Report: Chinese, Indian Nationals Most Targeted in Nigeria’s Rising Attacks on Expats
Foreign nationals working in Nigeria have faced a steady rise in targeted attacks over the last seven years, with Chinese and Indian workers recording the highest fatalities. This is according to new visual data from SBM Intelligence covering incidents between 2019 and 2025.
The infographic titled “Expat Targets: Attacks on foreign nationals in Nigeria, 2019–2025” shows that Chinese nationals accounted for 36 fatalities, the highest among all expatriate groups tracked.
They are followed by Indians with eight deaths, Lebanese with four, and Ghanaian nationals with four. Americans, British, Thai, South Korean and North Korean nationals also appear in the dataset, though with significantly lower counts.
SBM Intelligence’s contextual note, included within the graphic, states: “Recent attacks on foreign nationals in Nigeria… show that expatriates are specifically targeted, with Chinese and Indian nationals suffering the highest fatality rates. This trend, linked to separatist and criminal militant activity, poses a significant risk to international businesses and calls for tailored risk mitigation strategies.”
A breakdown of incident frequency shows fluctuating but persistent violence. Nigeria recorded seven attacks in 2019, rising sharply to 14 in 2020. The number dropped to 12 incidents in both 2021 and 2024, with lower counts recorded in 2022 and 2023. Fatalities followed a similar pattern: five deaths in 2019, seven in 2020, four in 2021, zero in 2023, before climbing to six in 2024 and 10 already recorded in 2025.
The data points to a recurring pattern in which expatriates—particularly those working in construction, extractives, manufacturing and infrastructure development—face elevated risks in regions marked by militant activity, kidnapping-for-ransom networks and separatist disruptions.
The circular visualisation in the SBM report shows that Chinese workers represent the largest segment of recorded fatalities, taking up more than half of the chart’s distribution.
Indian nationals follow as the second-largest group, while others appear in smaller slices that reflect comparatively fewer incidents.
While the security challenges affecting Nigerians remain broader and more severe in scale, the data indicates that foreign nationals are increasingly selected as high-value targets, especially in remote work locations and transit routes associated with industrial and infrastructure projects.
With 2025 already exceeding the total fatalities recorded in most previous years, the trend underscores a worsening risk environment for foreign businesses operating in Nigeria and highlights the need for more specialised protection protocols.
