New direction to tackle insecurity in Zamfara

On May 29, 2023, Dauda Lawal Dare assumed office as Governor of Zamfara State. Lawal’s was a historic win, being the only governorship candidate in the last elections who knocked out an incumbent. Being of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he defeated Governor Bello Matawalle candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Just […]

On May 29, 2023, Dauda Lawal Dare assumed office as Governor of Zamfara State. Lawal’s was a historic win, being the only governorship candidate in the last elections who knocked out an incumbent. Being of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he defeated Governor Bello Matawalle candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Just as Lawal surmounted the odds to win, he must work to defeat two major daunting tasks gripping the state – poverty and insecurity. Both are intertwined. Zamfara is one of Nigeria’s poorest states. Records by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) say 78 per cent of the residents are poor. The Presidential Enabling Business Council ranked the state the least among the 36 states of the federation in the ease of doing business index, a not so complimentary record.

Zamfara is essentially an agrarian state with more than 80 per cent of residents engaged in agriculture. It wears its agrarian badge with pride, with its motto – “Farming is Our Pride.”

And that explains the citizens’ attachment to land, making it a source of insecurity. Yes, Zamfara occupies the top position today in the league table of violent deaths in Nigeria because of struggle for access and control of land.

Unfortunately, this conflict took on an ethnic colouration. Though the state is mainly populated by the Hausa and Fulani people as well as Gwari, Kamuku, Kambari, Dukawa, Bussawa and Zabarma ethnic communities, it came to a point where the war was categorised. Fulani were tagged herders and later bandits, and Hausa as farmers, and later vigilantes.

This ran counter to the occupational categorization in place in Zamfara in which though the Fulani have traditionally constituted most cattle-owning and herding families, they also engage in sedentary farming. In the same vein, the Hausa are mostly sedentary farmers, some also own and rear cattle.

The first sign of trouble came when incidents of cattle rustling began but were restricted to only the pastoralist Fulani community in their remote forest-based camps. With time, the number of cattle diminished within the camps. They started roaming the farming communities on motorcycles, armed with AK-47s, rustling cattle, kidnapping, looting, and extorting the people.

To protect themselves against the herders’ incursions, the mainly Hausa farming communities formed Yan Sakai and began to target Fulani communities in reprisal attacks. Armed originally with locally fabricated weapons and magical charms, they were lauded as community defenders. The Fulani, with their assault rifles, responded by forming the Yan Bindiga militia. But in terms of operations, there was no difference between Yan Bindiga and the original forest-based bandits.

Though banditry started in Zamfara long before the arrival of colonial masters, Dr Murtala I. Rufa’i, in a paper titled ‘I am a Bandit: A Decade of Research in Zamfara Bandits’ Den’ at a public lecture organised by Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, said the recent wave resurfaced in 2011 when the first armed group led by Kundu and the notorious Buharin Daji emerged.

Rufa’i noted that “the first incident that triggered a change in the course of the conflict was the brutal killing of Alhaji Isshe, in Chilin, Dan-Sadau Emirate, Maru LGA of Zamfara State. He was killed by Yan-Sa-Kai on  August 16, 2012, on the accusation of harbouring criminals and supporting rustlers.

“The public murder of Isshe was used as a justification for reprisal and mass killings of innocent people by the gang. Furthermore, the late Isshe’s family mobilised fighters and extended an invitation to the gang for reprisal attacks a few days later. Members of the gang multiplied in number, strength, power and weapons and even connections in 2013. It also became more heterogeneous and transnational in 2016, constituting members from the Niger Republic, Mali and Chad, mostly Tuaregs with links to Sahelian rebels.”

Unfortunately, instead of the state government, along with the security agencies, being proactive in tackling the menace, they allowed it to snowball into an ethnic war. They adopted differential policy targeting.

The state government initially backed the Hausa vigilantes and later made a U-turn in 2021 and embraced negotiations with the bandits. They offered amnesty, trading cash for guns. But in no time, the truce arising from the efforts collapsed.

It became clear that the Zamfara State, local councils and district political leaders exhibited ineptitude, playing weak. To compound matters, the traditional rulers seemingly lost their influence as they were largely seen as compromised or intimidated. 

