What is OpenWatch

OpenWatch is Nigeria’s open-source security intelligence platform.

It monitors hundreds of open sources across the country and turns the noise into a verified, mapped, searchable record of every security incident, from kidnappings and banditry to terrorism and unrest, updated in real time.

29,000+
Verified incidents
2009
Records reach back to
30+
Tracked sources
36+1
States + FCT covered
What it is

Open sources, turned into ground truth.

OpenWatch is an open-source intelligence (OSINT) platform focused entirely on Nigerian security. Open-source intelligence means intelligence built from information that is already public: news reports, official statements, and verified social posts. The hard part is not finding it, it is separating the signal from the noise, at scale, fast enough to matter.

That is the work OpenWatch does. It reads the flood of open reporting on Nigerian security, verifies what actually happened, and turns it into a single record of incidents that is mapped, timestamped, and searchable. The result is local security intelligence you can act on, without the wait of an analyst report or the price of a global feed.

How it works

From open source to verified incident.

Every incident on the map runs through the same open-source intelligence pipeline, from raw report to a scored, geolocated record.

  1. 01

    Monitor open sources

    OpenWatch continuously watches hundreds of open sources: Nigerian news outlets, official government and security feeds, and verified social accounts. This is the raw material of open-source intelligence, gathered the moment it is published.

  2. 02

    Extract verified incidents

    AI reads every report and pulls out the security incidents that matter, what happened, where, when, and who was affected, discarding rumour, opinion, and noise in the process.

  3. 03

    Deduplicate the record

    The same event is often reported by a dozen outlets. OpenWatch collapses those duplicates into a single incident, so one attack is counted once, not twelve times.

  4. 04

    Geolocate to the place

    Each incident is resolved to the exact town, road, or landmark the report named, then plotted on the live map, so risk sits at street level rather than smeared across a whole state.

  5. 05

    Confidence-score every one

    Every incident carries a confidence score and a traceable link back to its sources, so you can weigh each record and check the reporting for yourself.

What it covers

Every threat, across the whole country.

OpenWatch tracks over 29,000 verified incidents, with records reaching back to 2009, drawn from more than 30 tracked sources across all 36 states and the FCT. See how the risk breaks down state by state on the State Risk Index.

Kidnapping

Abductions for ransom and mass kidnappings.

Banditry

Armed raids on villages, farms, and highways.

Terrorism

Insurgent attacks, bombings, and armed assaults.

Armed robbery

Highway, home, and commercial robberies.

Communal violence

Farmer-herder and inter-community clashes.

Unrest

Protests, riots, and civil disturbances.

Who it’s for

The people who carry the risk.

Logistics & fleet operators

Know what is on the route and around the depot before a truck rolls.

Real estate & land

Due-diligence any parcel or site with incident history plus live monitoring.

Private security firms

Power your service with verified local data and resell it under your brand.

NGOs & humanitarian

Duty-of-care alerting for field teams at a fraction of the global tools.

Journalists & analysts

Verify and break Nigerian security stories against a searchable record.

Anyone moving people or goods

See the security picture across Nigeria before you go, not after.

Why it’s credible

Built on the largest verified open-source security record in Nigeria.

Credibility in security intelligence comes down to one thing: can you trace it. Every incident in OpenWatch is sourced, timestamped, and confidence-scored, with a link back to the open reporting it came from. Nothing is asserted that you cannot check.

That record, tens of thousands of verified incidents spanning more than a decade and every state in Nigeria, is what makes OpenWatch useful. Not a single alert, but the full, queryable picture of where and how risk moves across the country.

See the record for yourself.