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Improvised explosive devices detonated on a road in northeastern Nigeria killing at least 26 people in several vehicles, including women and children, police said Tuesday. An Islamic State group affiliate in the West African country claimed responsibility for the Monday attack.
The blasts happened on a busy road connecting the towns of Rann and Gamboru in Borno state, near the border with Cameroon, Nigerian police spokesperson Nahum Daso told The Associated Press. Multiple explosives planted along the route ripped into several civilian commercial vehicles coming from Rann, killing at least 26 people, he said.
Most of those killed were local farmers and traders crowded in a Toyota pick up van that drove over a land mine, Daso said. He said the mine was buried by suspected militants from the Islamic State affiliate known as IS West Africa Province. Besides the dead, at least three people were injured and were taken to nearby medical facilities for treatment. Security forces have since secured the area and begun clearance operations.
Abba Modu, a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a vigilante group that supports the military in the fight against Islamic militants, said the explosives may have been intended for security operatives who regularly patrol the highway. “Terrorists often plant IEDs in craters or under sand on severely damaged sections of roads, typically targeting soldiers,” Modu said.
The Islamic State West Africa Province, also known as ISWAP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Telegram on Tuesday. The IS-linked group is an offshoot of Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis who took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. In 2016, ISWAP broke away from Boko Haram following a dispute over leadership and the strategy of attacking civilian targets such as mosques and marketplaces. The conflict between Nigeria and Islamic extremists is Africa’s longest struggle with militancy.
It has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbours Chad, Niger and Cameroon, and has left some 35,000 civilians dead and more than 2 million displaced, according to the U.N. Nigeria’s northeastern region has been particularly hard hit by Islamic militant violence. Earlier this month, a roadside bomb suspected to have been planted by Islamic extremists in northeastern Nigeria struck a passenger bus and killed eight people. On Tuesday, the Nigerian military appointed a new commander, Maj. Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, in the fight against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province insurgencies in the northeast, the spokesperson for the operation said in a statement.

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Farmers in Nigeria are finding it increasingly difficult to get enough water for their crops. Riverbeds have started to run dry leading some to have no choice but to pump for groundwater. The finger is pointed firmly at climate change, with conservationists warning that food could become scarce if measures are not urgently put in place to help the farmers irrigate their land. STORYLINE: The ground is cracked and dry – once a lake and a river had been here.
These are the conditions for farmers in Nigeria and many believe climate change is to blame. After two decades of working his farm in north-western Nigeria, and struggling to find water for his crops, Nasiru Bello has no other option but to resort to pumping groundwater. A muddy puddle is all that remains of a river that had provided water for his over five-hectare farm and those of others in the Kwalkwalawa community in arid Sokoto state. “All these things are a result of climate change, because in the previous years we didn’t know the dryness of rivers like that but now due to climate change they are dry.
Surely, all the people around there, some of them counted the loss some years back when the rivers dried because they don’t have any means of irrigation apart from the river,” says Bello. He continues to plant his leeks in the dry earth. “I am facing a lot of difficulties because I’m not using the river,” he says. “It’s a well and sometimes you can dig a well but it dries up while you’re using it. You have to dig another one and to dig another is not easy because you have to spend money on any well that you are going to dig. And you don’t have the money to charge generators (to power the well) every year, you will be managing the ones you have until you get the money to buy another one. If you don’t, you will continue to manage it.”
Climate change is challenging agriculture in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. The decisions of farmers in the north, which accounts for about 70 per cent of Nigeria’s agriculture, are already affecting food prices and availability in the booming coastal south that’s home to the city of Lagos (with an estimated population of over 21 million people). Farmers say once-reliable water bodies are drying up.
And they have few resources to draw on. More than 80% of Nigeria’s farmers are smallholder farmers, who account for 90% of the country’s annual agricultural production. Some work their fields with little more than a piece of roughly carved wood and their bare hands. Maize, Nigeria’s largest cereal crop, saw a decline in cultivated land from 6.2 million hectares in 2021 to 5.8 million hectares in 2022, according to AFEX, a licensed private commodities exchange.
