What if Boko Haram and ISWAP overrun northern Nigerian cities?
Boko Haram/ISWAP overrunning northeastern Nigerian cities is a humanitarian and governance crisis but distant from oil infrastructure — the Niger Delta and offshore output sit in the south, so Brent carries only a small risk premium. Analogue: the 2014-2015 Boko Haram territorial peak, which displaced millions yet left Nigerian crude exports and oil prices largely intact. The skeptical read: this threatens Abuja's authority and security spend, not barrels, so the oil leg should be faded unless unrest spreads south.
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The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Boko Haram and ISWAP overrun multiple northeastern Nigerian cities, displacing millions and threatening Abuja's authority. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.