Intelligence Brief – 🇳🇬 Nigeria’s Banditry Crisis: A Fragmented Power System Threatening State Authority in the Northwest
Ujasusi Blog’s West Africa Monitoring Team | 29 August 2025 | 0255 BST
🌎 Executive Summary
Northwest Nigeria is facing a perilous security transformation, driven not by jihadist insurgency but by the emergence of highly fragmented bandit groups engaging in systemic extortion, cattle rustling, kidnapping, forced labour, and territorial control. These actors, numbering between 30,000 and 50,000 fighters across 100–200 groups, are creating parallel systems of governance in rural Nigeria. Far from being disorganised criminals, these "kachallas" (bandit leaders) run militarised operations resembling proto-states with tributary economies, armed enforcement, and delegated governance structures. This brief explores the historical roots, spatial logic, organisational structure, and implications of Nigeria’s banditry crisis.
🥷 Historical Context and Strategic Emergence
Banditry in northwest Nigeria crystallised as a major security challenge from 2011, originating in Zamfara State. Initially grounded in local grievances and pastoralist-military clashes, the phenomenon rapidly evolved beyond cattle rustling into large-scale kidnapping and protection rackets. By 2019–2020, revenue streams diversified through extortion of farming communities and artisanal miners.
Crucially, this system mirrors 18th and 19th-century political orders in the region, particularly the Sokoto Caliphate, which governed via concentric zones of influence: a central core, tribute-paying periphery, and raiding frontier. Modern-day banditry is reproducing this logic with alarming success, replacing historical caliphates with self-declared forest governments.