Nigeria’s kidnapping crisis: ‘Too scared to speak’: Villagers talk about living among bandits

Many of the parents whose children were kidnapped 10 days ago from a boarding school in Nigeria are terrified: they do not want to talk to the authorities or journalists in case of retaliation by the kidnappers.

“If they hear you say something about them, before you know it they will come looking for you. They will come to your house and take you into the bush,” one of them told the BBC. For his safety, the BBC does not identify him and calls him Aliyu.

His young son is one of more than 300 students kidnapped when gunmen stormed the grounds of St Mary’s Catholic School in the village of Papiri, central Niger state, in the early hours of November 21.

Some of the kidnapped children are as young as five years old. Around 250 are reportedly still missing, although state officials have said this figure is exaggerated.

The incident is part of a recent wave of mass kidnappings in northern and central Nigeria, some of which have been attributed to criminal gangs, known locally as “bandits”, who see kidnapping for ransom as a quick and easy way to make money.

“Our village is remote, we are close to bandits,” explained Aliyu, whose son is still missing.

“It’s a three-hour drive to where they are hiding. We know where they are, but we can’t go there ourselves, it’s too dangerous.”

He is desperate with worry, especially because vulnerable captives held in forest hideouts have died during previous kidnappings, either from illness or because ransoms have not been paid.

“I feel very bitter and my wife hasn’t eaten for days… We are not happy at all. We need someone to help us take action.”

A few days before Papiri’s abduction, 25 girls were taken from their school in Maga, 200 kilometers (125 miles) further north, in Kebbi state.

One of the students escaped before the rest were rescued by security forces last week from what authorities said was an “agricultural settlement.”

Bandits tend to live in cattle camps deep in the bush. The gangs are largely made up of ethnic Fulani people, who are traditionally nomadic herders.

No details have been revealed about whether a ransom was paid to free the Maga girls.

In fact, in Nigeria it is illegal to pay ransoms. However, if they are not paid, the hostages can be (and have been) killed.

Relatives tend to crowdfund or, in the case of mass school kidnappings, authorities are sometimes suspected of negotiating their release.

No group has claimed to be behind these two recent school kidnappings, although the government recently told the BBC it believes jihadists, not bandits, were responsible. Residents of Kebbi and Niger states are likely to be curious to find out more about it.

Yusuf, the legal guardian of some of the Maga girls and whose name has also been changed to protect his identity, believes such abductions could not have occurred without informants in the community.

“All these kidnappings are not common in Kebbi. These kidnappings can only happen with the connivance of someone in the community, because no outsider can come to a place and do something like this without the help of the locals,” he told the BBC.

“They need the help of someone who knows the terrain very well.”

But there has been a striking change of approach in some areas where villages have been at the mercy of bandits for the past decade and have given up hope of receiving help from security forces.

It has led some of these rural communities, living in close proximity to kidnapping gangs and in the unfortunate absence of effective policing, to find their own solutions.

“In the northwest, communities that have been severely affected by these mass kidnappings have reached so-called peace agreements with these bandits in exchange for access to the mines,” David Nwaugwe, a security analyst at security risk consulting firm SBM Intelligence, told the BBC.

Many northwestern states are rich in untapped mineral deposits, especially gold, a profitable prospect for bandit gangs.

These agreements, according to Nwaugwe, have been effective in some areas.

“What we’ve seen over time is that there seems to be sort of a decrease in the rate of attacks,” he said.

Katsina State, in the far north of Nigeria, is a case in point. It has long been synonymous with insecurity, particularly banditry and mass kidnappings. But last year, things began to change, thanks in part to several peace agreements reached between bandit leaders and community leaders.

Sitting on mats under the shade of large trees, representatives of both sides discuss their terms and conditions before reaching an agreement.

Bandit leaders have been willing to negotiate, although they have faced criticism for attending peace talks armed with AK47 pistols and other weapons.

The Jibia area was one of the first to adopt the peace negotiation process and reached an agreement in March of this year.

