A nation under siege: The banditry crisis, by Ugoji Egbujo

One fateful evening, the people of Malumfashi, Katsina, sensed trouble. Vultures circled their community, a grim portent. Alarmed, villagers alerted the military, who came, saw nothing, and left. At dawn, as the people trooped to the mosque to beseech God, bandits struck. They roared in on motorcycles and fired at everything. The mosque took the brunt. By the final toll, the bandits massacred 32 and injured many. On their way out, they littered death and sorrow, burning houses with women and children inside. At least 20 were burned to death. That was in Gidan Mantau,  Malumfashi. A year ago, bandits had visited and claimed 20 lives.

One moment, bandits and soldiers shake hands, sowing confusion among a bewildered populace; the next, another bloodbath unfolds. The government justifies its impotence by claiming insecurity is a universal phenomenon—as if the wretchedness and torture endured by communities in Zamfara, Katsina, and Benue are inevitable. Bandits swagger to meetings with government agents, received like foreign investors. They leave these meetings triumphantly, hugging security agents, rifles hanging on their shoulders. The state is so weak it doesn’t know whether to fight or beg. In many northwest villages, communities pay taxes to the government and buy peace from bandits. In some instances, when ransoms haven’t arrived on time, bandits have visited communities, going house to house, raping women and girls. At other times, they’ve abducted dozens to exchange for ransom. 

The BBC reported the Malumfashi mosque attack was reprisal for local vigilantes neutralizing bandits two days earlier. With violence mushrooming across the country, the military is spread thin. Poorly funded, the police lack the capacity to cope. Yet no one has imagined a third force to bridge the gap and hold ground in troubled areas. The state is weak, overstretched, and irresponsible. Locals must defend themselves or perish. But neither the law nor their pockets allows them to arm sufficiently to match the feral bandits. When they manage to make an impact, inevitable reprisals render it futile.

The brutal casualty figures of the Katsina massacre have been confirmed by the state lawmaker representing Malumfashi. The governor of the besieged state is on medical leave abroad. The chronicity of the problem and the government’s abiding nonchalance breed consuming hopelessness. Sometimes the federal government claims it’s winning the war. Other times, it says it has won, the problem conquered. The issue with propaganda is that when it’s so fact-defying, it sounds like a scam. When it minimizes the daily death and misery communities suffer, propaganda becomes complicit.

After the Katsina massacre, public outrage was nearly absent. With thousands slaughtered annually, the nation has become accustomed to wanton, senseless violence. People are adjusting to a short, brutish existence in a killing field. A few months ago, bandits visited Yelewata in Benue, leaving 200 dead and thousands displaced. That massacre escaped national attention until an activist shared gory pictures. Soon after the president’s hesitant visit to console Yelewata, a massacre struck Riyom. 27 people were slaughtered.

The security architecture feels like an old, leaky, tattered basket. The government no longer seems to keep count because its capacity for whitewashing propaganda is never affected. After Riyom, Yelewata was hit again. The Benue and Plateau situations are severe and chronic, but in the last year, they’ve been acutely inflamed. Yet no new remedies have been tried. Benue and Plateau have witnessed over a hundred attacks and lost thousands of lives. But nothing in the response to these recurring massacres suggests urgency or thoughtfulness.

The proliferation of banditry in Nigeria must be studied and checked. Porous borders enable easy influx of foreign gangs and guns. Yet data shows much of the terror is homegrown. The surge in poverty, worsened by insecurity crippling rural farming, provides jobless hands for recruitment. In Zamfara, 638 villages have been sacked. While cattle rustling and farmer-herder frictions birthed gangsterism in the northwest and north-central regions, the lucrativeness of mining and kidnapping has made banditry a booming industry. The situation is rapidly evolving, so containment ideas and strategies can’t remain this static. Funding, training, motivating, and equipping the police and military will help stem the rage, but political and social reengineering must undercut the inferno. Our sovereignty is in peril. Nigeria must act swiftly.

HOMELAND SECURITY AGENCY 

There is a compelling need to create a Homeland Security Force—paramilitary, mobile, tech-equipped units to rescue the nation from these wild urchins. One hundred thousand educated youths, preferably the last five NYSC batches, with 1,000 locals per LGA. Youths fresh from tertiary institutions, brimming with patriotism. The surplus of 22,600 will be deployed nationally to reinforce high-risk areas. The enormous cost of training, equipment, and welfare for 100,000 new federal agents will be offset by increased productivity. Vigilantes have given sweat and blood, but it hasn’t worked. Community self-help often invites reprisals. Arming vigilantes can be a problematic, potentially feral stopgap. A statutory, standing force is more amenable to control and ethical orientation. We must repossess our country.

As the new Homeland Force is established, federal and state governments must form regional political committees to devise bottom-up solutions to douse and squelch tensions. For instance, cross-country grazing must be addressed through ranches as a conflict management strategy. This will delegitimize militancy tied to herding and farming in some areas. Mining regulations must be strictly enforced. The boom in rogue mining fosters the banditry industry.  Porous borders must be policed with the best technology available.

Beyond military and political solutions, rural economies must be revamped through aggressive agricultural and agro-processing investments. Agricultural incentives should boost rural cooperatives. Rural agricultural centers and hubs must provide easy access to finance, equipment leasing, and extension services. Incentives, not cash handouts, will birth agro-processing cottage industries. A functional Commodities Board will minimize post-harvest losses. Insecurity has devastated rural economies; agriculture must be rebuilt not just for food security but to sustain military and political efforts against insecurity. Alongside agriculture, rural health and education must become national priorities.

Our banditry crisis is a national emergency demanding bold, multifaceted action. All regions of the country are affected.  Many communities in the southeast and south-south have been devastated.  The Malumfashi, Yelewata, and Riyom massacres are only stark reminders of the human cost of inaction.  Military victories alone are insufficient. Without addressing poverty, porous borders, and weak governance, violence will persist. The proposed Homeland Security Force, Regional Committees, and Rural Economic Reforms offer a roadmap to restore peace and prosperity. We must act decisively.

Perhaps we can begin by keeping data and putting human faces to the abstract numbers. If the names and pictures of all those killed and kidnapped by bandits are published nationally, we might grasp the scourge’s enormity and rise against it.

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