UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
NIGERIA: IRIN Background Report On Banditry [19990625]

NIGERIA: IRIN Background Report On Banditry [19990625]


NIGERIA: IRIN Background report on banditry

LAGOS, 25 June (IRIN) - There is growing concern in parts of northern Nigeria over insecurity caused by bandits suspected to have come from neighbouring countries.

Scores of people have been killed and many more robbed of valuables in the past year by bands of heavily armed gunmen identified as remnants of rebel forces from years of civil war in Chad and by militant herdsmen known locally as Udawawa and said to come from Niger.

In the latest attack reported last week from the north-eastern state of Taraba, dozens of people were killed and many left with horrific injuries inflicted with swords and machetes in four local government areas: Karim Lamido, Ardo-Kola, Gassol and Bali.

In another recent attack, several villages in Katagum, Darazo and Alkaleri local government areas of the north central state of Bauchi were set ablaze, many people killed and property looted.

Armed Udawawa herdsmen were blamed for an attack on 18 June on villages in Gwoza local government area of northeast Borno State in which 13 people were killed and about 250 injured.

"The armed bandits often travel with cattle as if they're genuine herdsmen, but they're terrorising us here," a resident of Izge, which was also attacked, told IRIN.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who took office at the end of May, held a meeting on 23 June of his security council, to which governors of 10 affected northern states were invited.

"We are going to deal with threats to security in the border areas and in the areas that the bandits operate," Obasanjo said just before the meeting. "We won't fold our hands and let them do what they like, when they like and as they like."

Attacks have been reported in the past year on highways over an area covering more than 1,000 sq km, from Damaturu in the extreme, arid northeast to 10 km from Jos in the thick savannahs of the central region. Survivors have described the perpetrators as poorly clad, heavily armed men who spoke Hausa, the local language, with a strange accent and operated with uncommon violence.

"Their arms looked very sophisticated, with one mounted on tripods pointed directly on the lead bus," Ike Ochuko, a traveller whose convoy was ambushed, told 'The Guardian', a Lagos newspaper.

"But they showed some brutality that still sends shivers down my spine," he said. He added that people had their eyes gouged out and skulls split for the slightest reluctance to part with their valuables.

Security officials had been aware in the past few years that many rebel bands left over from insurgencies in impoverished Niger and Chad were crossing into Nigeria with automatic arms. However, efforts to check the bands were at best half-hearted although, on a few occasions, crack units were sent after them in search-and-destroy missions.

The issue of security in Nigeria's extreme north had at one time topped the agenda of meetings of the Nigeria, Niger, Chad Joint Commission, with the three countries pledging to cooperate on matters concerning the security of their common borders.

But efforts to check banditry slackened in the latter part of late dictator Sani Abacha's reign since he saw any military exercise in the country as a possible pretext for a coup.

As a result, the raiders have taken a huge toll in terms of lives and disrupted economic activities by attacking the network of highways that link various parts of Africa's most populous country (population 108 million).

Pastoralists and farmers have often been targetted by bandits in search of food. In the worst affected areas of the northeast, harvests are threatened as most people are afraid to go to their farms for fear of being attacked.

Presidency officials said the government was viewing the latest incidents as evidence of incipient insurgent activity and would take every necessary step to flush out the "armed infiltrators" quickly.

"We believe that everybody from the man and woman in the hamlets to the biggest man in the nation must be security conscious," Obasanjo declared after Wednesday's security meeting.

[ENDS]

[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]

Item: irin-english-1101

[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999

Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar

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