Insights
Reframing Nigeria’s Banditry Crisis: From Emotional Narratives to Strategic Clarity
Nigeria Banditry is once again trapped in a familiar and dangerous cycle: confronting a grave national security threat through emotionally charged narratives, partisan framings, and poorly differentiated solutions that blur the line between grievance and criminality. The armed banditry plaguing Northern Nigeria—particularly across the North-West and parts of the North-Central—has generated an avalanche of commentary for and against dialogue with bandits. While supporters of dialogue are often cast as well-intentioned, their opponents frequently argue that such a stance is insensitive to the victims of banditry.
This essay intervenes in that conversation. Its purpose is not to provoke a sterile debate between advocates of ‘dialogue’ and proponents of ‘kinetic action,’ nor to dismiss non-kinetic tools wholesale. Rather, it seeks to interrogate the assumptions, misdiagnoses, and conceptual errors that increasingly shape public discourse on banditry, often in ways that undermine Nigeria’s national security rather than strengthen it. What is urgently required is clarity of threat, precision of categorisation, and discipline in policy response. Banditry in Northern Nigeria is neither monolithic nor reducible to a single narrative of grievance. Treating it as such—through emotional understanding, ethnic profiling, or indiscriminate calls for amnesty—risks legitimising violent criminal enterprises, emboldening perpetrators, and eroding the state’s monopoly over the use of force.
I write neither as a passive observer nor as a theorist detached from the theatre of violence. Before entering public service, I spent over a decade as a journalist covering conflict and insecurity in Northern Nigeria. I later served as Spokesperson to the Government of Kaduna State and pioneer Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs. For nearly a decade, I was a member—and later Secretary—of the State Security Council, actively involved in security operations, liaison between the Government of Kaduna State and security forces, coordination of intelligence gathering and internal security, among other responsibilities.
My work took me repeatedly into frontline areas: Birnin Gwari and its adjoining corridors; the forests and flashpoints of Zamfara, Katsina, and Niger States; and into out-of-reach locations in Chikun, Igabi, Giwa, Kajuru, Kachia, Kagarko, Kauru, Kubau, and other high-risk zones across the state and beyond. My submission is, essentially, a summary of the practical knowledge from my involvement.
Banditry in Northern Nigeria today is not primarily a grievance-based phenomenon seeking political redress. It is a violent, profit-driven criminal ecosystem that has evolved into a quasi-corporate enterprise, with diversified revenue streams, transnational arms supply chains, and entrenched leadership structures. To treat it otherwise is to misread the threat.
Banditry is not new to Northern Nigeria. Historical accounts trace cattle rustling and armed robbery as far back as 1891 around Dansadau, where some traditional rulers were accused of colluding with bandits. Cross-border criminality involving some Tuareg, Fulani, Gobirawa, and Asebenawa actors existed during the colonial period, but these activities were limited in scale and lethality, constrained by the absence of widespread small arms proliferation.
The contemporary mutation of banditry emerged gradually but decisively in the post-2011 period. What began as rural criminality—cattle rustling, highway robbery, and communal disputes—metastasised into mass kidnapping, village annihilation, sexual violence, arms and drug trafficking, territorial control, and many other challenges. The turning point was not merely grievance but weaponisation: the transition from sticks and swords to pump-action rifles and, eventually, AK-47s and other high-calibre weapons.
Scholarly work, including that of Dr. Murtala Rufai, identifies Alhaji Kundu and Buhari Tsoho (Buharin Daji) as architects of the first modern bandit gang. Their operations expanded rapidly across Zamfara and neighbouring states, eventually spawning over 120 gangs by 2021. Between 2011 and 2021 alone, these groups reportedly killed over 12,000 people, displaced tens of thousands, destroyed entire villages, and stole hundreds of thousands of livestock.
Crucially, the early victims of modern banditry were Fulani herders whose cattle were rustled en masse by bandits of the same Fulani extraction. Eventually, these legitimate cattle owners resorted to self-help by also acquiring low-calibre weapons to protect their livestock from being rustled by the bandits, as police and traditional rulers’ interventions failed and the authorities turned a blind eye—not seeing the dangers ahead and just perceiving the development as usual intra-Fulani herders feud. In return, because of their contacts and resources, the bandits started acquiring automatic weapons and overpowered these legitimate cattle owners and massively rustled their cattle. It also got to a stage where bandits were kidnapping these cattle owners and demanding herds of cattle or its equivalent in cash as ransom. Many cattle owners who had no herds of cattle to present nor money to pay as ransom were killed, and some of their daughters and wives were forcibly taken as sex slaves. This trend impoverished these owners, driving many of their kin to join banditry to recover stolen cattle. Others joined gangs like the ‘Kungiyar Gayu’ to demand pastoral unity and justice in response to cattle rustling, extortions, allegations of injustices by local traditional rulers, police partialities, politicians, local court corruption, and other abnormal practices that exposed them to extreme poverty without a source of livelihood. Some were also brainwashed by bandits to join banditry in the name of resisting a perceived agenda against their ethnicity in view of social discrimination and stereotyping.
As I have previously argued, the first main targets of Kundu and Tsoho’s gang were the legitimate Fulani cattle owners. Once they were finished with them, they turned to rustling the farming cattle (Shanun Huda) of Hausa farmers, alongside killings, kidnappings, gender-based violence of the Hausa women, confiscation of properties, and the destruction of farms. In response, Hausa farming communities formed volunteer groups, commonly referred to as ‘Yan-Sakai’ or ‘Yan-Banga’.
