Nigeria’s internally displaced persons rise to eight million

IDPs

Nigeria carries the highest number of internally displaced persons in West Africa, hosting roughly 8.18 million IDPs.

This is according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees June 2025 situation report obtained by Sunday PUNCH.

Nigeria’s IDP count surpasses the combined numbers for its four Sahelian neighbours—Burkina Faso’s 3.58 million, Niger’s 2.06 million, Mali’s 931,000 and Cameroon’s 1.42 million.

The country accounts for the region’s most populous nation with about 44 per cent of all persons displaced within their own borders.

The UNHCR report aggregates monthly returns from national emergency agencies. These include the International Organisation for Migration’s displacement-tracking matrix and partner NGOs operating across 14 West African states.

According to the commission, Nigeria’s eight million IDPs excludes nomads in transit and unregistered city migrants, both considered large but unquantified shadows in the country’s humanitarian profile.

Nigeria’s displaced population has ballooned since 2014, when Boko Haram attacks first desolated villages in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

Over a decade later, the same insurgency, now splintered into rival factions, collides with banditry in Zamfara and Katsina, farmer–herder clashes in Benue and Plateau, and oil-bunkering violence in parts of the Delta.

These overlapping crises, the reports say, have pushed fresh waves of families into informal host communities rather than purpose-built camps, complicating aid delivery and leaving many outside formal statistics.

Across the wider Sahel, the drivers of the displacements are similar; jihadist offensives in Burkina Faso’s northern provinces, Islamic State expansion along Niger’s Tillabéri corridor, and livestock conflicts in Mali’s Mopti region.