How Nigeria's 'banditry' crisis has evolved

Nigeria's countryside is under growing threat from gangs of armed criminal "bandits", who have in recent years proven more deadly than the west African nation's jihadist insurgency.

Earlier in July, at least 40 people were killed in central Plateau state, while on Friday nine farmers were killed and more than a dozen kidnapped in northwestern Zamfara state. In May, 5,000 fled their homes in Sokoto.

Originating in the northwest, the gangs have spread throughout the country, with swathes of rural Nigeria now confronted with kidnappings for ransom and deadly village raids from criminals focused primarily on one thing: money.

Here, AFP breaks down the evolution of Nigeria's banditry crisis.

Origins in farmer-herder conflict

Banditry grew out of land conflicts between farmers and herders.

As land degradation linked to climate change made suitable space for farming and grazing even more scarce, violence escalated, with attacks and reprisals falling along ethnic lines.

Since 2011, as arms trafficking increased and the wider Sahel fell into turmoil, organised armed groups have formed. Cattle rustling and kidnapping became moneymakers in the largely impoverished countryside.

Many draw ranks from Fulani Muslim herders, giving the crisis an ethnic dimension in the mostly Muslim northwest, and a religious one in religiously mixed central Nigeria, where most farmers are Christian.

Fulani civilians meanwhile have found themselves victims of both bandits and those retaliating against them for their shared ethnicity.

The size of the groups can be staggering: in a clash with bandits in Kebbi state this month, the military attacked a motorcycle convoy of some 400 men.

 Fears of jihadist links

Between 2018 and 2023, there were more deaths from bandits than there were from jihadist groups, who are waging a separate, long-running conflict in the northeast.

In the northwest states of Kaduna and Zamfara alone, some 4,758 fatalities were reported, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a US-based monitor.

Jihadists and bandits sometimes operate in overlapping areas and have cooperated on arms trafficking.

So far, "cooperation is often transactional," said Kabir Adamu, of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence, noting bandits are largely driven by profit motives rather than ideological ones.

The threat of jihadist groups from Mali and Niger spilling over into Nigeria complicates matters further, he added, as "local communities sometimes invite jihadists to protect them from bandits".

 Is the situation getting worse?

A report published in July 2024 by ACLED and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that as bandits in the northwestern states of Kaduna and Zamfara consolidated power and shifted to taxing artisanal mines and farmers in recent years, violence dropped -- though those operations are carried out under the threat of force.

But bandits have spread outside of their historic northwest heartlands, with the situation "getting worse" in central Nigeria despite recent military gains in the northwest, said Mannir Fura-Girke, a security analyst based in the region.

Beacon Security recorded a 100 percent increase in abductions between the first half of 2024 and 2025, while "armed attacks" spiked by more than 250 percent.

Fura-Girke said massive convoys like the one in Kebbi have become rarer over the past two years, as the military has stepped up its assaults.

Recent gains include the disruption of an arms pipeline running from Libya, Fura-Girke said.

But the military remains overstretched, despite better coordination between the air force and army.

Others warn that a military response can only accomplish so much

Peace deals

Bandits can find it easier to recruit new members after they destroy people's farms, livelihoods and other economic opportunities -- especially in areas where many people are already out of school or unemployed, said Oluwole Ojewale, researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.

The government has launched a disarmament and de-radicalisation programme in the northwest, as it has done in the northeast for jihadists.

But peace deals can be difficult to strike, said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher at Good Governance Africa, given that an agreement in one state does not stop bandits from just carrying out a raid elsewhere. They operate in large, ungoverned forests that straddle several porous state borders.

Deals that are not done "in coordination" across multiple state governments will likely fail, Samuel warned.