The excesses of these volunteers—generalising and categorising all Fulani, including herders who were also victims, as complicit—drew a dangerous ethnic battle line. The rural Fulani herders could no longer access towns and markets, while Hausa farming communities could not access their farms deep in the forest. Markets became inaccessible. Farms were abandoned. Forests became battlefields. This development set in motion killings and counter-killings, even as cattle rustling intensified. In the midst of this, kidnapping for ransom emerged, with bandits carrying out abductions and the ‘Yan-Sakai’ organizing counter attacks—excesses that affect the innocent based on shared ethnicity. This dynamic further compounds the crisis, as aggrieved innocents seek vengeance, since there is no justice system to dispense justice, while the bandits and ‘Yan-Sakai’ pursue their own, parallel cycles of retribution.
The ‘Yan-Sakai’ killing of a Fulani leader, Alhaji Isshe of Chilin village in Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State—an event recorded as occurring on 16th August 2012—marked a decisive escalation. As Rufai noted in his thesis, they carried out the public murder on the accusation that he was harboring criminals and rustlers. Reprisal followed reprisal. What began as criminality hardened into an ethnicised cycle of violence, even as bandit gangs expanded operations against all communities regardless of identity. By the time the government acted, the criminality had become entrenched across several centres of gravity in Zamfara State and neighbouring corridors. Kidnapping and attacks intensified around 2013 and resurged in 2016 across Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Niger, Plateau, and Benue.
A major obstacle to an effective response has been the tendency of some media sections to fracture the banditry narrative along ethnic and religious lines: one story for Zamfara and Katsina, another for non-Hausa communities in Plateau and Benue.
The criminality perpetrated by the bandits—for instance, in Benue and Plateau states—further ignited the long-standing farmers-herders, land-grabbing, and indigene-settler tensions and crises, which usually take on religious and ethnic dimensions because the farmers are largely non-Fulani Christians while the herders are Fulani Muslims. This escalation occurred despite a positive history of Fulani-Tiv and Fulani-Berom relations built on complementary farming and pastoralism over time.
The good side of Tiv and Fulani brotherhood was well captured by Akiga Sai (1898-1959) in his book ‘History of the Tiv’. The exact passage is: “Besieged with animosity from their neighbours, the Tiv pulled out from their neighbors, the Tiv pulled out from their midst and migrated north-east, if one uses a modern compass, until they met with another alien group called Fulani and mingled with them. The Fulani never troubled them by interfering with their way of life. They formed close bonds with each other. In case of any attack by another group, the Fulani would easily repel such an attack. The Tiv marvelled at the dexterity with which the Fulani fought and defeated aggressor ethnic groups and nicknamed the Fulani pul, meaning ‘conqueror’ in the Tiv language.”
Akiga Sai was a man of historic firsts. He was the first Tiv man to declare himself a Christian in 1912 and was among the first group of four to be baptised in 1917. He became the first Tiv to read and write, edited the first Tiv newsletter (Mwanger u Tiv) published by the Gaskiya Corporation, served as the first Tiv elected politician in the Northern House of Assembly, was one of the delegates sent to the London constitutional conference in 1953, and authored the first book ever written by a Tiv person. He completed the Tiv language manuscript for his book, ‘History of the Tiv’, in 1935. An edited English translation by Rupert East was first published by the International African Institute in 1939 under the title ‘Akiga’s Story: the Tiv tribe as seen by one of its members.’
In a separate 2016 article on Nigerian linguistics, the scholar Farooq Kperogi notes: “Again, although the Fulani and the Berom of Plateau State see themselves as belonging to the furthest poles of northern Nigeria’s political and cultural divide, especially in light of the recent internecine ethnic conflict in Plateau State, they not only belong to the larger Niger Congo language family (to which many languages in central and southern Nigeria belong); they actually belong to the same Atlantic Congo subfamily of the Niger Congo family.”
These historical and linguistic ties underscore how the contemporary framing of conflict along rigid ethnic lines is dangerous, one that bandits and partisan narratives exploit. Much as there’s a problem, the better part of the past can be used in reframing narratives to halt bloodshed and exploit the strengths of diversities and the ubiquitous of all humans.
Furthermore, the fact that banditry is perpetrated by criminals whose ethnic identity is traceable to Fulani has exacerbated the problem. I have argued elsewhere that, despite the symbiotic nature of banditry and farmers-herders conflicts, there is a fundamental difference between the two; and all parties (farmers and herders communities) are ultimately victims of the banditry perpetrated by these criminals and their collaborators who are driven by economics and terror. The book ‘The Root Cause of Farmers-Herders Crisis in North Central Nigeria’ by Plangshak Musa Suchi and Sallek Yaks Musa explores this problematic nexus in greater detail.
The media’s selective framing fuels polarization and obscures the underlying criminal logic that drives the violence. Banditry is not tribal or identity-based violence but a form of terrorism and criminality perpetrated by criminal elements who must be viewed and treated as such. Ethnic profiling weakens the collective battle against crime, complicates counter-banditry campaigns, and strengthens the bandits’ emotional narratives.
At its core, contemporary banditry is sustained by money. What began as cattle rustling evolved into a sophisticated criminal economy with multiple income streams: ransom payments, cattle sales, arms trafficking, illegal mining, protection levies, forced taxation, mercenary killings, drug peddling, and collaboration with transnational criminal networks across borders. Some kingpins transitioned from field operations into full-time arms dealing, supplying weapons not only to their own gangs but to other criminal actors. In certain forest corridors, weapons became easier to obtain than food. The accumulation of wealth allowed bandits to establish shadow governance structures in ungoverned spaces and thrive in their lucrative enterprise of crime.
Faced with mass casualties and public pressure, several state governments in the past turned to dialogue and peace accords. Early attempts at negotiation were documented, such as a reported meeting with the bandit leader Buharin Daji at Gobirawa Chali village in December 2016. Zamfara, Katsina, and others experimented repeatedly with negotiations, arms surrender ceremonies, and promises of reintegration. Key events include a peace agreement in Katsina on 15th January 2017, a major surrender ceremony in Zamfara on 16th December 2019, and another peace accord enacted by the Zamfara state government in 2019. Each time, violence temporarily subsided—only to return with greater ferocity.
