Reading the bandit report Nigeria spent a decade ignoring

Folorunso Adisa

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Earlier this week, I encountered a document titled I Am A Bandit: A Decade of Research in Zamfara State’s Bandit Den by Dr Ahmed Rufa’i of Usman Danfodiyo University. The title stopped me. The content shook me. It is a plain and clinical excavation of how a country allowed a small seed of neglect to grow into a vast industry of violence. What began as a whisper in the forests matured into a roar that now dominates the security terrain of the North-West.

Incontrovertibly, to understand banditry, you must understand the many hands that shaped it. Some are residents and local power brokers who built quiet alliances with armed groups out of fear or personal gain. Some are politicians who armed young men to secure elections, then walked away once victory arrived. And there are the borders. For years, fighters from Niger, Chad and Cameroon slipped into Nigeria through unmanned routes. Tuareg, Fulani and other Sahelian groups blended into local conflicts and worsened the crisis.

This disaster did not erupt overnight. Dr Rufa’i’s research shows that what began in 2011 as a small cell in Zamfara has multiplied into more than 120 gangs across six states. Roughly 10,000 armed men operate in Zamfara alone. More than 12,000 people have been killed. Over 50,000 have been displaced. Families have fled into the Niger Republic and turned its border towns into makeshift havens for Nigeria’s forgotten.

The genesis of this violence is painfully straightforward. In 2011, political actors armed young men for election battles. Once the contests ended, they abandoned them. These men drifted into the forests, still armed and now angry. There, they met pastoralist groups like the Kungiyar Gayu who claimed they were resisting extortion by security agencies, the seizure of grazing routes and a judicial system that favoured the powerful. Genuine grievances mixed with dangerous ambition.

The state responded in ways that worsened the crisis. The Yan Sakai vigilantes profiled and killed innocent herders. Their actions radicalised armed groups. The public killing of Alhaji Isshe in 2012 became a rallying cry for revenge. What began as cattle rustling soon turned into mass killings and the destruction of entire villages. Violence became an economy with its own rules.

At the heart of the conflict lies a resource war. Zamfara’s gold deposits attracted local and foreign profiteers. Reports of helicopters landing in remote areas to exchange weapons for gold circulated in investigative accounts. Bandits became enforcers in this shadow economy. They collected levies from miners while traditional rulers and political figures allegedly fought for control. The conflict became a competition for wealth that wore the mask of grievance.

This economy of war has produced a frightening spread of weapons. Tens of thousands of arms circulate in the North-West. Women and children smuggle dismantled rifles through more than 1,400 illegal border routes. In some camps, food is scarce, but ammunition is easy to find. An AK-47 that once cost half a million naira now commands far higher prices. A gun has become a passport to power.

Leadership among these groups has calcified into a hierarchy of hardened warlords. After the death of the founding figure, Buharin Daji, in 2018, the movement splintered into more aggressive factions. Figures like Dogo Gide and Turji commanded large territories and operated with the sophistication of transnational crime networks. Some camps hold anti-aircraft guns, RPGs, drones and CCTV systems. These are not loose militias. They are syndicates with deep links to Sahelian rebels and terrorist groups.

The human cost is staggering. Women and girls bear the heaviest burden.

Rape is used to dominate communities. Parents give their daughters in marriage to bandit leaders for protection. Young girls serve as cooks, spies and sometimes fighters. Social order has collapsed. Fear governs daily life.

The state has lost control of wide stretches of the North-West. Border posts remain understaffed. Smugglers move unhindered. Rural economies have collapsed. A generation is growing up with violence as its native language. This is not simply insecurity. It is a retreat of authority.

What we are witnessing today across Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara, and the Federal Capital Territory is not a new tragedy. It is a continuation of the descent that researchers like Dr Rufa’i documented more than a decade ago. The mass kidnappings unfolding in real time are not fresh nightmares. They are the latest chapter in a story Nigeria refused to read.

The present kidnappings reveal a criminal ecosystem that has matured. The early cells that once acted in scattered pockets now move across states with coordinated efficiency. Kidnapping has become an industry with financiers, negotiators, informants and weapon suppliers. A country that once dismissed banditry as rural unrest now watches hundreds of children being taken in minutes because the perpetrators have mastered logistics that resemble a paramilitary system.

The most troubling link between past and present is territorial control. The bandits who once hid among trees now control forests, border routes and rural corridors. They run camps. They impose taxes. They set rules where the government is absent. Every ransom strengthens them. Every successful operation reinforces their authority. The weakness the report described years ago has only grown.

The borders remain open. Arms still enter through the same unmanned routes. The same transnational networks still thrive.

The resignation of Mohammed Badaru Abubakar as Minister of Defence arrived at a moment when the violence he was appointed to confront was rising on every front. His exit, officially linked to health concerns, still leaves a simple truth on the table. When unrest thrives under a leader, the problem is not only the criminals on the field. It is the weakness at the top. A change in leadership can become a message in itself. If the new occupant of that office, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, steps in with clarity, force and resolve, the bandits will read it. Power always announces itself. A firm hand in that ministry can signal that Nigeria is done tolerating excuses and is ready to reclaim lost ground.

The complicity and silence that fed this crisis remain unbroken. As long as these borders stay unprotected, every school in northern Nigeria stays exposed.

Nigeria is living inside the architecture of a crisis it never dismantled. We are reaping the whirlwind of a storm we watched gather. If the country hopes to break the cycle, it must confront the roots described in that report. Border control, accountability for political actors, and intelligence-led operations must replace reactive outrage. Without that shift, each kidnapping will be another proof that the warnings were clear, the evidence public, and the consequences inevitable.

The document I read is not only a chronicle. It is a warning. A decade and a half after this crisis began, the bandits are stronger, richer and more connected. Nigeria helped build this monster through political carelessness, weak institutions and the abandonment of its borderlands. We ignored the early signals. We dismissed the early cries. Now we live inside the consequences. We refused to hear the whisper. Today, we face the scream, and its decibels have robbed us of sleep.

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