ARMED BANDITRY IN NIGERIA’S NORTH-WEST AND COMMUNITY PEACE ACCORD: CONSEQUENCES ON STATE SECURITY

Abstract

For over a decade now, armed banditry has become one of the major social and economic problems that characterized life among millions of the population around the North-Western part of the country. Despite the negative effects that banditry has caused, the government has been making concerted efforts to manage the excesses of the armed bandits through various combatant operations by both the military and other security operatives. Stakeholders believed the conventional operations, which were financed through budgetary supports running into trillions of naira since 2011, failed simply because of a combination of several social and economic reasons. While these operations failed, agitation have been on for the government to enter into reconciliation by way of a peace accord with the armed bandits for peace to prosper. The reconciliation measures, however, failed because of what many believed is attributed to a lack of sincerity by both the bandit criminals and the government. While the murderous activities of the armed bandits continue to resurface with grave consequences and dynamism, communities believe that, since peace is the only option, they could try the option of entering into an independent peace accord in isolation from the government. The independent peace accord has so far provided some relative peace to various communities in the North-Western part of Nigeria, even though there have been scores of armed bandit attacks that have been recorded. Despite that, many believed the idea of community dialoguing with the armed bandits in isolation from the government has produced some relative peace. The paper adopted a mixed research methodology of literature review and field interview with a view to ascertaining the extent of the facts and reasons behind the fresh community/bandits peace accord.