Complexities of banditorism

Late last week, communities in Anka and Bukuyyum local government areas of Zamfara State buried at least 143 people killed in attacks by bandits terrorizing parts of Kaduna, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states for years now. The attacks and killings followed the ‘unconditional’ release, in the week before last, of over 50 people abducted […]

Late last week, communities in Anka and Bukuyyum local government areas of Zamfara State buried at least 143 people killed in attacks by bandits terrorizing parts of Kaduna, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states for years now. The attacks and killings followed the ‘unconditional’ release, in the week before last, of over 50 people abducted for months by the same bandits.

That ‘release’ itself followed an open letter “for peace” to President Muhammadu Buhari purportedly written by one of the most notorious and vicious bandits’ leaders known as Bello Turji. Before Turji’s letter, an Abuja High Court had declared banditry a form of terrorism and the bandits themselves as terrorists in late November, a development that has since been gazetted by the federal government.

On New Year’s Day, the Nigerian Airforce’s Operation Hadarin Daji reportedly killed two bandits’ leaders in Zamfara State when an aircraft bombarded the bandits’ enclaves in Gusami Forest and Tsamre Village in Birnin Magaji area of the state. A few days later, on January 4th, newspapers cited police sources saying they had rescued 97 persons around the same Birnin Magaji.

The killing of the bandits’ leaders by the military and the rescuing of abductees by the police were seen as indications that military offensive against the bandits was at last yielding fruits in recent weeks, after being in the doldrums for months. The following day, however, Sheikh Ahmed Gumi reportedly demanded that the Air Force should provide evidence it actually killed the two bandits’ leaders, implying that no such thing may have happened, or that military response would not resolve the situation, a position he has maintained for some time now. As usual, Gumi was roundly condemned for his view.

These disparate events illustrate the complexities of yet another armed violence we are dealing with in Nigeria, even though there is no implying any direct links between them. What I now call ‘banditorism’—terrorism by bandits—may in fact be messier and far more complex than we all think. And without a claim to expertise of any kind on this subject, it looks to me that if the search for a permanent solution is the goal, and nothing else should be, then we might need to fully appreciate at least six dimensions of this banditorism. 

The first is what we might call the root cause of it all, but to understand this we need to make a brief detour. Since at least 1995, Nigeria has been confronted with five very distinct forms of localised armed violence: militancy in the Niger Delta, ethno-religious conflicts in mostly North Central, Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, violent secessionism in the South East, and now bandit terrorism in the North West. Add to these, the sporadic ethno-communal conflicts in the South West and throughout the country such as the farmer-herder clashes.

None of these has been fully resolved yet. Moreover, each of these has its own distinct manifestations, geographic coverage, and different key actors. But each has, or so the claim goes, at its roots some sense of injustice perpetrated by the Nigerian state or by some real or imagined communal neighbours. The militancy in the Niger Delta arose out of genuine grievances for a larger share of oil revenues to the region that produces it and concerns for the environment and the livelihoods of those who depend on it. But it was not long before these genuine concerns morphed into armed violence against the state and oil companies.

The ethno-religious conflicts that have plagued mostly Plateau and Kaduna states, and other parts of the so-called Middle-Belt since the early 2000s, are similarly deeply rooted in some idealised sense of injustice by one group over another, although the groups involved in this case are equally marked by religious difference. The overall toxic rhetoric of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) simply boils down to the misguided idea that a sovereign Biafra nation is the only way to escape injustice and marginalization by the rest of Nigeria. This is why IPOB draws so much sympathy even among Igbos who would otherwise remain within Nigeria.

Boko Haram, too, became violent only after the extra-judicial killing of its first well-known leader, Muhammad Yusuf. Of course, other aspects of the Boko Haram ideology and its copycat versions of political Islam are dominant causative factors too. And from attacking police and security formations, its reign of terror quickly turned on to individuals and the civilian population at large. Today, we are still dealing with it, or rather, struggling to deal with it.

Banditorism is rooted in similar feelings of injustice perpetrated on Fulani herders by cattle rustlers. There has also been much talk about the neglect and marginalisation of the itinerant Fulani from mainstream Nigerian social, economic and political loop. While these feelings are always there in the background, they are not always reflected in recent discussions about what is going on in these areas today. But there is, at least, one indicative or anecdotal evidence of it. Anyone who has been following news reports out of these states in the past 15 years would have noticed that in around 2005 to 2010, or thereabouts, there was much news of cattle rustling, but less of kidnapping or killings.

Over the last seven years or so, however, there has been more news of destruction of villages, killings and abductions from these areas than of cattle rustling. This chronological order of events, as reflected in news coverage of both cattle rustling and banditry at least, may mean nothing other than happenstance, or even no more than the nature of news coverage, which is always fragmentary. But it may also mean that the dispossession of Fulani of their cattle—the only means of livelihood for many itinerant Fulani—is indeed a contributory factor to the conflagration we now have as banditorism. This much has been claimed by many with deeper knowledge of these events.

Still, there are two further issues here. First, even if there is the dispossession of the livelihoods of many Fulani, it is no sufficient grounds to take up arms against other Nigerians or the state. The bandits’ leaders are not those who have lost the most cattle through rustling, nor are the victims of their destructions, killings and kidnappings the very people who rustled their cattle, even if those involved in banditry now were actual cattle owners or herders.

Sociologists know only too well that it doesn’t take long for criminality to creep into any use of violence rationalised by a sense of injustice. This is true also for all other forms of organised but non-state violence in Nigeria, wherever they may be located or against whoever. All forms of armed violence by non-state actors in the name of injustice are hollow. They are not only usually exaggerated but also not fully justified or justifiable. The problem with Nigeria is that we find it easy to accept and even help justify some use of violence by non-state actors in the name of injustice but abhor others. I shall return to this when I discuss the discursive dimension of banditorism.    

Secondly, while in all other cases of non-state violence under discussion here there are easy markers of difference between the ‘agitators’ and the presumed ‘enemy’ or victims, the case of banditry in the North West is very different. Niger Delta militants express their grievances against the state or oil companies and their employees. In the ethno-religious conflicts in Plateau, Kaduna and other parts of the North, religion and ethnicity are clear markers of difference. Boko Haram is against Nigerian security forces and everyone else who does not believe in their ideology.

But cattle rustling is perpetrated by both Hausa and Fulani. Many bandits are Fulani. Many are Hausa. In fact, some bandit leaders are neither Hausa nor Fulani, but other Sahelians of foreign origin. The victims of banditry are equally amorphous. Many of those killed and dispossessed by bandits are also Fulani. Many cattle owners are Hausa, or Fulani, or sometimes neither. So, an idealised sense of injustice or neglect by one group against another is not exactly a tenable explanatory factor for the rise of banditorism. To appreciate the root causes of banditorism, we must look to social class.