The result was mayhem as Zamfara became the centre of the kidnap-for-ransom industry with 1,090 abductions recorded in the last quarter of 2022 alone. It was such that on January 4-6 2022, over 200 people were killed by bandits, the deadliest terrorist attack in recent Nigerian history. At a point, 10 local government areas became bandits’ colonies.

This resulted in the dislocation of over 700,000 citizens across the state, leading to the establishment of eight Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps.

The banditry effectively grounded the education sector as assaults on schools and the mass abduction of students led to the near collapse of the education sector. 

In fact, a state government report claimed 3,672 people were abducted from 2011-2019, and over N3 billion was paid as ransom. The committee, headed by a retired Inspector General of Police, Muhammad Abubakar, also said 4,983 women were widowed, 25,050 children were orphaned, and 190,340 persons were displaced by banditry over the period.

With a drought of help from federal, and state governments or their agencies, communities and traditional leaders started reaching deals with terror kingpins controlling their areas. They allow local markets operate undisturbed, dismantle roadblocks to allow free movement of people and paradoxically protect the citizens against attacks from other bandits. 

And this is so because of the collapse of governance and security architecture in these areas. It doesn’t have to be so. The new federal and state governments must understand that military strategy alone would never solve the challenges as is. It should fully deploy its military and security arsenal merely as a deterrent but the major focus should be on non-kinetic measures.

Governor Lawal should realise that his ascendancy to power shows the citizens are not ready to have the status quo as acceptable. He should avoid the fault line of politicisation of the conflict with the garb of ethnicity. He should lead towards the exploration of dialogue at the local levels, borrowing from the type of platform used between the bandits and some farming communities. This bottom-up approach should also be supported by genuine civil society organisations (CSOs) that have credibility with the people.

The dialogue has to be real where all sides (Hausa and Fulani) would air their grievances and resolve to work and live peacefully. There must be genuine forgiveness among the citizens, communities, ethnic groups and combatants. This should kick off a healing process because the reality is that so much bitterness, hatred and hardened hearts were built up over the years and only genuine forgiveness would guarantee peaceful coexistence. 

The state government should also work to develop capacity to manage the complexities of the security situation, and along with the federal government, implement fresh peace-building measures. There should also be an effective public service system that would deliver good governance to the people in order to regain the trust and confidence the citizens have lost in the ability of government to provide utilities or secure them. 

Also, it would not be out of place for the government to embark on a new focus of purposeful and creative job creation initiatives especially for the jobless youths to wean them of the bandits’ recruitment market and away from kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling and armed robbery. 

Many people have lost their means of livelihood due to the protracted insecurity and displacements and there should be a form of economic assistance to enable them to restart life again. And if this is well-managed, the state would use the avenue to genuinely lift many out of poverty. 

The federal government should also do more in terms of policing Nigeria’s land borders to stop the free flow of arms and ammunition from other countries that are now in the hands of criminal elements. Also, the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) should live up to its mandate and begin to invest in the development of the border communities, along with the state and local councils. This would make the residents see themselves as true Nigerians and not the present situation whereby they seek developmental succour from neighbouring nations. 

Governor Lawal should take the lead in rekindling the regional and coordinated approach abandoned by the governors of the North West in 2021. But this should not be avenue to impose another three-month telecoms blackout, indiscriminate introduction of ban on fuel sales, use of motorcycles and closure of markets as a measure to choke bandits’ mobility, financing and operations. These ended up unleashing excruciating hardship on the people. 

The governor needs to bring the organizational ability, firmness and indomitable spirit that saw him triumph in his election despite the opposition stacked against him, to tackle the protracted security challenge. 

He must never be seen to be helpless, otherwise, the image of running a weak government would negatively affect other aspects of governance. The era of criminal gangs raiding villages and towns, attacking security personnel at will must end. He must work with the military and other security agencies who must be proactive and respond promptly to attacks, and deny the bandits and other criminal elements space to operate.

Moreover, the incoming administration should revisit and implement the recommendations of the 2019 MD Abubakar-led Committee on Finding Solutions to Banditry in Zamfara State. And it must do this without fear or favour towards doing the right thing, no matter whose ox is gored.