Conflict areas

Military satellites over Nigeria

On 21 October 2026, working military satellites of 22 countries were predicted to pass over the places in Nigeria where UCDP recorded fighting this year: 566 passes by 415 satellites. China's made the most: 288 passes by 196 satellites. A country's satellites over itself are not counted.

UCDP recorded 3,435 deaths (best estimate) in 525 events of state-based armed conflict in Nigeria between 1 January 2026 and 1 September 2026.

Passes by country, 21 October 2026

predicted

How often each country's working military satellites pass over the fighting in Nigeria in the UTC day, for how many minutes in all, and by how many satellites. Arrows: the last 7 days against the 7 before, shown from 10% when new, moved or stopped satellites are behind it, or from 35% otherwise.

The fighting, from UCDP

1 January 2026 to 10 September 2026

The state-based armed conflicts UCDP recorded deaths in Nigeria this year, with when each began from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (to 2025). Conflicts that began later aren't in that list yet.

ConflictDeathsSince
Nigeria: Islamic State
Internationalised internal		1,56215 March 2015
this round since 22 March 2015
Nigeria: Government
Internationalised internal		19415 January 1966
this round since 1 March 2011
Nigeria: Biafra
Internal		276 July 1967
this round since 24 April 2021
Cameroon: Government
Internationalised internal		2631 January 1960
this round since 4 August 2022
Benin: Government
Internal		09 February 2020
this round since 12 October 2022
Niger: Islamic State
Internationalised internal		026 March 2015
this round since 30 March 2015

Other conflict areas

by passes

Passes and clusters: predicted by overhead24 for each minute of the day from Space-Track.org orbital elements, counting a pass when the point beneath a satellite is in or next to a 0.5° cell where UCDP recorded a death this year. Military satellites and their countries: GCAT by Jonathan McDowell (CC BY 4.0). Fighting: the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset (CC BY 4.0). Hegre, Håvard, Mihai Croicu, Kristine Eck and Stina Högbladh (2020), "Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset", Research & Politics. UCDP is part of and funded by DEMSCORE, national research infrastructure grant 2021-00162 from the Swedish Research Council. Conflict start dates: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset 26.1. Davies, Shawn, Therése Pettersson and Magnus Öberg (2026), "Organized violence 1989–2025, and violent political protests", Journal of Peace Research, doi:10.1093/jopres/xjag046; Gleditsch, Nils Petter, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg and Håvard Strand (2002), "Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset", Journal of Peace Research 39(5). See military satellites by country and how overhead24 works.