North-East recorded nearly 2,000 IED incidents in seven years — Report

The North-East region of Nigeria recorded 1,934 improvised explosive device incidents between 2017 and 2024, with road-emplaced devices accounting for the dominant share of attacks throughout the period, a new report has shown.

The 2025 Nigeria Mine Action review, obtained on Wednesday, reveals that road IEDs remained the most persistent threat across all seven years, consistently outnumbering body-borne and vehicle-borne incidents.

The data shows 2017 as the peak year, with 381 incidents — comprising 165 road-emplaced IEDs, 211 body-borne devices, four vehicle-borne explosives and one other device. The figure dropped to 267 in 2018 and further to 189 in 2019 before rising again to 249 in 2020 and 281 in 2021.

The trend reversed in 2022, when incidents fell to 185, with no body-borne IED recorded for the year. Figures stabilised at 191 in both 2023 and 2024, with road IEDs continuing to dominate — accounting for 161 and 174 incidents respectively in those years.

Explosive remnants of war featured prominently from 2019 onwards, reflecting the lingering danger of unexploded ordnance across the conflict-affected zone.

The Coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre, Maj. Gen. Adamu Laka, underscored the evolving nature of the threat at a Counter-IED workshop held in Abuja on March 11, 2026.

“From 2011 to 2017, I saw how the use of IEDs in the North-East evolved — from wire control and telephone control to pressure plates,” he said. “Each time one method of activating an IED was addressed, the insurgents found new ways to improve how they detonated it.”

He described how insurgents adapted to military countermeasures by placing secondary devices beneath pressure plates, ensuring detonation even when troops attempted to extract the primary device.

“I can tell you that the effect is devastating. To this day, Nigeria is still facing this threat,” Laka said.

Security analysts have long warned that insurgent groups operating in the North-East and North-West continue to refine their IED tactics, posing grave risks to troops, civilians and critical infrastructure.