Nigeria Strives to Contain Banditry Problem

ADF STAFF

On Christmas Day in 2023, fighters commonly called “bandits” killed more than 115 people in northern Nigeria. The bandits destroyed more than 220 homes in about 10 communities. They killed more than 400 people in Plateau State in attacks in the last quarter of 2023, the Jamestown Foundation reported.

In the past decade, northwest Nigeria has become increasingly infested with bandits working as criminal gangs. Banditry involves crimes such as murder and kidnapping, but it also includes nonstate armed groups such as Boko Haram factions, separatist groups and militants. The International Peace Institute notes that although some of the activities these groups engage in is similar, “each of them has distinct motives, objectives, and methods, and encompasses a wide range of actors.”

About 30,000 bandits are spread across numerous groups in the northwest part of the country alone, with the groups’ numbers ranging from 10 to more than 1,000 fighters. But it’s also a national problem. Other parts of Nigeria have similar criminals, including Niger Delta militants in the south, and separatist groups in the southeast.

“Banditry is a composite crime that includes kidnapping, massacre, rape, cattle rustling, and the illegal possession of firearms,” wrote Oluwole Ojewale in a May report for the Global Observatory. Researchers say bandits had displaced 1.1 million people in rural villages in the northwest by the end of 2022. It is estimated that banditry has been responsible for at least 14,000 deaths in the region.

Two Boko Haram splinter factions have moved into northwest Nigeria, “where they tap into community grievances and form alliances with herder-affiliated militias and criminal groups,” the Clingendael Institute reported in June.

In the case of the raids in Plateau State, there was no claim of responsibility nor any explanation of the motives. “It is common, however, for bandit groups to not have a religious or ideological motivation for attacks,” The Jamestown Foundation noted. “Instead, they often conduct killings as a part of extortion operations, to steal cattle, or to ‘punish’ communities for not granting them grazing land for their own cattle or other such economic concessions.”

The first bandit groups formed in the early 2010s, largely as part of the ongoing conflicts between ethnic Hausa farmers and Fulani herders over land ownership and grazing rights, according to a June report in New Lines Magazine.

“Such conflicts have escalated across sub-Saharan Africa, accelerated by climate change,” the magazine reported. “Disputes, driven primarily by environmental factors, led to small-scale conflicts and sporadic attacks resulting in crop damage and livestock theft. Primitive weapons like sticks, daggers and locally crafted Dane guns were often used in these skirmishes.”

RICE FARMS AT RISK

In 2015, Nigeria banned rice imports to support domestic production. The Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria reports that 12 million Nigerians took up rice cultivation in the years after the ban. With Nigeria consuming more rice than any other country on the continent, the rice farmers prospered. With that prosperity, the farmers became a new target for bandits.

New Lines described a typical rice farm raid in April 2021 when bandits swarmed a farm in Sokoto State and demanded what they claimed were taxes the rice farmer owed them for protection. The payments were late, they said, so they seized the money by force and kidnapped village farmers for ransom. A neighbor told the magazine how the bandits dragged the farmer outside and forced him to the ground as he pleaded with them not to hurt his pregnant wife. But once they had taken what they came for, they slit the farmer’s throat.

“Once they finished him off, his wife’s screams filled the air as she rushed to his side,” the neighbor told the magazine. “One of them turned to her and emptied his gun into her body.”

STOPPING THE BANDITS

Despite the threat that bandits pose, Nigeria has had some success fighting them in the past year or so. Nigerian Minister of Defence Mohammed Badaru in May said the military had killed about 9,300 bandits and terrorists and arrested 7,000 more, according to Nigeria’s Premium Times. Soldiers also confiscated nearly 5,000 weapons and nearly 84,000 pieces of ammunition.

There is evidence that security throughout Nigeria is improving, according to David Roberts, a former British diplomat. He said the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who took office in August 2023, has made some genuine improvements to the country’s safety.

Roberts, who served in Nigeria as director of the British Council, said statistics show that terrorist killings in the country now are mostly between rival terror groups and bandits, adding that the infighting among the nonstate actors meant that the Nigerian military had been able to infiltrate them and turn them on each other.

“The once deadliest road on Earth, the Abuja-Kaduna highway, has made a 180-degree turn,” he said, as reported by The Nation newspaper. “There has not been a single incident reported on that road in 2024. Jihadi communes and ungoverned bandit spaces have disappeared, and the near warlords who ran them have been neutralised.”

Still, the bandit threat is deadly. In April, six Nigerian Soldiers died and two were wounded in an ambush while on patrol in Niger State, according to Africanews. A bandit leader with ties to Islamic State group extremists is known to operate in the area.