Words and photography by Collin Mayfield
Kaduna Bound
“They are devils that don’t care about human life,” Sadik told me during our muggy taxi ride from Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. “The bandits will kill anybody in the way of them stealing money.”
Sadik, a Lance Corporal in the Nigerian Army, accompanied me up the rural A2 highway, an enticing target for bandit attacks. Marauding, heavily armed gangs block traffic to attack passersby. Valuables are stolen, unlucky victims are kidnapped. The gangs kill those who resist.
I met Sadik in Abuja in March 2023. A decorated veteran of the Jihadist insurgency in Borno State, Sadik has fought against terror groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State. He has helped to rescue kidnapped hostages and slaves, recapture territory and fight the insurgents.
Sadik and I traveled north from Abuja to Kaduna State’s capital, Kaduna Town. We split a run-down taxi with two women in colorful abayas and hijab. We left in the morning, few risk traveling at night.
About every half hour we passed army installations; the military is trying to eradicate banditry on the highway. Sentry posts straddled both sides of the A2 behind HESCO barriers, with some behind further earthen parapets. Armored vehicles and technicals stalked the road. A railway runs parallel to the highway. Security with AK-47s makes the train a more expensive but preferred route, though the train has been attacked a few times.
Banditry plagues northern Nigeria, though the term “bandit” evokes Old West images of revolvers and thieves on horseback. Here in Nigeria, it’s Mad Max: West Africa.
From their hideouts, bandits traverse cattle trails to launch surprise attacks on villages and/or town outskirts. They regularly ambush traveling vehicles. The thieves carry automatic rifles, light machine guns, and RPGs. Bandit motorcycles, sometimes equipped with .50 caliber machine guns or small mortar pieces, are more agile than the military’s armored vehicles.
Expensive goods, farm animals, and hostages are taken. Then, bandits escape into the bush—leaving a trail of death, rape, and scorched earth. Loot is sold on the black market or traded directly for weapons and fuel. Rustled livestock feeds bandit gangs.
The bulk of bandit income comes from kidnapping. Nigerians pay bankrupting ransoms, sometimes up to $40,000. High-profile victims and foreigners fetch higher prices. Inspired by the Sahel’s jihadists, bandits started targeting schools in 2020, kidnapping students and killing staff. The month of my visit, dozens of attacks occurred across Kaduna State.
Hundreds of gangs crisscross Nigeria’s north and the wider Sahel region, minding no state or national borders. Nigerian authorities estimate there are 40,000 bandits in Kaduna and Zamfara States alone, but the true figure is likely much higher.
The army, with civilian auxiliaries, conducts regular search-and-destroy missions. The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) bombs isolated hideouts, but the often inaccurate airstrikes sometimes kill civilians, such as when the NAF accidentally bombed a religious service in Kaduna State in December 2023, killing 85.
Brazen Attacks and Jihadist Allies
Several bandit groups are allied with Islamist militants. Partnerships are more often pragmatic than ideological, but some bandits justify their actions as jihad. Nigeria’s Islamist insurgency is historically concentrated in the northeastern Borno State. Long story short, the infamous Boko Haram emerged, allied itself with ISIS, and then had a falling-out with ISIS, resulting in two separate, rival factions: Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
In mid-2021, ISWAP defeated Boko Haram at its Borno stronghold of Sambisa Forest. Boko Haram abandoned much territory while some fighters joined bandits in states like Kaduna. The Nigerian military believes Boko Haram has supported various bandit groups by sending commanders and instructors, armored vehicles, weapons, and hundreds of fighters.
Per Nigerian and US intelligence, Boko Haram likely assists in kidnappings. It also teaches its bandit allies how to make bombs and operate different weapons systems, including anti-aircraft guns. In 2021, a gang shot down an Nigerian Air Force (NAF) jet that bombed their hideout, but the pilot parachuted down and rejoined the military. Another gang downed an NAF helicopter in 2023, killing 13 troops.
