Northern Nigeria is being weighed down as it carries the burden of over 4 decades of insecurity in one form or the other. Its initial problems revolved around ethno-religious clashes but has to now grapple with insurgencies and banditry.
The weight of these multiple types of insecurity means that governments at all levels struggle (or use that as an excuse not) to focus on implementing development programmes. We are flooded with daily stories of villages being ransacked and Nigerians being kidnapped and killed at random. Government’s approach has been to mobilise its security forces to tackle this menace, however, this approach has had limited success.
Currently, the country is losing control of land in Borno and Zamfara states to bandits and insurgents. Given that the state is assumed to have ‘the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’, this is alarming and threatens the integrity of the Nigerian state. We must therefore rethink our approach to dealing with the insecurity before it consumes us all.
One of the key issues when trying to tackle insecurity is the need to acknowledge that it is nuanced and we must understand the factors that lead to the emergence of the different groups that perpetuate these crimes and their unique characteristics to be able to tackle them effectively.
We can identify two types of groups and while there might be some intersect, they are founded on very different principles. How they justify their actions can help in developing strategies to combat them and we can get this from some of their narratives.
The first group comprises the ideological-based groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) whose focus is on usurping the state by taking over territory and entrenching their ideology in the areas that they conquer.
History around the world has shown that ideological groups are difficult to suppress because members are willing to risk all, including their lives for what they see as the greater good. When government tried to tackle Boko Haram in 2009, it resulted in the extra judicial killing of its leader Mohammed Yusuf. This led to the emergence of a more militant leader of the group leading to increased attacks and kidnappings including the kidnap of over 200 Chibok girls in 2014.
Over 16 years since the emergence of Boko Haram, there are few signs that it is being contained. The BBC in a report in April 2025, interviewed the governor of Borno state, Professor Zulum who warned that Boko Haram ‘now attacked and kidnapped people in many communities almost on a daily basis’. He noted thatMarte local governmentin the state has over 300 communities that are being controlled by the group. He went on to state that subduing the group has proven difficult because there are ‘informants and collaborators within the Nigerian armed forces, within the politicians’ circle, and within the communities.
Like many issues in Nigeria, opportunists are using the Boko Haram insurgency as a money pot ensuring that it makes efforts to tackle the group more difficult. Government must include identifying and holding collaborators accountable as part of its strategy or it will be one step forward, two steps back.
The second type of groups are fighting what they see as marginalisation in different forms. For the Fulani herdsmen, they cite the devastation of their livelihood through the rustling of their cattle as the basis for their current actions. They note that even those that attempt to graze their cattle are denied access to pasture with many of them attacked and killed by farmers. They have used this grievance as a springboard to terrorise the populace through kidnappings, rapes and killings while also taking advantage of the poor security apparatus to turn this into a money-making venture through the imposition of taxes of villages within their sphere of operation.
The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics report titled ‘Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey 2024’ stated that Nigerians paid over N2.2 trillion in ransom between May 2023 and April 2024 with more than N1.2 trillion paid in the Northwest alone. Many Nigerians have had to sell their assets to try and free loved ones even though many are still killed.
Older ethno-religious conflicts where groups use age-long ethnic grievances to justify their clashes have been common in parts of northern Nigeria for over 4 decades. These conflicts are common around the north central states of Plateau where there are contestations between the Fulani and Berom, Taraba/Benue between the Tiv and Jukun and southern Kaduna between the Hausa and Kataf.
These conflicts differ from other conflicts with little ideological foundations and non-pursuance of personal gains. Rather these are steeped in age long identity contestations that are bolstered by group narratives of self and the other.
Groups use claims of ‘Horizontal inequalities’ where they feel marginalised due to their identity that leads to the denial of access to education, healthcare, economic opportunities (including access to finance) and political representation. These types of perceived inequalities are very dangerous and hard to resolve when they become entrenched as part of the narratives of groups.
As government tries to tackle the insecurity on multiple fronts, it must do a few things. Firstly, as Dr. Fatima Akilu noted in 2018, it needs to set up early warning systems to guard against the recruitment of youths into ideological groups.
This process will include identifying the reasons why people are willing to join such groups and mitigating against these. There is obviously a sense of despair among youths in this country and this leads them to groups that give them a sense of purpose and some financial security.
Secondly, government needs to find a way of addressing the grievances of the Fulani that are behind the banditry in the Northwest. Some state governments currently try to reach agreements with leaders of the groups in the hopes of getting them to step down their attacks.
This includes giving them largesse sums of money, but I would argue that this only further emboldens them and does little to reduce their activities. Another dimension is the fact that many of these groups in the northwest are being used by illegal miners to protect their activities. It is interesting that government is unable to track the funds that are paid to these bandits. If government can follow and shut down the pipeline of money, it would make it more difficult for them to continue funding their activities.
Thirdly, ethnic clashes have gone on for too long and government needs to change the narrative from one of group marginalisation which currently prevails to one of inclusion. Government must ensure that perpetuators are held accountable whenever crisis occur and justice must prevail without any sense of partiality.
Mohammed Liman. PhD – balamliman@gmail.com
