IT WAS late when John heard a knock at the door of his house in a village in Borno state, north-eastern Nigeria. “Today”, a voice outside shouted, “will be the end of your life”. Nine gunmen then burst into his house and dragged him outside. After setting fire to his car, they beat him to the ground, shot him twice in the head and left him for dead. Rushed to the nearest decent hospital, he was lucky to survive. A pair of cavernous scars bears testimony to his ordeal. That was two years ago. He is still too frightened to go home.

He is one of a rising tide of people who have been forced out by members of Boko Haram, the extreme Islamist group that has been tightening its stranglehold across the country’s north, while the armed forces strive heavy-handedly and in vain to bring it under control. It has attacked targets farther south, too. On June 25th a bomb it was presumed to have planted went off in Abuja, the capital, killing at least 21 people.

No one is certain how many people have been uprooted. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, a Swiss-based, Norwegian-backed group, reckons that 3.3m Nigerians have fled their homes, not just because of Boko Haram. Inter-communal fighting and floods have added to the toll of families forced to flee. If this figure is correct, Nigeria now has the world’s third-highest number of displaced people, after Syria and Colombia.

The fighting is also pushing more people across borders. The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees said in May that 61,000 people had fled into neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. It reckons that up to 1,000 refugees are pouring into the Diffa region of southern Niger every week.

As the numbers rise, things have become increasingly dire. Food and water are scarce. Sanitation is grim. Yet few non-governmental organisations can help people in Nigeria’s north-east because it is so dangerous. In Adamawa, one of three northern states under emergency rule, the overburdened local arm of the government’s National Emergency Management Agency says it is trying to distribute food, mosquito nets and clothes to more than 100,000 people. With violence likely to rise in the run-up to next year’s elections, the UN says the situation may get even worse. More people are likely to flee Nigeria altogether to seek sanctuary in Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Poor John has little hope of going back home soon.