A whirl of nine bloody bandit attacks in three of Nigeria’s northern states has claimed more than 160 lives since March 20. Tens of thousands of panicked residents have packed their belongings on their backs and trekked into refugee camps, according to eyewitnesses and media accounts.
The bandits—numbering up to 1,000—may be aiming to extort campaigners seeking the presidency in February 2023, according to David Otto, a London-based military consultant.
The Nigerian government has designated the bandit groups, which are composed of radical Muslim jihadists, as terrorists.
“We are seeing a dangerous new paradigm where armed bandits hold politicians virtual hostage during campaign periods,” Otto told The Epoch Times.
“In this scenario, politicians are forced to pay access and protection ransom to bandits in return for unhindered access to carry out campaigns in certain communities that are otherwise inaccessible. This is the new mafia in the northwest.”
Nigeria is no stranger to jihadist terrorism, especially by the infamous Boko Haram and other ISIS-related militia. Yet in the past two years, these groups have been overshadowed by swarms of radicalized bandits in five of Nigeria’s northwestern states. Unlike ISIS and Boko Haram, the bandit terrorists don’t have clear political aims.
The bandit gangs prey upon Muslims and Christian communities alike, although they target ethnic and religious groups perceived as opponents, especially Christians, according to Kyle Abts, executive director of International Committee on Nigeria, a United States-based advocacy group.
The bandits first attacked on March 20, killing 37 Christian residents of four villages bordering the town of Kagoro. Some victims were burned to death. A company of soldiers in a forward operating base one mile away were notified but didn’t arrive to stop the slaughter. On March 24, no fewer than 50 people were murdered in Giwa.
A hundred bandits invaded the Kaduna International Airport on March 26 and attempted to stop a departing aircraft. One civilian was killed, according to Faithful Hope-Ivbaze, general manager of corporate affairs at the Federal Airports Authorities.
On March 28, the bandits bombed a train carrying close to 1,000 passengers, killing eight people and kidnapping several others along the Abuja–Kaduna highway.
On March 29, the bandits killed 23 Christian farmers and herders in Giwa County, which borders Zamfara in Kaduna’s north. On March 30, a woman was killed in an attack in Zaria, a city in north Kaduna.
On April 3, the bandits killed at least 17 people and took 22 hostage in a midnight attack in the village of Kagarko, near Abuja, according to Steven Kefas, reporting for TMS News. The bandits occupy land in five communities on the border between Kaduna and Niger states, both of which border Abuja.
On April 4, the bandits killed 11 soldiers and 3 local civilian guards during an assault on a forward operating base in Birnin Gwari County, bordering Kaduna and Zamfara states.
The bandit warlord in charge of the encampments outside Abuja is Ali Kawaje, likely the most powerful bandit leader in the Northwest, according to Dr. Murtala Rufa’i, a scholar at Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto. “The message Ali Kawaje is sending is that if he can bring Kaduna to its knees, he can attack Abuja,” Rufa’i told The Epoch Times.
“Presidential and state elections have been transformed into a source of chaos for ordinary Nigerians, and 2023 is no different,” Otto wrote in a text.
“As election campaign momentum heats up, desperate politicians are in the active hunt for hard and untraceable currency to fund the often-expensive campaigns.
“Just as politicians need votes from a vulnerable population in search of positive change, promising a desperate people with the return of security and stability is a voting insurance in an environment where insecurity is simply unbearable.”
A common denominator in the attacks is the ethnicity of the gang leaders. All are reportedly members of the Fulani ethnicity, which claims up to 10 million members in Nigeria and which is one of the largest tribes in Africa.
Some of the Fulani are semi-nomadic herders who have traditionally migrated with their cattle herds according to seasonal rainfall from Nigeria’s north to the middle belt states.
Bandit gangs emerged in 2011 and grew in number and range since then, according to Rufa’i, author of “I Am a Bandit.”
Disputes between ethnic Hausa farmers and migrating Fulani herders gave rise to armed militia known as Yan Sakai, also called vigilantes, in 2011.
The lawlessness in the country’s north has evolved in recent years into complex, coordinated terrorism, according to Tanwa Ashiru, chief operating officer of Bulwark Security in Lagos and a former U.S. Army captain.
Ashiru discounts the claim by officials of the Nigerian government that climate change and fierce competition for land and water resources are the drivers of clashes between Muslim herders and sedentary Christian farmers.
“Desertification and climate change could indeed be playing a part in increasing the attractiveness of the middle belt for herders compared to the more arid climate up north,” she told The Epoch Times by text.
“But there are multiple actors at play here, with multiple motives for attacking, and this is what makes this case a bit more complex than a climate change issue.”
The herding peoples linked to armed clashes fall into three categories, she said.
“There are herder groups that are interested in having access to greener pastures for their herds. They have the motive to attack communities for settlement purposes,” she said.
“There are former herders who have now evolved into armed criminal groups because they’ve realized kidnapping is more lucrative, less taxing, and has a quicker turnaround time.
“Then you have those who are simply armed criminals who travel around to wreak havoc and conduct attacks anywhere they want, because they are getting away with it with little to no consequences.
“They have control of local communities, provide local governance [collect taxes, provide security for a fee], and challenge the legitimate government structures.”
The wide-ranging violence in Kaduna state includes reprisals by farming communities against herding people, which incites endless tribal counterattacks.
A case in point was an attack on Christian farmers in Azabagut, located in the northwest of Zangon Kataf county, that killed six people on March 28. It was retaliatory, according to Haruna Usman Tugga, the leader of the Fulani tribe in Kaduna.
“We have lost many people and cattle in that area, but the media is not reporting it,” Tugga said by phone.
The massacres are an example of “horrific suffering” inflicted on “innocent civilians,” Baroness Caroline Cox, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, told The Epoch Times in a text message.
“As long as the perpetrators can continue with impunity, there’s no indication that there will be an end to the killings,” she said.
“There’s an urgent need for the Nigerian government and the international community to call the perpetrators to account. Until and unless they do so, they can be seen to be complicit.”