Former Governor Aminu Bello Masari’s frustration was telling: peace accords rarely lasted beyond a few months. Bandits regrouped, rearmed, and resumed operations. In Kaduna State, an attempt to suggest dialogue was rebuffed, and the state maintained an outright rejection of negotiation—a stance hardened by major attacks in 2021 and 2022. This position stemmed from a hard-earned assessment: financially incentivised criminals have little reason to abandon lucrative violence. Dialogue is not inherently wrong. Its error lies in misapplication.
A central failure in Nigeria’s discourse is the refusal to distinguish between categories of armed actors involved in the banditry cycle. There exists a group of low-risk non-state actors: individuals who armed themselves defensively after suffering attacks from bandits or vigilantes, as earlier discussed. They do not engage in predatory kidnapping but in violence associated with the repercussions of attacks and criminality perpetrated by bandits. These actors and communities can be engaged through dialogue, disarmament, and state protection, alongside an emphasis on recourse to the law and the avoidance of stereotyping that creates chains of serial attacks and counter-attacks resulting in killings and displacement while banditry flourishes.
But there is a second group: heavily armed, profit-driven bandit networks responsible for mass killings as hired mercenaries; serial kidnappings of students, citizens and expatriates; cattle rustling; attacks on schools and hospitals to cripple education and healthcare service delivery; attacks and killings of worshippers at mosques and churches, as well as at markets, farms, and rivers during fishing; the burning of communities and territorial control; the displacement of communities; the enslavement of community members to run errands and service their logistical needs for petrol and food; and the conscription of others from these enslaved communities into armed banditry and other related crimes. They impose protection levies on communities and levies for the clearing of farms, farming, and harvesting. They engage in armed robbery, maintain informant networks that aid targeted kidnappings, and coerce communities to place their wards on routine sentry duty to report security force movements while forbidding them from volunteering information or responding to official inquiries—a directive enforced by the threat of execution. They are also involved in illegal mining, procuring and trafficking in arms and drugs, carrying out joint operations and fusing with ideologically based terror groups, attacks on critical national infrastructure, and gender-based violence, including the impunity with which they make minors and married women into sex slaves, and attacks on security forces—carting away arms and committing other forms of violent attacks for monetary gain and objectives that undermine national security and Nigeria’s sovereignty. These actors operate criminal franchises.
Appeasement or kid-glove approaches only strengthen them, as practical study shows they rush to embrace truces when weakened by the coercive power of the state, buying time to restock and rebalance their armoury. Within this category are those they conscripted; if these individuals surrender voluntarily and give up their arms, it should be honoured while they are profiled, further disarmed, and processed as guaranteed by law and protocols.
Advocates of dialogue often underestimate the intelligence advantage held by security agencies. Lawful interception, human intelligence networks, and post-operation verification provide a far clearer picture of bandit intentions than any forest-level engagement. For those familiar with security management trends, these capabilities provide intelligence agencies with crucial advantages. They enable the collection of real-time details and background intelligence on armed groups, putting strategic communications, tactics, and decoys at the agencies’ fingertips—all without the knowledge of the groups themselves or of the commenting public. Bandits stage theatrical performances for emissaries: choreographed displays of arms, rehearsed grievances, emotional appeals. These are psychological operations designed to conceal their real motive, which is fundamentally criminal and nothing more. What emissaries hear is not truth—it is an emotional narrative, as many advocates do not engage in post-intelligence verification that security agencies conduct and from which they glean actionable intelligence.
Nigeria has paid dearly for ignoring early warning signs: Maitatsine, Boko Haram, and now banditry. Each followed the same trajectory—dismissal, appeasement, escalation, catastrophe. Recent statistics underline the cost. According to a report issued by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in December 2024, which calls for deeper reflection on the economy of banditry, between May 2023 and April 2024, the nation recorded more than 600,000 deaths from insecurity, with 614,937 citizens killed nationwide. The North-West had the highest figure with 206,030, followed by the North-East with 188,992, while the least was recorded in the South-West at 15,693. The Bureau, in the said report which has not been countered, added that 2,235,954 Nigerians were kidnapped and a total of ₦2,231,772,563,507 (approximately $1,438,040,707) was paid in ransom.
The report stated that the North-West remained dominant in Nigeria’s kidnap-for-ransom landscape, recording 425 incidents, or 42.6 per cent of total cases nationwide. The region also accounted for 2,938 victims, representing 62.2 per cent of all abducted persons. This report and the recent one issued by SBM Intelligence in December 2025 are worrisome, presenting a clear scenario and a sign that the nation must tread with caution.
Banditry in Northern Nigeria is not a misunderstanding to be resolved through sentiment and politicking. It is a national security threat that demands conceptual clarity, differentiated responses, and state resolve. Dialogue has a place—but only where actors are willing to genuinely disengage. Criminal enterprises masquerading as aggrieved must be confronted with lawful, proportionate, and decisive force. Nigeria’s future security depends not on emotional understanding, but on strategic honesty.
To move forward, Nigeria must formally abandon the tendency to treat “bandits” as a single category. A national threat differentiation doctrine should be adopted across federal and state security architecture, clearly distinguishing between low-risk armed non-state actors, who are defensive and grievance-driven, and high-risk entrepreneurial bandit networks, which are profit-driven, transnationally connected, and heavily armed criminal franchises. This distinction should guide who may be engaged, who must be disarmed, and who must be confronted with the might of the state. Without this clarity, dialogue and force will continue to be applied blindly, with counterproductive results.
Consequently, dialogue, reconciliation, and reintegration must be surgically applied, not morally universalised. Engagement should be limited to individuals who do not engage in kidnapping for ransom, do not command armed groups, have no history of mass killings or sexual violence, and are willing to submit to biometric registration, vetting, and monitoring. Such processes must be embedded within formal Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) frameworks, not ad hoc political expediency arrangements. Any negotiation with high-value bandit leaders constitutes strategic appeasement and should be reconsidered.