In March 2022, bandits—likely aided by Boko Haram—mined the aforementioned Abuja-Kaduna railway. The attack derailed a train with some 970 passengers. Assailants on motorbikes ambushed the coaches, primarily targeting first class. Passengers crouched behind the train’s armored walls as bullets pierced the windows. Security shot sparingly to conserve ammo but kept most bandits from entering. The onslaught lasted almost an hour before the army arrived to repel the bandits. 62 passengers were kidnapped, and at least eight people—security guards, train staff and passengers—were killed.
Hunters and Minutemen
Bashir Garba fired his musket on the outskirts of Jaji, a village north of Kaduna Town. The air filled with white smoke that dissipated into the trees. He poured gunpowder down the barrel with a bottle cap and used plastic bag scraps as wadding. Bashir’s teeth tore open percussion caps, made from crushed match heads rolled into paper, that were affixed under the gun’s crude hammer.
The hunter didn’t shoulder the homemade musket. Instead he held it like an oversized pistol, as the pipe barrel was secured with hose clamps and copper wire. The hammer often didn’t ignite the percussion caps, so Bashir kept recocking until the musket fired. Bashir put the gun’s barrel into his mouth. He blew inside to extinguish any remaining embers, then reloaded to practice shooting again.
In Jaji, local hunters use traditional bladed weapons and the odd gun to collect bushmeat. Their game consists of animals like monkeys, rats, rams, and gazelles. Most hunters carry two weapons: a wooden club called a gora, used for defense and whacking an opponent, and a bladed weapon. The blades are cutlasses, called takobi, broad axes or sickle-like weapons called gariyos. The gariyo hooks an opponent’s neck and chops at limbs. The weapons are forged from rebar.
The army does the bulk of the fighting against bandits, but hunters serve as a local community’s initial defense. Jaji’s hunters volunteer within the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF, JTF)—a decentralized, government-authorized militia. The first JTF units were created to fight Islamists in Borno State in the early 2010s. Their successes in Borno led to new JTF units across Nigeria.
Despite facing bandits with modern arsenals, JTF volunteers are handicapped by Nigeria’s restrictive gun laws and their own financial conditions. The best guns legally available are bolt-action rifles, pump-action or break-barrel shotguns. Virtually no one can afford armory-built guns.
Instead, the few gun-owning JTF members use homemade muskets called Dane guns. Originally, these were flintlocks traded by Scandinavian slavers and traders, recreated by local blacksmiths and updated with the invention of percussion caps. Hunters and JTF volunteers must purchase a license to build and register these literal muskets.
But the antiquated guns sometimes see combat, such as when Jaji resident Kamal Dan Zuru faced bandits in 2021. Kamal and his hunting party of 62 men stumbled across bandits in Kaduna’s bush. “The larger group of bandits thought we were attacking,” Kamal said, “so they shot with AK-47s and PKMs.” The hunters shot back with muskets, while others postured with gariyos and takobis. Kamal peppered bandits with his Dane gun, hastily reloading before the hunters retreated. Dozens were wounded on both sides and 20 hunters were killed. The presumably fewer bandit casualties are unknown.
Upon returning to Kaduna Town, I visited the JTF Unit Six building. Barefoot men sat on benches against the white concrete walls of the building’s single room. The men explained how they all volunteered from a desire to defend their community.
“Bandits and terrorism are a threat to our society,” said JTF State Secretary Abdullahi Mohammad Bashir, his cheeks adorned with traditional, intentional scars. He sat beside a wooden barrel of goras and gariyos.
In 2020, the Army launched Operation Accord, an anti-bandit operation. The JTF and other vigilante groups aid the army as scouts and supplementary fighters
“Our guys fight bandits,” Bashir explained. “You cannot go into the bush without knowing the terrain. Our men are mostly hunters, so they assist [the military] in the bush.”
Kaduna Town’s JTF is spread through different neighborhoods. The nearest unit responds to emergencies, be they bandit attacks on town outskirts or gang violence within town. Unit Six falls under the larger Badarawa-Malali District Development Association. We left the Unit Six post for the Badarawa JTF building, where JTF State Chairman Shehu (Shiekh) Usman Dantudu was waiting.
