About Remains

Why this exists

Nigeria’s insecurity crisis is extensively documented and catastrophically under-felt.

Between July 2023 and June 2024, 7,568 people were kidnapped in Nigeria, according to SBM Intelligence. Nigerians paid ₦2.23 trillion in ransoms in a single year. 2.1 million people are displaced across the north. Attacks on healthcare facilities tripled in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states.

These numbers exist in reports. They are real and they are available. And yet they do not move people the way they should. They sit in spreadsheets and policy documents and annual reports, and they do not change enough.

We built Remains because data without human reality is just data. And apathy in the face of this crisis is itself a kind of harm.

Remains is not another database for analysts. It is a living record built for Nigerian citizens, for the diaspora, for journalists who need to cite specific incidents, for NGOs who need to know where help is needed most, and for the families of people who were taken and deserve to have that written down somewhere permanent and public.

Every number on this platform is a person. We built the platform to make that impossible to forget.

What makes us different

This platform was built to be felt, not just consulted.

Existing conflict data platforms are built for researchers and policymakers. They are cold by design, and they serve their purpose well. Remains serves a different purpose.

We record down to community and Local Government Area level, because state-level data obscures where the crisis actually falls. We track active abduction cases by days in captivity, because a person taken 200 days ago is not a closed record. Every incident has a permanent, citable page naming its sources — what journalists cite, what families find, and what makes the record real.

We separate the verified from the unverified with architectural rigour — not as a cosmetic distinction but because the integrity of every number depends on it. Our methodology is fully public. Our corrections are public. Our funding will be public.

We are built for the Nigerian public first. Every other audience — journalists, NGOs, researchers, donors — comes after.

The team

Remains is built and operated by a small team. We identify publicly by role rather than by name at this stage of the platform’s development. This is a considered decision, not an oversight.

The material documented on this platform creates real personal risk for those who compile it in the Nigerian context. Operating with limited personal identification is consistent with international standards for conflict documentation in high-risk environments — and with the platform’s editorial independence. We are not the story. The crisis is the story.

As the platform builds legal structure and institutional credibility, our approach to public identification will evolve. We are committed to full transparency about who we are as that becomes safely possible.

Advisory board — in formation

We are building an advisory board of journalists, researchers, and civil society practitioners with direct experience of Nigerian conflict documentation, human rights, and data journalism. Names and affiliations will be published here as those relationships are formalised. If you have relevant expertise and are interested, contact advisory@remains.ng.

Independence and funding

Remains is editorially independent. No funder, partner, data source, or commercial relationship has any influence over what we publish, how we classify incidents, what we correct, or what we remove. This is not a policy — it is the condition on which the platform exists.

We are funded by grants from foundations and institutions that support independent journalism, human rights documentation, and civic information infrastructure. No single funder will account for more than 30% of our revenue in any year — a standing rule, not a target.

Current funders: to be published on first grant confirmation. Legal structure: operating structure to be published on confirmation. Full funding disclosure published annually.

We will never carry advertising. We will never sell user data. We will never accept funding that requires editorial influence. These are not aspirations — they are the terms on which this platform operates.

Our commitments

We record every incident we can verify. We acknowledge every incident we cannot. We correct every error publicly. We update every record when new information emerges. We protect every source who needs protection. We publish our methodology in full. We never let a funder, government, or commercial interest change what we write.

If we fall short of any of these — our corrections record will say so.