Along the Sokoto-Zamfara state line, close to the Nigeria- border, the villages of Sabon Birni and Isa have been abandoned. To avoid the same fate, some other villages have tried to strike peace deals with local bandit groups. This comes after years of failed efforts from the state to stamp out armed non-state actors from in the northern Nigerian states of Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina.
Numerous villagers who spoke to DW told of family members being abducted and killed. Their livelihoods, which primarily consist of farming sorghum, millet, and livestock, and then trading their produce in nearby market towns, have been severely disrupted. Not only are local families facing a due to farms being abandoned or their harvests being looted, but Nigeria’s entire northern region — historically the nation’s agricultural heartland — can no longer produce enough food.
“We have been pleading for peace. We want to live and farm in peace. We have no access to our farms. We have to beg before we can feed our families,” Suraju Mohammed from Sokoto told DW, adding that nothing is more important than peace.
“No other choice”
Peacebuilding analyst Dengiyefa Angalapu from the Lagos-based Centre for Democracy and Development describes the hard choices faced by villagers as “the failure of the social contract between the Nigerian government and the Nigerian people.” Seeking a peace deal with violent non-state actors becomes “a rational survival calculus,” he told DW.
“Communities know these actors. They will tell you: “I know his father, I know his mother. This person grew up with us,” Angalapu said.
Farmers who want to return to their fields to produce food for their families risk abductions or face taxes imposed on them by the violent groups. Bandit territories overlap, so even if a peace deal is reached with one group in exchange for protection fees, fuel, and or food sharing, another group does not necessarily respect this.
Recently, armed bandits on motorbikes rode into Zamfara State’s Sabongarin Damri, killing 11 people and kidnapping at least 70 others, including women and children.
“We want an end to the bloodshed. So, we are in support of the deal,” Suraju Mohammed told DW, “We want the killings to stop and live peacefully.”
Calls to strengthen state capacity
Analysts and international observers say there are areas of Nigeria now no longer considered under the government’s control. For national security, this has severe implications.
“There is now some level of parallel governance,” Angalapu told DW. Negotiations with the violent gangs give the gangs some level of legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens, he said, which makes it difficult to stop them
“They tell communities: ‘We are actually fighting for you. This government cannot protect you’ — so in the long run it is very disadvantageous for national security.”
But on a local level, Angalapu says communities have little choice.
“It’s not as though they want these peace agreements. It’s an act of survival. We have to strengthen the state capacity to protect these communities,” he told DW.
But for some community members like Aisha Tukur from Zamfara State making peace with the bandits is unacceptable: “They killed eight people in Turmi, four in Damne, three in Dauku. So, how do we make peace with that? There would not be any reconciliation between us. They should be prosecuted. They are heartless. They don’t listen to our pleas.”
Fighting bandits and insurgents
Local state governments have been battling violent non-state actors for years. But so far, neither mediation efforts, de-radicalization campaigns, nor force through armed patrols and airstrikes from the have brought long-lasting stability.
Umaimah Abubakar fled the farming village of Ranganda, about 50 km (31 miles) north of Sokoto city, and now lives in an internally displaced peoples’ camp. “The government hasn’t really done anything for us except for paying ransoms whenever the bandits demanded. Even after that, the bandits would still come back months later,” Abubakar told DW.
Bandit gangs maintain camps in a huge forest straddling Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states. The unrest is believed to have started from clashes between herders and farmers over land and resources, but later evolved into a broader conflict fueled by arms trafficking made possible by insecurity in the . To make matters worse, the violence is spreading from the northwest, and the and coordinated.
Increasing cooperation between the criminal gangs, who are primarily motivated by money, and — who are waging a separate, 16-year-old-armed insurrection in the northeast — has seen attacks worsen. Western monitors suggest bandits killed more civilians than the jihadists did from 2018 to 2023.
This article was adapted from the AfricaLink podcast. You can listen and subscribe to AfricaLink wherever you get your podcasts.
Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu
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