Nigeria's Rampant Banditry and Some Ideas On How to Rein It in

They are known simply as "bandits" - heavily armed criminal gangs that have terrorised Nigeria's rural northwest, killing, kidnapping, forcing people from their homes, and taunting the authorities with their brazenness.

The raids are increasingly daring. In the last few months, bandits have downed an air force jet, attacked the military's officer training school, struck a prestige commuter rail service running between the capital, Abuja, and the city of Kaduna and kidnapped students for ransom from schools and colleges so many times that education is now in peril, writes Idayat Hassan for The New Humanitarian.

Zamfara, one of Nigeria's poorest states, is at the centre of the banditry. It tops the country's league table of violent deaths, with 495 reported killings  between July and October 2021. That's far more fatalities than northeastern Borno, where Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram operate. 

To try and stem the spreading chaos, some state governments have turned to peace deals to essentially buy off the gunmen. The model is the oil-rich Niger Delta from a decade ago, where militants protesting the government's exploitation of the area accepted amnesty deals and development programmes to end attacks on oil facilities.

At least 10 military operations have been launched against banditry in the northwest so far, but they have failed to make a dent in the insecurity. The mobile gangs take advantage of a forested, sparsely populated region, and when attacked, simply move elsewhere.