The bandit economy survives on cash flow. Therefore, payments by communities for “peace,” protection, access to farms, mining, or ceasefires must be officially discouraged because they are indirect terror financing and a source of oxygen for the crisis. Communities must be protected so that survival payments and ransom do not become their only option, and networks in communities involved in ceasefire payments or facilitation ought to be dismantled. Ending violence requires cutting revenue, and no line enabling or sustaining a revenue source should be taken lightly.
For entrenched, profit-driven bandit groups, force must be lawful, precise, relentless, and intelligence-led. Operations should prioritise command nodes, arms supply chains, logistics corridors, financial intermediaries, and forest-based staging areas. This is not collective punishment; it is targeted state enforcement of the monopoly of violence.
The Kaduna-bound train attack of 2022 and similar incidents demonstrate a dangerous convergence between bandit networks and ideological terrorist elements. Nigeria must treat this convergence as an early-stage insurgency risk, disrupt funding overlaps, shared training, and weapons transfers, and prevent bandit networks from evolving into full-spectrum terrorist organisations, as happened with Boko Haram. History shows the cost of ignoring this phase is catastrophic.
Bandits thrive where the state is absent. Security operations must be followed immediately by permanent security presence, the reopening of schools and health facilities, the restoration of markets and rural livelihoods, and the reinstatement of administrative control through courts and civil authority. Clearing operations without holding and governing will only recycle violence.
Furthermore, the state must lead a deliberate narrative reset. Official communication should describe banditry as criminal violence—a threat to the common good that must be addressed. Media framing that profiles entire communities must be actively discouraged, and law enforcement actions must be visibly even-handed. While community self-defence emerged from necessity, its excesses escalated violence. The security outfits being established by some states must be regulated and trained in human rights and rules of engagement, placed under clear legal authority, and held accountable for abuses. Unregulated activities compound the crisis and fuel cycles of attacks.
Nigeria’s history—Maitatsine, Boko Haram, now banditry—reveals a pattern of ignored warnings. Intelligence assessments must translate into early action, not delayed consensus. Political hesitation in the face of clear threat indicators must be treated as a national security failure. Prevention is always cheaper—in lives, legitimacy, and resources—than containment.
Finally, Nigeria must stop debating banditry primarily as a sociological misunderstanding. It is a violent criminal economy, and a threat to national security and all the negative consequences earlier discussed. The central lesson from the foregoing is simple: If emotional narratives continue to override intelligence, law, and experience, the country risks repeating the very mistakes that produced its gravest security catastrophes.
Will Africa Follow Niger Republic? By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
Africa’s greatest economic contradiction is buried beneath its own soil. Across the continent lie enormous deposits of oil, gas, uranium, gold, lithium, cobalt, copper, diamonds and other strategic minerals, yet many of the countries sitting on these resources continue to struggle with poverty, unemployment, weak industrialisation and the steady movement of their young people towards Europe, North America and other destinations in search of better opportunities.
For decades, much of Africa’s natural wealth has travelled outward as raw material, while the greater economic value created through processing, refining, manufacturing and technology has accumulated elsewhere. Africa has supplied the resources that feed global industries, but has too often remained at the lower end of the economic chain, buying back finished products at prices far removed from what it earned when those raw materials left its soil.
That contradiction is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore because of what is happening in Niger Republic. Since General Abdourahamane Tiani came to power following the July 26, 2023 coup, his government has increasingly pursued greater control over Niger’s natural resources. What initially appeared to be part of the broader political rupture between Niamey and its former colonial power, France, has gradually developed into a wider policy of resource nationalism.
On June 19, 2025, Niger’s Council of Ministers approved the nationalisation of Société des Mines de l’Aïr, SOMAÏR, the uranium company operating at Arlit in the Agadez region. SOMAÏR was established in 1968 and began uranium production in 1971. Before nationalisation, French nuclear company Orano held 63.4 per cent, while Niger’s state mining company, SOPAMIN, held 36.6 per cent.
Between 1971 and 2024, SOMAÏR produced 81,861 tonnes of uranium, of which 80,518 tonnes were commercialised. Figures presented by the Nigerien government showed that Orano had taken 86.3 per cent of the commercialised production, while SOPAMIN accounted for 9.2 per cent.
In August 2026, the government took another step. It awarded the In Azaoua large-scale uranium mining permit in Arlit to Teloua Safeguarding Uranium Mining Company, TSUMCO, the state company created to replace SOMAÏR and continue operations over the former SOMAÏR perimeter. At its August 21 meeting, the Council of Ministers also approved the reassignment of another uranium permit, Madaouela I, to the state-linked Madaouela Mining Company.
The government has adopted a similar approach in the petroleum sector. On June 12, 2026, Niger’s Petroleum Minister, Hamadou Tini, announced that the government was reviewing the hydrocarbons code and preparing a new production-sharing contract model. He said the reforms were intended to strengthen the state’s negotiating capacity and increase the economic benefits accruing to Niger. He also disclosed plans to review provisions relating to cost recovery by petroleum operators and stressed the importance of training Nigerien professionals capable of negotiating more effectively with international companies.
Niger has also established MAZOUMAWA National Gold Company as part of its attempt to strengthen national control over gold resources and the country’s gold value chain. In January 2026, its Director-General, Abdou Ousseini, said the company intended to contribute to gold exploitation while controlling the valorisation and value chains of gold in Niger. The company had two exploration permits in the Dan Issa area and had collected more than 6,000 samples for analysis.
There is, therefore, something much bigger than the Niger-France dispute at stake. It is the ownership of Africa’s economic future.
For generations, the structure has remained remarkably familiar. Africa digs, pumps, cuts and exports. Someone elsewhere processes, refines, manufactures, finances and markets. The finished product eventually returns to African consumers at a considerably higher price.
