Nigerian authorities killed more than 200 bandits in early January during an attack on a camp in central Kogi State. The region has become a new focal point in the government’s campaign to rein in three security threats: banditry, Islamic terrorism and separatist campaigns.
The action in Kogi State demonstrates how banditry has begun to spread into the heart of the country, bringing with it mass kidnappings and school attacks that have inflamed public opinion in the past.
In November, a criminal gang abducted more than 300 students and teachers from a boarding school in Papiri in Niger State. The Papiri kidnapping had echoes of Boko Haram’s abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Chibok in Borno State in 2014. A decade after those abductions, 82 of the 276 girls remained unaccounted for.
By some estimates 30,000 bandits operate in northwestern Nigeria, largely in Zamfara State but also in Katsina and Sokoto states. Bandits are spreading southward, traveling on motorcycles and hiding in forests.
“Banditry has emerged as the principal security challenge in the northwest,” The Soufan Center reported in August. “Despite sustained military deployments against criminal gangs since 2015 and the creation of a state-backed militia force in Zamfara two years ago, violence has continued unabated.”
Criminality in the northwest has drawn the attention of Boko Haram and Islamic State West African Province, which remain locked in their own struggle for dominance in parts of the northeast and the Lake Chad Basin.
Both groups have begun to reach into the northwest, providing financial support and training to bandit groups there.
“This has produced a fraught and fluid nexus between jihadist insurgents and criminal networks, enabling extremists to establish enclaves in the northwest,” The Soufan Center wrote.
The violence across northern Nigeria killed more than 10,200 civilians in the 18 months between early 2023 and mid-2025, according to researcher Onyedikachi Madueke.
“Insecurity is now reshaping daily life in rural Nigeria,” Madueke wrote in The Conversation. “Families are abandoning their homes. Food supply chains are being disrupted. School attendance is falling.”
Other Islamic terrorist groups have begun to take root in western Nigeria. Some of these, such as Mahmuda in Kwara State, are believed to be offshoots of Boko Haram. Others, such as Lakurawa in Kebbi State, have ties to terror groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Nigerian authorities declared Lakurawa a terrorist group in 2025.
Sahel-based Jamat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin also may be establishing a foothold in Nigeria, according to government authorities.
While Nigerian security forces battle terror groups in the northern states, separatists with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement in the southeast are threatening residents — sometimes violently — to force them to participate in an economic campaign demanding independence.
In 2020, the IPOB launched the armed Eastern Security Network to protect ethnic Igbos. However, residents say the group has inflicted suffering on them, not protection. IPOB’s founder, Nnamdi Kanu is being held by the government on terrorism charges. IPOB has repeatedly called for stay-at-home protests on Mondays and when Kanu is in court to shut down economic activity and pressure the government to release Kanu.
Residents told Deutsche Welle (DW) that they obey IPOB’s calls for stay-at-home protests because they are afraid of what its members will do to them if they don’t. More than 500 people have been killed for defying the stay-at-home order.
“Businesses are shut down and shops locked down,” Gift Chigo, a resident in Imo, told DW. “And to be honest, we don’t necessarily sit at home because we support the IPOB, but out of fear. It’s not about solidarity, it’s about [protecting] ourselves. What can we do? Nothing.”
Confronting Nigeria’s growing insecurity requires leaders to put more resources and manpower into the country’s police force, according to Madueke. The Nigeria Police Force is short-handed, underfunded and overcentralized, he wrote in The Conversation.
“These shortcomings aren’t just bureaucratic — they create an environment where organized violence thrives,” Madueke wrote. “Tackling armed banditry in Nigeria requires addressing the institutional weaknesses of the police.”
