Experts Urge Nigeria to Target Bandits’ Finances

ADF STAFF

For at least 25 years, bandits have plagued northern Nigeria, terrorizing and stealing from residents, recruiting new members, and driving the region’s chronic insecurity.

Experts with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organizational Crime (GI-TOC) and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) say that Nigerian authorities should consider a nonmilitary approach to bandits by targeting their finances. Bandits make money through crimes such as  cattle rustling, kidnapping, extorting farmers and taking over artisanal gold mines.

“It’s a subject matter that is the least understood,” analyst Kingsley L. Madueke said of bandits’ financing during an online discussion of banditry sponsored by the GI-TOC. “It directly underpins the resilience of armed banditry and also does a lot in terms of serving as a motivation for armed banditry recruitment.”

By some estimates, up to 120 bandit gangs operate in Kaduna and Zamfara states. Experts believe the total number of bandits could be as high as 30,000, with a third of them in Zamfara State.

Armed bandits move nimbly between distinct licit and illicit revenue streams to generate the money they need to operate. From 2011 to 2019, their primary tactic was cattle rustling. When herders began moving their cattle elsewhere, bandits turned to kidnapping for ransom. Kidnapping  soon became unviable as potential victims ran out of money or were killed for not paying.

In recent years, bandits have shifted their attention to three other revenue streams: the largely unregulated artisanal gold mining industry, demanding “taxes” from trucking companies transiting the region and demanding that farmers pay to plant and harvest their fields.

“The transition has been toward revenue collection that requires less violence and more coordination with communities,” analyst Olajumoke Ayandele said during the GI-TOC discussion.

Although those new forms of terrorist financing are underpinned by threats of violence, physical violence is actually rare, Ayandele said.

Gold mining’s poor regulation and cash-based transactions have been a magnet for bandits, who have gone from robbing miners to running some mines.

“The (mining) industry presents armed bandits with a significant earning potential,” Madueke said.

For that reason, focusing on mining could play a key role in starving the bandits of revenue, he added.

Analysts urged the Nigerian government to direct more government oversight to artisanal gold mining. In 2019, the government shut down mining in Zamfara to try to disrupt bandits’ income.

“Rather than banning the mining sector, there’s a need to promote and facilitate the formalization of artisanal gold mining,” Madueke said.

By registering miners and boosting security at mining sites, the government could disrupt bandits’ revenue without making things harder for the people who make their living from the mines, analysts said.

Bandits also have gained control of the region’s supply lines by taking over trucking routes after commercial trucking companies refused to enter bandit-plagued territory due to poor security, analyst Maurice Ogbonnaya wrote for ENACT, the anti-transnational organized crime organization.

While military intervention remains an important part of Nigeria’s anti-bandit strategy, investing more heavily in the economies of the North West and North Central regions could go a long way toward breaking the hold bandits have on the area, according to the joint GI-TOC/ACLED study.

Doing so would make banditry less attractive to young men looking for purpose and to others looking to make money by informing bandits about the government’s counterterrorism operations. Financial support for farming also could prevent people from turning to banditry.

“It’s crucial to prioritize these vulnerable groups by offering them an alternative livelihood,” Madueke said.