Last week’s abduction of about 300 school children by bandits in Kuriga, Kaduna state is the latest in a slew of such raids since the infamous 2014 Chibok schoolgirls’ mass abduction. Thousands of students have fallen victim to the booming criminal enterprise since then.
The kidnappings take place in the country’s troubled northern region, where relentless violence by insurgent Islamic militant organisations and by bandit groups with no definite ideology have crumbled communities and killed thousands of people.
While some of the Chibok school victims were forced into marriages with militants, most of the kidnappings since then have been for ransom. Bandits also attack communities to force adults into labour on seized farmlands and mining sites.
Some of the raids have targeted colleges, such as a 2021 attack on Greenfield University in Kaduna State in which at least five students were killed when parents failed to meet ransom demands.
A closer look at the security crisis in Northern Nigeria
The impoverished and educationally disadvantaged northern region of Nigeria has been worst hit by a wave of crime and insecurity.
The government claims progress against Boko Haram and its splinter Islamic State in West African Province, but the groups remain active and have established bases, including in Niger State near Abuja, outside of their original northeastern birthplace.
But a seemingly intractable problem has arisen in the northwest where large numbers of armed gangs have taken control of swaths of territory, invading schools and communities to conduct mass killings and abductions.
They have seized mining sites and farmlands and forced rural people to labour for them. The Nigerian armed forces, fatigued from fighting endless internal conflicts for more than 10 years, have done little to stop the gangs.
The gangs threaten the country’s food security because they control parts of Nigeria where much of the country’s home-grown food is produced.
Who Are The Bandits ?
There has been no claim of responsibility in the kaduna latest attack, but it happened in an area where bandits are active and have attacked communities in the past.
Historically, several findings have suggested that the bandits are of the nomadic Fulani community, who initially took up arms to fight the ethnic Hausa communities in Zamfara State over access to land and water resources.
With little or no resistance, they have now developed into organised armed groups specialising in abduction for ransom and forcibly taking over farmlands and gold mines.
Why Are The Abductions Happening?
The abductions generally are aimed at obtaining ransom and have become a lucrative business, according to Shehu Sani, a former federal lawmaker from Kaduna, where the attack occurred on Thursday.
Schoolchildren are targeted because the bandits “know that it will evoke public sympathy for the pupils, and pressure will be mounted on the government to bow to their demands,” Sani said in a post on X.
The government does not admit it, but sources close to the negotiations say ransom payments are made by both families and state governments, Sani said.
Ransom payments and other illicit incomes, such as proceeds from seized farms and mines, have helped the gangs amass arsenals of weapons, such that they have brought down military planes.
Nnamdi Obasi, an advisor at Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said the willingness of desperate families, embattled communities and even the state governments to pay ransoms has “turned mass kidnapping into arguably the most lucrative criminal enterprise in the northwest zone.”
Affected communities often are in remote rural locations where the government is largely absent, making them vulnerable to attacks from…
