Security agencies must do more to restore the peace
Shortly after authorities in Niger State announced a phased reopening of schools, following an earlier forced closure due to mass kidnapping, gunmen raided Kasuwan-Daji village in Borgu local government area, killing dozens of the villagers. They also abducted many residents, including women and children after razing the local market and several houses. Kasuwan Daji is a neighbouring community to Papiri where more than 250 schoolchildren and their teachers were kidnapped from a Catholic school last November. While President Bola Tinubu has made the usual order to the security agencies to fish out the perpetrators, the fleeing terrorists are reportedly issuing renewed threats of attacks on other communities in the state, thus triggering panic among the people.
The attack on Kasuwan Daji is the latest in a cycle of deadly violence visited on innocent men, women and children in remote communities in Niger State, and indeed, many other rural communities in the North, with little or no security and government presence. The terrorists use vast forested areas like the idle Kainji Lake National Park as hideouts to launch serial attacks on rural schools, communities, and seizing residents for ransom. The violence in the state is further fuelled by conflict between farmers and herders over land and related resources.
Criminality in Niger has been building up for decades. In August 2009, then Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu identified a sect known as Darul Islam (House of Islam) as a potential security threat. The government was propelled to crack down on the group, whose members had lived in strict seclusion in Mokwa, a southwestern axis of the state, since the 1990s and refused to integrate and fraternised with any community. That helped to an extent to douse initial fire. But not for long as the problem has since escalated with extensive ungoverned spaces within the state amidst growing inability to neutralise the infiltration by terrorists.
On the northern axis of the State, these criminals embark on undertaking state functions, asking the communities raided or overpowered to pay taxes and levies. Shiroro, Paikoro, Mashegu and many other local government areas are incessantly terrorised by them. It took the national outrage triggered by the February 2021 raid on Government Science College in Kagara to draw attention to the descent into anarchy. There were also violent abductions of pupils from Salihu Tanko Islamiyya School in Tegina, Rafi local government, where negotiations for their release took six tragic months, with some of the children dying in captivity.
Incidentally, Niger State is Nigeria’s largest state by landmass, occupying about 76,000 square kilometres, and shares boundaries with volatile northern states of Zamfara, Kaduna and Kebbi. Unfortunately, this vast expanse of land that should ordinarily be an advantage has become home to bandits where they commit all manner of atrocities on citizens. As a containment measure, Niger State deployed vigilantes in addition to the regular security forces to fight the bandits. The Niger Special Vigilante Corps (NSVC) was designed to resolve the inadequacy of the security operations, especially the gang violence that is commonplace. But these measures have largely been ineffectual.
The increasing spate of attacks in Niger State is not only stoking unease in many rural communities, but it is also denying people access to schools, farms, and other sources of legitimate livelihood. Sadly, that is also the story of many other states, especially in the north. Borno, Zamfara, Kebbi, Kogi and Kwara States further south are increasingly bearing the brunt of atrocities from terrorists and the fleeing criminals from the Sahel. The federal government must liaise with the state for urgent security measures to contain, or better, eliminate the terrorists before they settle down in other parts of the country and cause more damage.
