New Lords of Nigeria’s North West

Nigeria has a long history of violent conflicts dating back to the 1960s’ ethno-political conflicts in the Middle Belt. The return to democratic governance in 1999 saw a rise in violent non-state actors and their domination of national and sub-national security agendas. Today, these armed non-state actors include ethnic militants, gangs and cult groups, political thugs and other groups. In agitating against the established socio-political order, such groups take advantage of the relative freedom provided by democratic governance, particularly the repeal of restrictive military-era laws, such as the notorious Decree 2 of 1984, which allowed the government to detain citizens it considered a threat to national security and Decree 13 of 1984, which prohibited citizens from challenging the validity of any decree in the court of law. The emergence of Boko Haram in 2002 only relegated some of these groups to the fringes of national and regional security agenda.

Bandits are the newest addition to Nigeria’s growing list of violent non-state actors and have become a convenient trope for framing the ongoing devastation in Nigeria’s North West and Middle Belt regions. Largely unconnected to the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, the origin of banditry in Nigeria can be traced to the farmer-herder conflict that accelerated around 2011. Since 2011, the farmer-herder conflict has metastasized to include cattle rustling, arms smuggling, protection rackets, kidnapping for ransom, gender-based violence, among others. In the North West alone, the activities of bandits directly affect roughly 21 million people living in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kebbi and Katsina.

The impacts of banditry on local populations have been devastating. According to a 2019 report by the Zamfara State government, between 2011 and 2019, bandits killed at least 6,319 people, kidnapped 3,672 people and burnt more than 500 villages in Zamfara State alone. The activities of bandits have also displaced more than 200,000 people while more than 35,000 Nigerians have been forced to emigrate to the Niger Republic due to the destruction of their communities by bandits. Bandits have reportedly killed more Nigerians than Boko Haram, robbers, kidnappers and cultists combined, and were reportedly responsible for 47.5 per cent of all violent deaths in 2019.

Due to the intensity of their attacks on communities and citizens, policymakers, security agencies, media agencies and citizens have called for these groups to be classified as terrorists rather than as bandits. To demonstrate the urgency of the security situation in the North West, media outlets often use the terms ‘bandits’ and ‘terrorists’ interchangeably to describe the criminal gangs, which have been accused by communities of being responsible for murders, ransom-driven kidnappings, sexual violence and other violent crimes.