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A rural community in northwestern Nigeria’s Kebbi State was partially abandoned by its residents this week after receiving a handwritten letter demanding N100 million from local religious leaders, with the armed group threatening to attack and identifying itself as fighters affiliated with Boko Haram, the latest and most direct act of psychological intimidation by militant organisations whose operational expansion across the northwest has already killed more than 200 people in the past three weeks alone.
The letter, dated February 17, 2026, and addressed to the district head of Utono community in Ngaski Local Government Area, was delivered to community leaders in the early hours of Thursday, February 19.
Since its circulation, residents told journalists that fear and uncertainty forced many families to relocate to nearby towns in search of safety. The authors identified themselves as fighters of Jannatul Ahlussunna Lidda’awa wal Jihad, the formal name historically associated with Boko Haram, and described the payment as zakat, the Islamic obligation of charitable giving, perverting the term to reframe extortion as a religious duty. The letter further instructed that wealthy indigenes of Utono living outside the community must be contacted and required to contribute toward meeting the demand, and ordered that the assembled funds be deposited in advance at the district head’s palace.
“This is not a joke. We are coming to preach. You must pay us N100 million. If you refuse, you will face the consequences and have no one to blame but yourselves. Even if you call soldiers, they cannot stop us,” it read. The group cited a previous attack on Woru community in Kiama Local Government Area of Kwara State as evidence of what follows when such warnings are disregarded. That attack, on February 4, was attributed to the Lakurawa group and killed at least 162 civilians, with witnesses describing residents being gathered, bound, and executed while shops were set ablaze, one of the deadliest single incidents of militant violence in Nigeria in recent years.
Governor of Kebbi State, Nasir Idris ordered the reinforcement of security personnel in Utono and surrounding communities and directed the Commissioner of Police to deploy additional officers to the area immediately. No precise security deployment figures were released.
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The demand arrived in the immediate aftermath of one of the deadliest weeks on record in Kebbi’s troubled north. On February 19, suspected Lakurawa militants carried out coordinated attacks across multiple villages in Arewa Local Government Area. The hardest-hit community was Mamunu, where 16 people were killed. Five youths died in Awashaka, three in Masama, and two each in Gorin Dena, Kamzo, Dan Mai Rago, Tungar Bature, and Tungar Tsoho, a combined death toll of 34 civilians killed in a single afternoon of organised village-to-village raiding. Kebbi State police spokesman Bashir Usman confirmed the attacks, saying preliminary investigations indicated the assailants had crossed into the area from Sokoto State. “Preliminary investigations confirm that armed Lakurawa militants entered the area to rustle cattle,” he said, adding that security personnel had been deployed to restore calm.
Two senior security officials who declined to be identified said the militants demonstrated a high level of coordination, arriving in motorcycle convoys and surrounding villages before opening fire. “They clearly conducted prior reconnaissance,” one official said, noting that escape routes were sealed before shooting began. Recovered ammunition fragments, he added, indicated access to foreign weapon supply chains.
The Lakurawa group, whose name and identity are contested across different security sources, with some attributing Thursday’s Arewa attacks to them, while others categorise the Utono letter separately as a Boko Haram-affiliated JAS communication, has emerged as one of the most significant new security threats in Nigeria’s northwest in the past two years. The group initially presented itself as a self-defence force set up to help communities resist bandit attacks when it first emerged in the Gongono Forest of Tangaza, Sokoto State, around 2016 to 2018. It entered Nigeria from Mali. By 2023 it had become a greater threat to many northern communities than the criminals it originally claimed to oppose, raising taxes, attacking security forces, imposing Islamist laws, and killing civilians. Nigerian authorities formally designated it a terrorist group in November 2024.
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Security reports indicate fighters from Niger and Mali have joined its ranks, contributing to cross-border expansion. The Nigerian Air Force has conducted air strikes on suspected camps in the forests of Sokoto and Kebbi in January and February. United States forces conducted strikes in Sokoto State in December 2025 targeting senior Lakurawa figures, which President Donald Trump announced on social media as having targeted “ISIS terrorist scum.” A local official in the Tangaza area said some Lakurawa camps were hit, but the death toll remained unclear.
The scale of violence in the first seven weeks of 2026 has been exceptional even by the grim standards of the northwest’s multi-year security crisis. In late January and early February, Lakurawa launched attacks on border communities in Kebbi State, abducting dozens of students from rural schools in tactics described by analysts as reminiscent of Boko Haram’s early campaign in the northeast. In February, the Kwara State attacks on Woro and Noko killed 162 people. The cumulative death toll from Lakurawa-linked violence in the first two months of 2026 has exceeded 230 confirmed deaths across three states, with hundreds more displaced.
Extortion demands framed as religious taxation, zakat, have historically marked a transition point in the evolution of militant groups from violent actors engaged primarily in raids and kidnapping toward something closer to a parallel administrative authority, capable of imposing financial obligations on communities and enforcing compliance through the credible threat of lethal force. That transition took Boko Haram approximately four years. It appears to be occurring considerably faster in the northwest.
No arrest had been made in connection with the Utono letter as of Sunday. Residents who had fled the community had not returned. Security forces remained deployed in the area.