That arrangement is not entirely without benefits. Foreign companies bring capital, technology, technical expertise, international markets and, in some cases, infrastructure that many African countries would struggle to provide on their own. The problem begins when that relationship becomes permanent, when Africa remains trapped at the extraction end of the value chain while the greater economic benefits of its resources accumulate elsewhere.
The African Union has recognised this problem for years through initiatives such as the African Mining Vision and its commodities strategy. The objective is for Africa to move from being primarily a supplier of raw materials towards greater value addition, stronger local content, higher returns from commodities and meaningful participation in global value chains.
The African Development Bank estimates that Africa possesses about 30 per cent of the world’s mineral reserves and could capture more than 10 per cent of the projected $16tn revenues from key green minerals by 2030. Yet the same institution reported that Africa received about $190.7bn in financial inflows in 2022 while losing approximately $587bn through financial leakages.
The implication is clear: Africa does not necessarily need to chase away foreign investors. It needs to become a better negotiator, a more capable participant and, ultimately, a stronger owner of the industries built around its own resources.
Botswana offers an important illustration. Its diamond industry was not built by simply shutting foreign capital out. Debswana, the company at the centre of Botswana’s diamond production, is jointly owned by the Government of Botswana and De Beers, with each holding 50 per cent. The partnership has become a major contributor to Botswana’s GDP, foreign exchange earnings and government revenue and employs about 5,000 staff and 6,000 contractors.
Tanzania has pursued another route by giving the state a minimum 16 per cent non-dilutable free-carried interest in mining companies, alongside taxation, royalties and other government participation mechanisms. Its local-content framework also seeks to ensure that Tanzanian companies participate in supplying goods and services to the mining industry.
Ghana has moved in a different direction. Rather than nationalising its gold mines, it has sought to increase domestic participation through regulation. Its 2025 local-content framework required surface mining operations to be undertaken by wholly Ghanaian-owned contractors, while underground contract mining requires at least 50 per cent Ghanaian ownership.
Zimbabwe’s lithium policy provides perhaps an even clearer example of beneficiation as a development strategy. After banning exports of unprocessed lithium ore in 2022, Zimbabwe announced in June 2025 that it would prohibit the export of lithium concentrates from January 1, 2027. The objective is to encourage greater domestic processing. Zimbabwe is Africa’s leading lithium producer, while Chinese-owned companies have invested more than $1bn in the country’s lithium sector since 2021.
If lithium is increasingly important to batteries and energy storage, Zimbabwe wants more of the economic activity generated by that demand to take place within Zimbabwe rather than elsewhere. That is precisely the direction Africa needs to consider.
The International Energy Agency reported in October 2025 that Africa captures less than one per cent of the value generated from manufacturing clean-energy technologies and their components, despite supplying around 75 per cent of global manganese, 70 per cent of cobalt and nearly 20 per cent of copper. The IEA estimates that moving into beneficiation, processing and manufacturing could raise the market value of minerals produced in Africa to about $120bn by 2040.
This is why the African Union’s Africa Green Minerals Strategy, adopted in March 2025, is significant. The strategy calls for Africa to move beyond raw mineral exports towards value addition at source, regional industrialisation, local beneficiation, job creation and economic diversification. The AU’s African Forum on Mining subsequently called for stronger continental bargaining power and high-level African critical-minerals diplomacy to ensure that mineral agreements prioritise local value addition rather than simply facilitate the export of raw materials.
Niger, therefore, should not be judged simply by whether its nationalisation policy succeeds or fails. Its experiment should be watched for what it reveals about both the possibilities and dangers of greater resource control.
National ownership does not automatically produce efficient management. A government can own a mine and still mismanage it. It can control petroleum and still import refined products. It can take over gold operations while communities around the mines remain poor. It can remove foreign companies and replace foreign inefficiency with domestic corruption.
Niger itself has already encountered some of these complications. Orano has pursued arbitration over the nationalisation of its interest in SOMAÏR. In September 2025, Reuters reported that about 1,500 tonnes of uranium, valued at roughly $270m, remained stockpiled at the former SOMAÏR mine. Orano had begun arbitration proceedings and warned against the material being transferred or sold without authorisation.
A country seeking greater control over its resources needs competent geologists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, negotiators, regulators and financial institutions. It needs reliable electricity, roads, railways and ports. It needs research institutions capable of developing technology. It needs transparent contracts and systems through which citizens can know what governments receive from their natural resources and how those revenues are spent.
Without these foundations, nationalisation can become an expensive political gesture. But Africa should not allow the imperfections of resource nationalism to become an excuse for maintaining a system in which the continent remains primarily an exporter of raw materials.
Nigeria illustrates the urgency. The country has oil, gas, gold, lithium, iron ore, coal and other minerals, but its economic history has repeatedly demonstrated the danger of exporting natural resources without developing sufficient downstream capacity.
The Tinubu administration has increasingly emphasised local processing and value addition in critical minerals. In July 2026, President Bola Tinubu commissioned a $250m lithium mining and processing plant in Nasarawa State with a capacity of 6,000 tonnes of lithium processing per day. It was described as Africa’s largest lithium processing facility.
Nigeria should not stop at processing lithium. It should be thinking about the battery industry, electric vehicles, energy-storage systems, industrial chemicals, research and the skilled workforce required to support those industries.
The same thinking should apply across Africa. A Congolese citizen living beside cobalt deposits should have access to opportunities created by cobalt. A Zambian living around copper mines should benefit from industries built around copper. A Ghanaian should see gold not merely as something extracted and exported, but as an opportunity for refining, jewellery, financial services and manufacturing. A Nigerien should be able to look at uranium and see engineering, science, technology and industrial opportunities. And a Nigerian should be able to look at oil and gas without accepting that the country’s natural destiny is simply to export crude and import refined products.
If Africa can retain more value from its resources, that value can help finance universities, technical schools, electricity, transport infrastructure, healthcare, manufacturing and technology. Those investments can create productive employment. Productive employment can reduce the economic pressure pushing young Africans towards foreign shores.