For years, Nigerians and others have taken note of the dramatic example of Lake Chad in the country’s northeast. It has shrunk by about 90%. There is little data available on the drying-up of other, smaller water bodies across the north. But farmers say the trend has been worsening. Elsewhere in Sokoto state, Umoru Muazu is tilling his farm to cultivate various crops without the certainty of a meaningful harvest. He says: “The year we started, we had enough water but now there is no water. Therefore, we have to dig a well in order to get water to continue to irrigate, except in the rainy season.
In the rainy season, we get water, but not now since the water withdrew, and before it didn’t dry as early as this, but now it does. We must dig a well to complete our work.” Nigeria is forecast to become the world’s third most populous nation by 2050, alongside the United States and after India and China. Experts are warning about the impacts of decreasing crop yields.
Dr. Isa Yusuf-Sokoto is an environmentalist from Sokoto’s Umaru Ali Shinkafi Polytechnic, he says: “The drying of rivers, lakes, streams in recent decades is associated to climate change that has come to stay. This is coupled with the precarious nature of Sokoto State being semi-arid region whereby desertification and other related climatic problems have been bedeviling the area. So this is why we’re battling with drought, which is the farmers are now complaining.”
Dr Yusuf-Sokoto explains how studies have shown that two-thirds of the trees across Sokoto are now gone, which contributes to rising temperatures. “If there is no intervention to farmers and this intervention has to be an emergency one,” he says. “There will virtually be a crisis, food crisis will occur, water crisis will also come up, and even health crisis can come up because all these are sons and daughters that could be given birth by climate change crisis.”
The decreasing farm yields are being felt elsewhere in Nigeria, especially in the south. Data from the government-run statistics agency show that local agriculture contributed 22% of Nigeria’s GDP in the second quarter of 2024, down from 25% in the previous quarter, while food imports reached their highest in five years.
With Nigeria’s population expected to reach 400 million by 2050, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been encouraging climate-smart agriculture to help ensure food security. Nigeria’s government has directed agricultural research institutes to develop solutions. That couldn’t come soon enough – for now farmers like Bello and Muazu continue to try cultivating in dry earth.

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South African authorities say they will continue with legal proceedings against Nigerian televangelist Timothy Omotoso who was acquitted of rape last month, even though he has left the country.
Mr Omotoso, who denied the 32 charges against him, was accused of sexually assaulting young women from his church in Port Elizabeth.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) says it will still appeal against the judgement which found Mr Omotoso not guilty, saying his presence is not required.
South Africa's Department of Home Affairs said Mr Omotoso had flown to Nigeria from OR Tambo International Airport, where he was filmed by public broadcaster SABC wearing a hoodie and dark sunglasses.
Mr Omotoso was first arrested in 2017 as he attempted to leave South Africa.
Among his accusers was a woman who said she was raped by the pastor when she was aged 14.
In a statement, South African prosecutors accepted "there are no legal grounds to prevent" Mr Omotoso from leaving the country following his acquittal.
However, if the appeal were allowed, the authorities would apply for Mr Omotoso to be extradited back to South Africa, the statement added, highlighting South Africa's "bilateral extradition treaty with Nigeria".
After his acquittal in April, Mr Omotoso also faced immigration issues, with the Department of Home Affairs alleging earlier this month that he was in South Africa illegally.
On Sunday, the department issued a statement saying that Mr Omotoso had been classified as an "undesirable person", meaning he will not be able to return to the country for five years.
South Africa's public broadcaster reports that the pastor left the country voluntarily.
The BBC has contacted the NPA for clarity on how any potential extradition process could work given Mr Omotoso's status as an "undesirable person".
Mr Omotoso leads the Jesus Dominion International church which has branches in the UK, Nigeria, France and Israel as well as in many parts of South Africa, according to its website.
Mr Omotoso's trial made South African history as the first high-profile rape case to be broadcast live.
Additional reporting from Khanyisile Ngcobo in Johannesburg
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
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