“There are some settlements that are at the fringes of Kaduna Town,” Dantudu explained. “Those are the areas where the bandits usually come in and [attack and kidnap] people.”
While banditry threatens rural communities and the outlying areas of towns, there are street gangs within town. Indiscriminate violence made Kaduna Town unlivable. Competing gangs mug citizens, and rob or destroy homes and stores. The gangs sometimes kidnap and rape, and citizens who defend themselves are cut-up or killed.
“We have gangster wars. Gangsters who are only concerned about drugs and fame and money—money they steal!” exclaimed Dantudu. “Sometimes in a neighborhood, in one day, we may find up to ten people dead because gangs fought … just to dominate that area.”
State Secretary Bashir pointed to a gariyos and described a clash between Kaduna’s JTF and a street gang.
“With this type of weapon, a [JTF] soldier’s hand was cut like this,” Bashir said while chopping at his left wrist. “Cut off! The bad boys attacked the soldier man, and they cut off his hand.” The JTF captured some of the attackers and gave them to the police.
Ethnic Divides
Dantudu described banditry as a result of the decades-long violence between Fulani herders and Hausa farmers. In northern Nigeria, the two main ethnic groups are Hausa and Fulani. Historically, Hausas tend to be farmers while Fulanis are herders. Politics and careers often unofficially fall along ethnic lines. Tribe matters, though distinctions are fading with time.
Under British rule, herders, farmers, and colonial authorities maintained a mutual agreement called burti. Farmers respected designated livestock trails, but after Nigeria’s independence the burti collapsed. Disputes arose over water rights and the boundaries between pasture and farmland. Shrinking savannah forced Fulani herders into farmland, while the growing population has farmers plowing pastures. Tit-for-tat murder and arson are common, with retaliations for each Hausa or Fulani killed.
While at the Unit Six building, State Secretary Bashir informed me that a JTF commander named Aeron was killed at a checkpoint the night before. The outbreak of ethnic violence left 17 dead, including a fisherman who was hacked to death. The attacks were likely retaliation after a Fulani herder was murdered; that herder was likely killed as retaliation for another Hausa man’s murder.
“Any small crisis and one group will attack the other,” explained Dantudu. Per the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON), nearly 20,000 people have been killed in herder-farmer violence since 1999—violence that often overlaps with the bandit war.
Poverty compounds ethnic tensions. Fulani previously traded milk for grains, but packaged drinks put Fulani milk in lower demand. Some disenfranchised Fulani turned to crime. Bandits are from all ethnicities, but most appear Fulani—survivors often report bandits speaking Fulfulde and most captured bandits are Fulani. Subsequently, Fulani victims of banditry are often ignored by society and law enforcement.
Yet the JTF rejects this ethnic violence and promotes coexistence among the different religions and tribes. Kaduna Town’s JTF troops come from the Hausa, Fulani and other ethnic minorities.
“We don’t do religion in JTF. We don’t do tribalism in JTF,” Dantudu explained. “We are one big family, and we encourage people to live freely. In this neighborhood, you have different tribes, different religions. We must live together now.”
I wrote to Dantudu in November 2024 for a sitrep. The Shehu (Sheikh) explained how gang violence and crime are increasing in Kaduna Town as economic factors worsen. The JTF is struggling without any government assistance, so the JTF relies on its volunteers and donations from supporters. However, bandit attacks and kidnappings on town outskirts have “reduced tremendously” because “the government has increased soldiers patrolling those areas.”
All the JTF can do is try to contain the violence and defend those who come under attack. With their medieval blades and 19th Century muskets, the hunters and JTF will continue their uphill battle against heavily-armed terrorist gangs. With the army overstretched and unable to stomp-out banditry, this is the JTF’s burden to bear—muskets vs machine guns. The violence must be stopped, despite the heavy cost.
Editor’s Note: Collin’s trip was funded by our friends at Qilo Tactical. Follow more of Collin’s reportage and Qilo’s clothing drops on Instagram @collin_mayfield and @qilotactical.