After enduring more than 10 years of insecurity, life had become unsustainable, said community leader and lawyer Ibrahim Sabiu, who represented Jibia during the peace talks.

“Our homes and sources of livelihood were destroyed,” he told the BBC in September.

“All schools and hospitals closed. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds more kidnapped for ransom.”

One of the main stipulations of the peace agreement was that schools reopen. Additionally, the community requested guarantees that they would not be attacked and that bandits would not enter the community with firearms.

As for the Jibia bandits, they asked for access to drinking water and safe passage for their livestock as they moved to new pastures.

They also requested that their women be allowed to shop and trade in local markets.

A high point on the agenda for both sides was the release of the hostages. The BBC does not know how many people were freed in Jibia, but 37 villagers had been freed in Kurfi, another area of ​​Katsina state, by the end of September, a month after a deal was reached.

“We had to accept the peace offer because there was no end in sight to the violence,” Sabiu said.

“This is a crisis that the police should handle, but the security agencies intervened and still could not put an end to it.”

Audu Abdullahi Ofisa, a bandit leader who participated in the Jibia talks, supported the move towards peace: “Life is full of ups and downs, we are happy to move to another phase.”

Rural communities will benefit from a return to peace, but what is not immediately obvious is why bandits have entered peace processes, especially in cases where gold mines were not part of the agreements.

Access to ransom money has traditionally made banditry a lucrative activity, but in Kurfi it was the bandit leaders who called for peace talks.

They live a relatively nomadic life, making access to drinking water difficult. It also drives up food prices because they cannot access markets.

Life had become expensive and uncomfortable.

“We are all tired of the violence,” Nasiru Bosho, one of the bandit leaders who participated in the Kurfi peace negotiations, told the BBC.

“We all lived together in the same community until the unfortunate violence began. We have agreed to live and let live. No more harassment or kidnapping by either party.”

There is also a view that these communities have been bled dry and can no longer pay ransoms.

While peace agreements in the north, such as those reached in Kurfi and Jibia, have produced tentative security gains, analysts say this has only modified insecurity.

Some gangs may find it more rewarding to set their sights on regions further south.

“As you go south, people are better off financially,” Mr Nwaugwe said.

“The further these gangs move south, the more likely they are to find places to attack. Parents at those schools have a better chance of raising enough funds to pay the ransoms.

“In many areas of the northwest, entire rural communities have been evicted. Those who have the means abandon rural areas to flee to large urban centers.”

Some have questioned whether the resurgence of attacks in recent weeks is related to Donald Trump’s recent threats of military intervention in Nigeria.

The US president criticized the Nigerian government for failing to adequately protect Christians from attacks by Islamist insurgents.

A jihadist insurgency broke out in the northeast of the country in 2009, and the kidnapping of more than 200 girls by Boko Haram militants in Chibok 11 years ago was one of the first mass abductions.

Government and security analysts have been at pains to point out that both Muslims and Christians have been targets of mass kidnappings. For example, the BBC was told that the schoolgirls recently kidnapped in Maga were Muslim.

“The security situation in Nigeria is now very complicated. We don’t know how to distinguish between violent extremist groups or bandits. Because they operate almost in the same areas and fluidly,” Christian Ani, from the Institute for Security Studies, told the BBC.

He is not convinced there will be a resurgence of high-profile mass kidnappings of schoolchildren because of Trump’s comments.

“They may have ideological motives, but they are more motivated by profit,” he said.

David Nwaugwe agrees that a causal link cannot be established between Trump’s comments and the recent rise in attacks.

“Right now, I think they’re just going after soft targets like schools because it’s easy to get money from them. It’s too early to draw any other conclusions,” he said.

As far as he is concerned, stopping the violence will require a two-pronged approach: a combination of armed confrontation and negotiation of amnesty deals.

“It’s like the carrot and stick approach: show them that overwhelming military force can be used against them and then try to convince the rest to surrender,” he said.

“I don’t think the pure use of military power is going to work here, it needs to be complemented by other measures.”

But for Papiri’s parents, the prospect of living peacefully with the enemy remains a distant dream as they pray for the safe return of their children.