The real lesson from Niger, therefore, is not that every African government should wake up tomorrow and nationalise every foreign-owned mine, oilfield or industrial operation. That would be a simplistic reading of what is happening. The lesson is that the old bargain deserves serious reconsideration.
Africa should welcome investors, but it should negotiate better. It should welcome technology, but build its own capacity. It should welcome international capital, but ensure that African capital also grows. It should permit extraction, but demand value addition. It should collect royalties and taxes, but also build industries around the resources generating them.
Alabidun is a media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com
Are Killings in Niger State Beyond Ordinary? By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
There is something increasingly unsettling about what is happening in Niger State. It is not simply the frequency of killings that should worry anymore. It is the changing character of the deaths, the places where they occur, the people caught up in them and, perhaps most importantly, the growing difficulty of explaining them as separate incidents.
It disturb one, of recent, to know that in one part of the state, terrorists are killing security personnel and civilians. In another, communities are settling old grievances with blood. Elsewhere, worshippers are taken away after Friday prayers. Then, within the same week, 37 suspected illegal miners die while in the custody of a government security agency. Each incident has its own immediate explanation, but when placed side by side, they begin to suggest something much bigger than ordinary insecurity.
Niger State has lived with banditry, kidnapping and communal violence for years, particularly in parts of Shiroro, Rafi, Munya, Mariga and other vulnerable areas. But 2026 has brought a succession of incidents that should make any serious observer pause.
On April 9, reports emerged of coordinated attacks in Shiroro Local Government Area in which scores of people were killed. Premium Times reported that at least 60 people, including more than 40 security operatives, were reportedly killed in attacks on communities including Bagna and Lanta. Although the details varied between accounts, but the central fact was difficult to ignore: armed men were able to attack several communities and inflict heavy casualties on both civilians and those deployed to protect them.
The disastrous event of Shiroro goes beyond the number of casualties. On many occasions, residents of the area have complained about the difficulty of getting timely security intervention whenever armed men move into their communities. The problem is not merely that criminals possess weapons. It is that rural communities are often separated from effective security response by bad roads, difficult terrain, inadequate communication and the sheer size of the state.
Then came the violence around Tegina in Rafi Local Government Area. On July 1, Premium Times reported that at least 48 people had been killed in violence involving Fulani and Kamuku communities. Residents said 42 people, largely women, children and elderly persons, were killed in an attack on a Kamuku community, while about six herders were subsequently killed in retaliation. The incident was particularly disturbing because it demonstrated how quickly communal grievances can become a cycle in which one death produces another. Once that cycle begins, the state is no longer dealing with one criminal incident. It is dealing with the gradual destruction of trust between communities.
But the August attacks in Borgu Local Government Area brought another dimension to the crisis. On August 21, armed men attacked communities during Friday prayers and abducted Muslim worshippers. The eventual account from the local government chairman, Mohammed Abdullahi, was that more than 60 people had been abducted across four villages and nearly 30 killed. The affected communities included Gbeji, Kpenya, Giyan Gbasu and Dekara. The fact that the victims were gathered for Jumaat prayers made the incident particularly disturbing, but it also exposed how far insecurity has penetrated ordinary life. Places of worship, which should represent sanctuary, are not immune. Villagers cannot assume that gathering for prayer will protect them from armed men.
The Borgu attack also exposed the practical weakness of the state’s security response. Difficult terrain and a damaged bridge were cited among the obstacles confronting security personnel. That may be a genuine operational problem, but it raises another question: if authorities know that communities are isolated by terrain and infrastructure, what preventive arrangements exist for those communities? Security cannot always depend on a distress call followed by a journey through impassable roads. Intelligence, local surveillance, communication networks and rapid-response arrangements are supposed to compensate for precisely these weaknesses. When they do not, citizens are left to hope that the attackers will not come.
Strangely, the deaths of 37 suspected illegal miners in NSCDC custody on September 17 have changed the character of the conversation entirely. According to the NSCDC, the victims were among scores of people arrested during enforcement operations against suspected illegal mining at the M.I. Wushishi/Lukoto axis on September 15 and 16. The corps initially said the detainees were found dead after what it described as a suspected disease outbreak, while stressing that the actual cause had not been established and would require medical examination.
That explanation cannot simply be accepted or rejected before the investigation is completed. Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago has ordered forensic examinations and autopsies, while the police, NSCDC and other security agencies have opened investigations. The Federal Government has also suspended the Niger State NSCDC Commandant, Suberu Siyaka Aniviye, pending the outcome of the investigation. There have been allegations from relatives and other sources about overcrowding, poor detention conditions and possible mistreatment, but those allegations must be established by evidence. At this stage, the scientifically established cause of the 37 deaths is still pending.
That caution, however, should not diminish the seriousness of what happened. Thirty-seven people did not die in a battlefield. They died after being arrested and taken into the custody of a government security organisation. The state therefore has a heightened responsibility to explain, with evidence, what happened between the moment of arrest and the moment their bodies were taken to the mortuary. Were they medically screened when arrested? How many people were held in the detention facility? How long were they there? What did they eat and drink? Was there ventilation? Was medical assistance available? Were any of them sick before their arrest? Were hazardous substances associated with mining involved? Were there minors among them? These are not questions for social media speculation. They are questions that a credible investigation must answer.
Governor Bago himself said possible causes being examined included suffocation from overcrowding and exposure to hazardous chemicals associated with illegal mining, while cautioning that no conclusion should be reached before forensic and medical examinations were completed. That is the right approach. The tragedy should not become another occasion for competing political narratives to outrun evidence.
