Methodology
Sources & Methodology
Provenance tagging system
Every incident, casualty figure, and territorial claim on this site carries a visible tag indicating the type of source behind it:
Government claimNGO / trackerAcademic / researchIndependent journalismMilitant claim — unverifiedSocial media — unverified
Where multiple sources report different figures for the same event, all reported figures are shown side by side — never silently averaged or picked without disclosure.
Inclusion criteria
A recorded incident requires: a specific date (or a disclosed date range/approximation), a specific location resolvable to at least state + LGA, at least one named source with a publish date, and an original-words summary (no verbatim reproduction of source article text).
Registered sources
ACAPS
ACLED
Event-level backbone; not yet wired into automated ingestion.
Adamawa State Government
Official Adamawa State Government website.
Africa Defense Forum
US Africa Command-affiliated defense trade publication.
Airspace Africa
Al Jazeera
International outlet.
Amnesty International
Army Recognition
Blueprint Newspapers
Nigerian daily newspaper.
Budget Office of the Federation (Nigeria)
BudgIT Foundation
BusinessDay Nigeria
Nigerian business/current-affairs newspaper.
Channels Television
Major Nigerian broadcast news outlet.
Council on Foreign Relations
US foreign-policy think tank; publishes analysis and incident writeups, not a live tracker.
CSIS
US think tank.
Daily Post Nigeria
Nigerian digital newspaper.
Daily Trust
Nigerian daily newspaper, strong Northern Nigeria coverage.
Dataphyte
DefenceWeb
Defense Mirror
Defense News
FDD's Long War Journal
Federal Ministry of Defence (Nigeria)
Official Nigerian Ministry of Defence website.
FlightGlobal
France 24
International outlet.
Global Defense Corp
Defense trade press.
Global Upfront
GovConWire
HumAngle
Nigerian outlet specializing in Northeast conflict reporting.
IISS Military Balance
Defence-budget-specific analysis.
Independent Newspaper Nigeria
Nigerian daily newspaper.
Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa)
International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR)
IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM)
UN-affiliated field survey program; periodic 'round' reports, not a continuous feed. Northeast rounds track Boko Haram/ISWAP-driven displacement; separate North-Central/North-West rounds (started later, ~2023) track banditry-driven displacement -- the two series aren't directly comparable in start date or methodology.
Katsina State Government
State-level official statements.
Leadership (Nigeria)
Military Africa
MilitaryLeak
Modern Ghana
Multinational Joint Task Force (official)
Official site of the MNJTF (Benin/Cameroon/Chad/Nigeria military coalition against Boko Haram/ISWAP) -- treated as a government/official-body source, not independent journalism.
National Assembly of Nigeria (via NALTF)
Legislative tracking of federal budget approvals.
Nigerian Air Force (official)
Official Nigerian Air Force website.
Nigerian Army (official)
Official Nigerian Army website.
Nigerian Defence Headquarters
Official military claims.
Nigerian Tribune
Nigerian daily newspaper.
OpenStreetMap / Nominatim (facility geocoding)
Overt Defense
Political Geography Now
Premium Times
Nigerian digital newspaper.
Punch
Major Nigerian daily newspaper.
Quwa
Reuters
International wire service.
Shephard Media
SIPRI Military Expenditure Database
The Aviationist
The Defense Post
The Guardian (Nigeria)
Major Nigerian daily newspaper.
The Nation (Nigeria)
Nigerian daily newspaper.
The Soufan Center
Security research organisation.
The Washington Post
US international outlet.
TheCable
Nigerian digital newspaper.
U.S. News & World Report
US outlet.
UNHCR
Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)
Peer-reviewed academic conflict event dataset. Each row cites the press report(s) its coders used, but UCDP does not republish live article URLs -- the original press citation text is preserved in each incident's citation note instead of a clickable link.
US Africa Command (AFRICOM)
Vanguard
Major Nigerian daily newspaper.
Wikipedia (Nigerian military equipment lists)
Used ONLY for the equipment roster (current fleet composition), by explicit site-owner exception -- Wikipedia aggregates many underlying sources and tracks delivered-vs-ordered status better than any single press article for this specific purpose. Not used as a citation anywhere else on this site. Figures are Wikipedia's own compiled estimates, not independently verified line by line; treat as a reasonable starting point, not an authoritative headcount.
Changelog
Data correction changelog (backed by the data_corrections table) renders here once the admin tooling in Phase 5 is built.