BY: Sonaike Peter
Claim:
The Sambisa Forest is in land mass, larger than Belgium, a country in Europe.
Verdict:
Misleading!
Full Text:
Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, claimed that the Sambisa Forest is larger than Belgium, a country in Europe.
Christopher Musa made the claim during a recent interview with Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television.
He made the statement while responding to questions about the challenges security forces face in tracking abductors, commonly referred to as bandits, who operate in the forest.
As of the time of filing this report, a video of the interview had garnered more than 100,000 views on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The claim went viral with many Nigerians questioning the veracity of the statement. At face value, the comparison appears straightforward: Belgium has a clearly documented national territory, while the size of Sambisa depends considerably on what geographical area is being described as the “Sambisa Forest.”
FactCheckAfrica examined available official, geographical, academic and historical records to establish the basis for the comparison.
Verification:
FactCheck Africa’s findings revealed that Belgium’s size was relatively straightforward to establish. According to Statbel, Belgium’s official statistical office, the country had a total surface area of 30,690 square kilometres in 2025. Statbel says its current surface-area calculations are based on the CADGIS database managed by Belgium’s Federal Public Service Finance, using updated digital measurements.
The difficulty arises when determining the size of Sambisa Forest. A widely cited geographical figure puts the Sambisa Forest at approximately 518 square kilometres. This figure is also used in geographical and academic literature. For example, an academic study on vegetation cover in Sambisa describes the forest as covering about 518 km², while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has similarly described Sambisa as a band of forestation and scrubland in south-central Borno covering approximately 518 km².
If this 518 km² figure is used, Belgium is substantially larger than the forest. Belgium’s 30,690 km² surface area is approximately 59 times larger than 518 km².
However, there is another figure that has been repeatedly used in Nigerian reporting: about 60,000 square kilometres.
In 2017, the News Agency of Nigeria reported that the Sambisa Forest was “said to cover 60,000 square kilometres,” describing the area as about 18 times the size of Lagos State and 85 percent of Borno State’s land surface. Punch reported the same 60,000 km² figure in its account of a military surveillance operation over the forest.
Earlier reporting also used the larger figure. In 2014, Anadolu Agency described Sambisa as covering approximately 60,000 km² and said it extended across parts of Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano and Jigawa states. The report, however, was describing a much wider geographical area rather than a precisely defined cadastral boundary.
The 518 km² figure refers to the more narrowly defined Sambisa Forest/Game Reserve, while the much larger 60,000 km² figure has been used in some Nigerian government, media and geographical accounts to describe the broader “Sambisa general area” or the wider forested and operational landscape associated with Sambisa.
Historical records further complicate the picture. Available geographical references indicate that the Sambisa Game Reserve was originally established over approximately 2,258 km² during the colonial period, while later records put the designated game reserve at 518 km². Some accounts have also included the neighbouring Marguba Forest Reserve when describing the wider Sambisa area.
There is therefore no single universally accepted figure that can simply be labelled the size of “Sambisa Forest” without defining the geographical boundary being measured.
So, is Sambisa bigger than Belgium?
If Musa was referring to the narrowly defined Sambisa Forest/Game Reserve of approximately 518 km², the claim is false. Belgium, at 30,690 km², is vastly larger.
But if the minister was referring to the broader Sambisa geographical or operational area, for which Nigerian authorities and previous reports have used a figure of about 60,000 km², then that area would indeed be almost twice the size of Belgium.
A 60,000 km² area would be approximately 1.96 times Belgium’s 30,690 km² surface area. The problem, therefore, is not merely the arithmetic. It is the absence of a clear geographical definition in the statement.
Calling the entire 60,000 km² area simply “Sambisa Forest” can create the impression that there is a formally delineated forest of that size. Available evidence does not establish that. In fact, academic and international geographical sources commonly identify the Sambisa Forest itself as approximately 518 km².
At the same time, it would also be inaccurate to dismiss the 60,000 km² figure as something that has never been used. Nigerian government-linked reporting and previous military accounts have repeatedly used that figure when referring to the wider Sambisa area.
What the available evidence shows
The available records therefore point to two different geographical concepts that are sometimes conflated in public discussions. The first is the formally or geographically defined Sambisa Forest/Game Reserve, for which 518 km² is a commonly cited figure. The second is the much broader Sambisa general area, which has been described in Nigerian reporting as covering roughly 60,000 km² and extending across parts of several northeastern states.
These are not necessarily measurements of the same geographical unit. Consequently, the statement that “Sambisa Forest is larger than Belgium” requires qualification. Without specifying that the reference is to the wider Sambisa area rather than the narrower forest/game reserve, the statement is likely to mislead audiences about the actual geographical size of the forest.
Conclusion:
The claim that Sambisa Forest is larger than Belgium is MISLEADING. Belgium’s official surface area is about 30,690 km², while widely cited geographical and academic sources place the narrowly defined Sambisa Forest at approximately 518 km². On that basis, Belgium is about 59 times larger than Sambisa Forest.
However, Nigerian government and media reports have historically used a much broader 60,000 km² figure when referring to the wider Sambisa area. That broader area would be larger than Belgium, but it should not automatically be equated with the formally defined Sambisa Forest.
The key issue is therefore the geographical definition being used. Musa’s comparison may correspond to the wider Sambisa area, but his statement, without that qualification, gives an incomplete picture of the forest’s established geographical size.