But there is a larger issue here that Niger State cannot afford to overlook. The state is dealing simultaneously with armed insurgents, banditry, communal violence, illegal mining and growing public distrust. These are not entirely unrelated problems. Illegal mining, for instance, is not simply an environmental or economic offence when it takes place in insecure areas. Mining sites can become sources of informal wealth, weapons, local influence and criminal networks. Communities struggling with poverty may depend on the activity even when government considers it illegal. Security agencies then arrive to enforce the law, often in places where trust between residents and authorities is already weak. The possibility of conflict is therefore high.
This is why the deaths in NSCDC custody deserve an investigation that goes beyond finding one or two individuals to blame. The country has seen too many official inquiries become exercises in administrative containment. A commandant is suspended, a committee is announced, condolences are issued and, after public attention moves elsewhere, the families are left with questions. Niger State should not allow this case to follow that familiar path.
If the detainees died from disease, the investigation should establish what disease, how it spread, whether it was detectable and whether reasonable medical precautions were taken. If overcrowding contributed, somebody must answer for the decision to keep so many people in unsuitable conditions. If toxic exposure contributed, the circumstances of the arrests and detention must be examined. If there was negligence or deliberate abuse, those responsible should face the law.
The same seriousness is required in the fight against the armed groups terrorising rural communities in the state. It is not enough to announce that troops have been deployed after another village has been attacked. Niger State is too large and too strategically important to be treated as a collection of isolated rural emergencies. Its proximity to the Federal Capital Territory, its international boundary with Benin Republic, its vast forests and its extensive rural settlements make its security problems a national concern.
The temptation will be to treat each tragedy separately. The Shiroro killings will be classified as terrorism. The Tegina violence will be described as a farmers-herders or communal clash. The Borgu deaths will be treated as another kidnapping incident. The NSCDC deaths will be called an unfortunate detention tragedy. Technically, those descriptions may be correct. But they cannot stop at classification. The real responsibility is to understand why so many different forms of violence are flourishing within the same geographical space.
There is also a danger in allowing residents to become accustomed to death. When a community loses ten people, the next community loses twenty, another loses forty, and then dozens die in custody, society can gradually develop a frightening tolerance for casualty figures. That is perhaps the most dangerous stage of a security crisis. Numbers begin to replace human beings. Thirty dead becomes a headline. Forty-eight becomes another headline. Sixty becomes another statistic. Yet behind every figure is a family, a household, a child, a livelihood and a future that has been abruptly removed.
Niger State should therefore resist the urge to normalise what is happening. These killings may have different immediate causes, but their cumulative effect is the same: they weaken citizens’ confidence that the state can protect life. That confidence is not restored by press statements. It is restored when communities see attackers arrested, when victims receive justice, when intelligence prevents attacks, when security personnel are held accountable for misconduct and when people taken into custody return alive to their families.
The question, therefore, is not whether every killing in Niger State has one hidden explanation. There is no evidence to support such a conclusion. The more credible concern is that the state is facing several overlapping failures at once, and each failure makes the others harder to contain. Terrorism creates displacement. Displacement creates economic hardship. Economic hardship can deepen dependence on illegal activities. Communal killings produce revenge. Weak institutional trust encourages rumours and vigilantism.
That is why the 37 deaths in NSCDC custody cannot be treated as an unrelated footnote to the wider security crisis. Neither should the killing of Muslim worshippers in Borgu be dismissed as just another kidnapping. Both incidents raise the same fundamental issue from different directions: what value does the Nigerian state place on the life of the ordinary person when that person is outside the protection of privilege?
For Niger State, the answer must now be demonstrated, not merely spoken. The dead deserve more than condolences. The families deserve facts. The communities living under the shadow of terrorists and bandits deserve protection. Those detained by security agencies deserve humane treatment, regardless of the offence for which they are suspected. And the institutions entrusted with keeping people safe must understand that accountability is not an obstacle to security; it is part of security.
Perhaps that is what makes the events of 2026 so troubling. Niger State is not experiencing one crisis. It is experiencing a convergence of crises. Until government confronts that reality with the same urgency with which it responds to individual attacks, the killings will continue to look like separate tragedies when, in fact, they are becoming chapters of the same larger story.
Alabidun is a media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com
Like Ant, Like AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, by Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
There is something deceptive about the ant. Put it beside a lion and it looks almost insignificant. Put it beside an elephant and it virtually disappears. It has no roar, no intimidating physique, no majestic stride and certainly no dramatic entrance. Yet the ant survives. More than that, it organises, adapts, carries burdens several times its body weight and, when confronted by obstacles, rarely wastes time fighting the obstacle head-on. It finds another route.
That, to my mind, is perhaps the most revealing metaphor for understanding the political career of Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. This is not an attempt to turn the governor into a political saint. He is not one. Neither is it an argument that he has won every political battle. He has not. His administration and political conduct have attracted criticisms, some of them legitimate, and his political camp has suffered setbacks. But there is one feature of his political journey that is difficult to ignore: AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has repeatedly been underestimated.
Those who dismissed him as merely a wealthy businessman entering a political arena dominated by established political structures have had to revise their calculations more than once. The journey began in earnest in 2018 when he emerged as the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate for the 2019 election. It was hardly an ordinary political contest. Kwara had for decades been associated with the political influence of the Saraki family, and the 2019 election was shaping up to be a battle over whether that influence would continue to determine the direction of the state.
AbdulRazaq entered that contest as the candidate of a growing opposition movement that had adopted the slogan “O To Ge” — enough is enough. On March 9, 2019, the slogan acquired electoral meaning when AbdulRazaq defeated the PDP candidate, Razak Atunwa, by a huge margin. AbdulRazaq secured 331,546 votes against Atunwa’s 114,754 and, remarkably, won in all 16 local government areas of the state.
That was not simply an election victory. It was the collapse of a political arrangement that many people had considered almost impossible to dislodge. AbdulRazaq became the beneficiary and symbol of that political revolution. But winning power is one thing. Keeping it is another.
