Clashes between gangs, vigilantes kill over 50 in Zamfara – Report

Clashes between criminal gangs and local vigilantes have left more than 50 people dead in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state, residents told AFP Saturday. Zamfara is one of several states in northwest and central Nigeria terrorised by kidnapping-for-ransom and cattle-rustling gangs who raid villages, kill and abduct residents as well as looting homes before burning them.

Locals call the gangs bandits. Vigilantes from Zoma village in Bukkuyum district ambushed the bandits who were passing through the village on Thursday after kidnapping several people from nearby Gummi district, the sources said. “We were alerted that the bandits were heading our way, so our vigilantes laid in wait for the bandits and engaged them in a fierce gunfight,” said a traditional village chief who asked not to be identified for personal safety.

“Our vigilantes killed 44 of the bandits … we also lost nine vigilantes in the fight,” said the chief, adding that a notorious bandit commander called Jijji, who had led the kidnapping, was also killed in the fight. – Call for weapons – News of bandit attacks in remote areas is usually slow to emerge due to poor telecommunications and distance. A Zamfara state police spokesman contacted by AFP said the force had yet to receive details about the clashes.

Zoma residents Kabiru Tafida and Basiru Buhari reached by AFP gave the same account of the clashes and toll. “We call on the authorities to provide our vigilantes with guns and ammunition to fight these bandits who use sophisticated weapons,” Buhari said. Banditry in Africa’s most populous country traces its roots to conflicts between herders and farmers over access to limited land and water, made worse by climate change and population growth.

Out of the violence emerged powerful gangs, largely composed of Fulani herders — and a kidnapping economy, while at times forging alliances with jihadists. In Zamfara’s neighbouring state Katsina, a bandit leader recently told AFP that “years of injustices” drove him and other cattle herders into banditry. He spoke during a rare interview which came during the reporting of an article for The New York Review of Books, co-authored by an American academic and writer Helen Epstein and an AFP northern Nigeria reporter.

The Nigerian military routinely refers to bandits as “terrorists”, and runs a dedicated military campaign in the northwest to combat them. Worsening insecurity and the high cost of living have become major issues in the ongoing presidential campaign, as Bola Tinubu runs for a second term in January polls.