On the road that winds through the rain-green countryside in northern Nigeria, there is a fragile improvement these days: security force checkpoints have restored a trickle of traffic on this axis that leads to the border with Niger, so close, so porous, so dangerous. The neighboring country, where a coup took place on July 26, was threatened by the Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu, with being the target of a regional military intervention intended to restore constitutional order there.
But here, in the State of Sokoto, as in the rest of this vast region of the North-West where a quarter of the Nigerian population is concentrated, it is not the risks of a conflict with neighboring Niger that haunt the nights. inhabitants. The danger is above all internal: that of the attacks, looting and ambushes of the “bandits”, as they are called in the country of 220 million inhabitants, armed bands of looters who, little by little, are transformed into lords of the war, while the area of their activities spreads like a bush fire. In early 2022, the Nigerian government labeled these groups as “terrorists” and launched operations to try to overcome them, including resorting to airstrikes on their hideouts. To no avail.
Dented cars, painted trucks, overloaded motorcycles: only rural modes of transport try their luck between Sokoto, capital of the state of the same name, and Tangaza, a small rural town. No notable SUV would venture on these roads. Fear of kidnappings annihilates the travel plans of those who now have the impression of having become game, hunted by armed gangs on the main roads.
On the road that leads to Tangawa, an invisible micro-border seems to have been crossed. Suddenly there is no longer a living soul on the tarmac. The driver zigzags between the potholes, as if speed had the power to ward off the threat. At a small village on the main road, the nearest group of bandits is reported: they are less than a kilometer away, installed in a locality under their control.
“If the village does not pay, they burn it down”
The gangs, established in this northwestern region of Nigeria, now have several tens of thousands of members. The armed groups move in swarms of motorbikes through small paths and forests, emerging several hundred kilometers from their base for an attack. More and more numerous, better and better armed, they are cutting off a growing part of Nigeria, which also includes regions close to the capital, Abuja, as well as mining areas. They abduct peasants, but also Chinese or Indian workers, notably involved in gold mining in the state of Zamfara, neighboring Sokoto. Kidnappings, cattle theft, taxes of all kinds… Criminal groups live on the beast, attracting, in addition to adventurers and idlers, jihadists from the confines of the Sahel and the Sahara.
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