The coalition that produced the 2019 victory contained powerful personalities and competing interests. Among the people who eventually found themselves on the opposite side of the governor was Lai Mohammed, the former Information and Culture Minister and one of the most influential figures in the Kwara APC. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, who had served as chairman of the state APC, also became involved in the internal struggle over the control and direction of the party. Gbemisola Saraki, another important political figure from the Saraki political family, was similarly associated with the factional disputes that emerged within the party. The disagreements were sometimes bitter and very public.
The internal crisis produced accusations, counter-accusations, rival tendencies and arguments over who truly controlled the party structure. At different points, it looked as though the internal issues could become more dangerous to AbdulRazaq than the opposition outside the APC. But the governor survived.
Also, on January 2, 2020, the Kwara State Government demolished the property known as Ile Arugbo, which was associated with the late Dr Olusola Saraki. The government argued that the property stood on land that had been illegally allocated and had been earmarked for government use. The Saraki family rejected the government’s position and challenged the action in court. The dispute became far larger than a disagreement over property.
For many people, Ile Arugbo became a physical symbol of the struggle between the political past and the present in Kwara. It was impossible to discuss the demolition without discussing the larger confrontation between the political establishment associated with the Saraki family and the new order represented by AbdulRazaq. Yet again, AbdulRazaq endured. Perhaps that is where the ant analogy becomes useful.
The ant does not defeat the elephant by pretending to be an elephant. It survives because it understands its limitations. It moves differently. It relies on persistence, organisation and patience. When one route is blocked, it looks for another.
AbdulRazaq’s political career has displayed something similar. He has not always responded to political pressure by attempting to overpower it. Sometimes he has simply waited for the political terrain to change.
The 2023 election was perhaps the clearest demonstration of that political dexterity. By then, the O To Ge coalition had lost much of the unity that characterised its 2019 campaign. Politicians who had once stood together against the Saraki establishment had moved in different directions. Some remained in the APC, some joined other parties and others developed independent political ambitions. Ordinarily, that should have presented the incumbent with a formidable problem. It did not.
Interestingly, on March 18, 2023, AbdulRazaq was re-elected with 273,424 votes, defeating the PDP candidate, Yaman Abdullahi, who scored 155,490 votes. The governor was declared winner in all 16 local government areas.
The significance of that election goes beyond the numbers because in 2019, AbdulRazaq had ridden a powerful anti-establishment wave to Government House. In 2023, he had to defend an administration whose honeymoon was long over, against an opposition that believed the fragmentation of the O To Ge coalition had created an opportunity. He still won.
That victory also demonstrated something else about AbdulRazaq’s political style. He has shown an ability to accommodate people who were previously on the other side of the political fence when circumstances change.
Politics is not a marriage ceremony, they say. There are no vows that prevent yesterday’s opponent from becoming tomorrow’s ally. That reality has become particularly relevant in the build-up to 2027. One of the most interesting names in the unfolding political drama is Senator Saliu Mustapha.
Mustapha was not always an opponent of AbdulRazaq. He was part of the APC establishment and supported the governor’s re-election in 2023. Today, the two men are political adversaries.
The senator has left the APC and emerged as the PDP candidate for Kwara Central for his re-election bid, the same seat that AbdulRazaq is seeking after leaving the Government House.
Mustapha has already expressed confidence that he will defeat the governor on election day, even declaring that the victory would come before 1pm. Such confidence is perfectly normal in politics. Every candidate must believe he can win. But confidence is not a substitute for votes, and 2027 will surely be decided by the electorate.
As it stands, hovering over the entire contest is the name of Bukola Saraki, who once occupied the seat both Mustapha and AbdulRazaq are jostling to get. No serious examination of Kwara politics can simply write Saraki out of the story. Whatever one’s opinion of him may be, his political influence and historical role in the state remain too significant to ignore.
The man who helped lead the political revolt that displaced the Saraki establishment in 2019 is now seeking election in Kwara Central, the same senatorial district that Saraki once represented. Saraki, meanwhile, has returned to active political engagement in the state and has been involved in efforts to rebuild the PDP ahead of 2027. It is therefore tempting to describe 2027 as a simple rematch between old enemies.
The 2027 election will test that contest in an entirely new way. In 2019, AbdulRazaq was the challenger riding a popular wave against an entrenched political establishment. In 2023, he was an incumbent defending his record. In 2027, he will be a departing governor asking voters to give him another platform from which to continue influencing the politics of the state. The electorate will have legitimate questions.
They will ask what his administration achieved. They will judge his record on infrastructure, education, healthcare, workers’ welfare, rural development, youth opportunities and other matters that directly affect their lives.
His opponents will remind voters about the APC crisis. They will point to the defection of Saliu Mustapha. They will invoke Saraki. They will argue that the coalition that brought AbdulRazaq to power has fractured beyond repair.
AbdulRazaq’s response will ultimately have to be more than political arithmetic. He will need to convince voters that his relevance deserves another chapter. And if his political history is any guide, he may not do it by shouting louder than his opponents. He may simply continue moving. That is why the ant is such a fitting metaphor.
The ant is not impressive because of its size. Its strength lies elsewhere. It understands that persistence can defeat intimidation, that organisation can compensate for weakness and that patience can sometimes achieve what aggression cannot.
AbdulRazaq’s political career since 2018 has offered several examples of that principle. He entered the political arena as an unlikely challenger and helped dismantle a political order that had dominated Kwara for decades. He survived bitter disagreements with former allies. He weathered the Ile Arugbo controversy. He defeated the opposition again in 2023 despite the fragmentation of the political coalition that produced his first victory. And now, as his governorship approaches its constitutional end, he is preparing for another electoral battle.
He may not be the lion in the Kwara political jungle. He has never needed to be. He has behaved more like the ant: small enough to be underestimated, patient enough to endure, organised enough to survive and persistent enough to keep moving when others assume the journey has ended. Whether he will win in 2027 remains unknown.
Alabidun is an Abuja-based media practitioner and can be reached via alabidungoldenson@gmail.com
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