeria’s challenge, therefore, is not merely to militarise forests but to reassert state capacity through intelligence, accountability, development, and credible justice. As global experience shows, violence thrives where profit meets impunity. Until forests are reclaimed as spaces of lawful economic and ecological value, they will continue to serve as theatres for exploitation in Nigeria’s dark political economy.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
