For a decade, foot-and-mouth disease has moved quietly across Nigeria's vast livestock landscape, but a new analysis of outbreak records from 2015 to 2025 has brought its shifting geography into sharp relief. What once spread across the North Central region has now consolidated with striking force in the northwest — particularly the Zamfara-Kebbi-Sokoto belt — which now carries more than seven in ten of the country's reported outbreaks. The disease does not spread evenly or steadily; it surges, lingers, and concentrates, and understanding that rhythm is the first condition of responding wisely