Old Oyo National Park: The Security Warnings Nigeria Ignored Before the Crisis Exploded
I had my own personal encounter with the realities surrounding Old Oyo National Park sometime in 2025 while scouting locations for a Nollywood film production. Long before the recent wave of kidnappings, attacks, and security operations dominating headlines, there were already visible signs that the situation around the park was becoming increasingly dangerous.
What many people fail to understand is that Old Oyo National Park falls under the control and management of the Federal Government through the National Park Service, not the Oyo State Government. While that does not completely absolve Governor Seyi Makinde and other state authorities from responsibility regarding security coordination, it is important to place accountability where it constitutionally belongs.
The truth is simple: the warning signs have been there for a long time.
Since mid-2025, the security situation around Old Oyo National Park has deteriorated from what was once largely a conservation challenge involving poaching, illegal logging, and grazing disputes into a full-scale security concern involving armed bandits, kidnappers, organized criminal networks, and direct attacks on security personnel.
The park’s massive forest corridors stretching across Oyo, Kwara, and parts of the North-Central region have increasingly become attractive routes for criminal groups seeking remote hideouts and operational bases. Security experts, local hunters, and community leaders have repeatedly warned that the difficult terrain and weak surveillance structure around the park created loopholes for armed groups to operate undetected.
One of the earliest major incidents that heightened fears occurred on June 4, 2025, when gunmen attacked a mining site in Oreke-Okeigbo in neighboring Kwara State. The attackers killed two police officers and abducted two workers, including a Chinese national. Although the incident did not happen directly inside the park, security analysts linked the growing criminal activities in the Kwara forest belt to wider insecurity spreading through forest routes connected to the Oyo-Kwara boundary axis.
By the second half of 2025, reports from local security stakeholders suggested that armed groups displaced by military operations in northern Nigeria had started using forests surrounding Old Oyo National Park as temporary camps and transit corridors. Communities around the area began witnessing increasing reports of kidnappings, cattle rustling, illegal armed movements, and suspicious settlements deep within forest locations.
The situation escalated dramatically on January 6, 2026, when suspected bandits launched a deadly attack on the National Park Service office at Oloka Village in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.
The night raid resulted in the killing of five forest guards and National Park personnel, while another officer sustained serious injuries. The attack sent shockwaves across the country because it directly targeted armed government personnel responsible for protecting federal forest assets. Preliminary investigations suggested that the attackers exploited cross-border forest routes and had extensive knowledge of the terrain.
Following the attack, security agencies deployed tactical police teams, mobile police operatives, bomb disposal units, and other security personnel into Oriire and surrounding communities. Authorities launched coordinated operations and intensified surveillance across sections of the park.
On January 31, 2026, security agencies announced the arrest of seven suspects allegedly connected to the killings. Investigations later revealed that the attack may have exposed a much larger criminal network operating within forest settlements around the park.
However, the crisis did not stop there.
In May 2026, another major security scare emerged after gunmen attacked schools and communities in Oriire Local Government Area, abducting pupils, teachers, and residents. Security operatives later traced suspected kidnappers to areas surrounding Old Oyo National Park. Reports indicated that the abductors attempted to use forest sections around the park as escape corridors and temporary hideouts.
The incident triggered renewed calls from traditional rulers, hunters, and regional security groups for stronger military presence around the park and the establishment of permanent security formations within the Oriire axis.
By May and June 2026, defence authorities and security experts openly identified Old Oyo National Park as one of the forest corridors increasingly exploited by kidnappers and armed criminal groups moving into the South-West. Intelligence reports suggested that insurgent elements displaced from northern military operations were seeking refuge in remote forest zones stretching across Oyo, Kwara, Osun, and Ekiti states.
The major threats identified around the park since mid-2025 include armed bandit incursions, kidnapping operations, attacks on security personnel, illegal occupation of forest areas, and cross-border criminal movements between Oyo and Kwara forest regions.
Overall, the period between mid-2025 and June 2026 represents one of the most dangerous security phases in the recent history of Old Oyo National Park. What was once primarily a conservation and tourism asset is gradually becoming a strategic security hotspot within Nigeria’s South-West region.
Sadly, this reflects a larger national problem. Nigeria’s security structure has remained largely reactive instead of proactive. Across different levels of government, warnings are often ignored until tragedies occur. When leadership fails to build preventive security architecture, the consequences inevitably spread across every layer of society.
Only proactive security systems work effectively, and unfortunately, that has remained one of the biggest missing links in governance for many years.
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