The Rape of Ngoshe
The Government Didn’t Just Fail the People. It Engineered their Slaughter.
By Mike Arnold
Ngoshe didn’t fall on March 3, 2026. It was killed in stages — first by Boko Haram, then by a government that lied about it, then by officials who paid survivors to walk back into the kill zone. What happened last week was just the body hitting the floor.
Our team knows this community. We were there a little more than a year ago. We have the footage. And here is exactly what was done to Ngoshe, and by whom.
The First Time
Before any of this, you need to understand what Ngoshe was.
Daniel Simon Hassan, a Middle Belt advocate who knows Gwoza intimately, put it plainly after the massacre: “Ngoshe is a missionary town. Christian missionaries lived and worked there for more than 100 years. Their graves are still there. Before Boko Haram, there was not a single mosque in that town. Today it is almost safe to say there is not a single Christian. The town had one of the best secondary schools in the region — Christian-founded.”
One hundred years of missionaries. Their graves in the ground. No mosque. A flagship school.
That is what Boko Haram came to erase. And the media calls it “insecurity.”
In 2014, they came to Gwoza Local Government Area in Borno State and burned it to the ground. Ngoshe was one of the communities they took. Men strung up. Women who brought food to men hiding in the mountains hunted down, raped, killed. Ms. Hanatu was the school principal. She watched five men hacked to death in front of her. Then she fled barefoot in the dark with her three daughters.
She made it to Cameroon. A nursing mother was shot beside her. The government of Cameroon loaded them into cattle trailers and sent them back. She eventually made it to an IDP camp in Abuja — 500 miles away — where she was told to scrounge materials and build her own shanty.
That was 2014. The Gwoza Christian Community Association documented what happened to the region: 176 churches before the insurgency. 148 burned. One sub-district alone — 74 towns sacked, 36,946 families displaced, 292 killed. 107,000 Christians scattered across 27 camps in 7 states, plus Cameroon. Of the resettlement houses eventually built, three went to Christians. Three.
The black flag went up over Gwoza. It never came down.
Twelve Years in a Tent
For twelve years, the people of Ngoshe lived in camps. New Kuchingoro in Abuja. Minawao in Cameroon. Children were born there who had never seen the village their parents wept over at night. The UN denied some camps existed. The Nigerian government bulldozed others. The world moved on.
Of the refugees in Minawao, Cameroon, 97 Gwoza refugees made it to America. 106 to Canada. 58,000 were left behind.
The Lie That Killed People
On May 30, 2024, George Akume — Secretary to the Federal Government — stood at a book launch celebrating Tinubu’s first year and declared: “The federal government under President Tinubu’s leadership has defeated Boko Haram terrorists.”
Nuhu Ribadu, the incompetent National Security Advisor, celebrated his victory. Mercenary spin doctor and Ribadu’s wanna-be 2032 running mate, Reno Omokri, begged me to nominate Ribadu for the Nobel Peace Prize. I declined.
Two months after Akume’s declaration, our team went to Ngoshe. They traveled with 21 soldiers and 3 gun trucks for the 40 miles from Maiduguri. The road had to be swept for land mines. They found a community in ruins — bullet holes in every standing wall, no electricity, no clean water, Christians living inside a military perimeter with guard towers. The only church, More Than Conquerors Christian Assembly, was built by a military chaplain after the massacres. More than 200 believers packed inside. They had never had an outside visitor.
Boko Haram was not defeated. They were a kilometer away.
We have the footage.
A few months later, the pastor of More Than Conquerors sent a video. Boko Haram recruitment footage, shot in the fall of 2024. Members of that congregation — people our team had just met — were in it. The men were beheaded with dull axes. The women were enslaved. A crowd cheered.
The Cash Scheme
With the “victory” declared, Governor Babagana Zulum went to Minawao — the UN refugee camp in Cameroon — on December 8, 2025, with N500,000 per family. About $310. Come home, he said. It’s safe.
Emmanuel Ogebe, a U.S.-based Nigerian human rights attorney who had visited Minawao in 2014, warned American officials in writing that same month: “Gwoza is still occupied by terrorists. This is a set up for disaster.”
Nobody acted on it.
Starting January 27, 2026 — just 35 days before the attack — the first buses rolled. By the time the repatriation was complete, 3,122 people from 557 households had been brought back to Gwoza. They carried their government cash. They went home to a town that Boko Haram still controlled the perimeter of. They were told it was safe.
Some families had refused the cash. For those who refused — Boko Haram came to them. They attacked Minawao itself. A pregnant woman was killed inside the UN camp wire.
There was no safe place left.
March 3, 2026
At 18:30, Boko Haram and ISWAP hit Ngoshe together. The base they attacked — belonging to the 82 Division Task Force Battalion — had a garrison of more than 200 soldiers. When the terrorists came, most of them ran. Thirty-six stayed.
What happened next was documented by a surviving soldier who spoke to Daily Trust. His account:
“About 10 terrorists surrounded our location and captured four soldiers. I said my last prayer, but as God would have it, none of them saw me. I watched how they slaughtered them like chickens and chopped up their heads and set our operational vehicles and building on fire. When they finally overran the camp, we started running inside the bush, they were shooting at us killing people. An officer was shot in the stomach. He was bleeding and we carried him, but we had to drop him at some point when the fire exchange became intense.”
The base commander — the Brigade commander himself — would not sleep in Ngoshe the last time he visited. He retreated to Pulka. The soldiers had asked for MRAPs and better equipment. The requests were denied. When the General Officer Commanding finally came after the attack, he berated the survivors. Not for losing. For not dying harder.
The soldier who gave that account was last seen looking for a car to take him to Maiduguri so he could catch a bus home. “I am tired of this job,” he said.
Five young men calling themselves members of Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda‘awati wal-Jihad posted a video from inside the central mosque of Ngoshe on March 6 — three days after the attack. Their leader, speaking in Hausa:
“People in this town are saying that we cannot conquer Ngoshe. With the help of God, we have already conquered the town and by the grace of God, we are going to stay in Ngoshe and change its name to a caliphate. We have slaughtered them, abducted their women and children and enslaved them. They are our legal property to use as ordained by God. We will extend the fight and reclaim more places from here to Maiduguri, up to Abuja.”
Abuja. Let that land.
Remember: the missionaries’ graves are in that ground. More than 100 years of them. This is the mosque Boko Haram is praying in while standing on those graves.
More Than Conquerors Christian Assembly — the church our team adopted as a sister congregation, the church whose people they met more than a year ago — was burned to the ground.
The pastor is not answering his phone.
The Nigerian government reported 7 soldiers and 11 civilians dead. The Gwoza District Secretary said more than 300 were abducted. An Associated Press source confirmed it. Survivors say hundreds were killed. Among the dead and taken: people who came home because their government told them it was safe. They arrived January 27. They were massacred March 3.
The rebel base — a known hilltop 10 kilometers east of Ngoshe — was never destroyed. The army knew where it was. They left it standing.
The Cover-Up
Seventy-two hours after the attack, the Nigerian Army had issued no statement. Senator Ali Ndume confirmed the attack and dramatically understated the casualties. Then, on Friday, the presidency finally spoke.
Tinubu’s spokesman called the massacre “a heartless assault on hapless citizens.” Then he commended the military for its “swift response.”
The military that ran. That left four soldiers to be beheaded. That abandoned a wounded officer in the bush. That the Brigade commander himself would not sleep in. Tinubu commended them.
That same evening — March 7, four days after the massacre — Tinubu hosted an interfaith fast-breaking dinner at the State House in Abuja with his service chiefs. He told them: “We will win. Nigeria will prevail.”
That same day, President Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base with the First Lady, the Vice President, and his Cabinet. Six American soldiers had been killed in Operation Epic Fury — an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait on March 1. Trump stood on the tarmac in the cold and saluted every flag-draped casket as it came off the plane. He called it “the toughest thing I have to do” as president. He read their names. He hugged their families.
Six Americans. Hundreds of Nigerians.
One president hugging widows. One celebrating at a dinner.
This is not a new pattern. In November 2025, ISWAP ambushed and executed Brigadier General Musa Uba — commander of the Nigerian Army’s 25th Brigade — in Borno state. The Washington Post covered it. He was the highest-ranking officer killed in the country’s jihadist war since 2021. Tinubu issued condolences through a spokesman.
A general. Ambushed. Executed. A generic statement read by spokesman.
The government reported 7 soldiers and 11 civilians dead at Ngoshe. Survivors say hundreds dead. That gap isn’t a rounding error. That’s a decision.
Then they arrested the man who talked about it.
A young TikTok activist from Gwoza known as KCEE GWOZA reportedly spoke out after the massacre, accusing local leaders of betraying their own people. His words: “All our Gwoza leaders have already sold Gwoza LGA. Why didn’t they tell us they sold it, including us the people living there? See how our brothers and sisters are being massacred. We need justice.”
According to multiple social media accounts, he was reportedly detained by the Nigerian Army — held for close to four days. No formal charges. No police. Just gone. A #FreeKceeGwoza campaign erupted across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X. As of this writing, his status remains unclear.
The massacre wasn’t enough. They had to silence the witness too.
Who Answers For This
Ngoshe was a missionary town. Christians built it, schooled their children in it, buried their dead in it, and worshipped in it for more than a century. Then Boko Haram came, and the Nigerian government did everything in its power to make sure they never got it back.
Ngoshe was attacked in 2014. It was kept in exile for twelve years. It was lured back with cash. And it was finished off on March 3.
That sequence has authors. Tinubu’s spokesman declared victory that wasn’t. Nuhu Ribadu built his reputation on it. Reno Omokri said Ribudu deserved a Nobel Prize for it, and called the genocide a hoax. Babagana Zulum paid people to walk into it. The Nigerian Army left the known base of the attackers intact — denied its soldiers equipment, abandoned its wounded, berated its survivors, and executed a general’s memory with a press release. Tinubu threw a dinner. And someone in authority ordered the arrest of a young man for saying out loud what every survivor already knows.
This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is something nobody saw coming. This was warned, documented, and ignored — by people with names and offices and government salaries.
The demand is simple: TELL THE TRUTH. Account for the dead. Destroy the Boko Hara base. Stop paying people to return to occupied territory. Free KCEE GWOZA. And answer the question that has been sitting on the table since May 30, 2024 — if Boko Haram was defeated, what just happened in Ngoshe?
Rise.
#EarthShaker
Mike Arnold is the author of EPICENTER: Nigeria, Radical Islam, and the War for Global Order (#1 Amazon Bestseller) and founder of Africa Arise International.