Nigeria\’s Three Axes-of-Mass-Murders

Insecurity in Nigeria continues to take many shapes and forms just as the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) dominates the country’s attention. With daily killings, arsons and kidnappings on the rise, the last five months has produced new waves of violent deaths which have seriously questioned the state of security in the country. Unfortunately, every region in the country is dealing with one form of insecurity or the other. It is disturbing as insecurity in the country seems to be rekindling with new vigour.

The North-West states of Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Kaduna currently head the leader board with various forms of violent deaths arising out of banditry, kidnapping, farmer-herder and ethnoreligious crises. For instance, bandits attacked four villages in Sabon Birni Local Government Area of Sokoto state on Wednesday, May 27, 2020, leaving more than 74 persons dead. These deadly attacks which have recorded more than 270 deaths since January 2020 in one zone of Sokoto state are equally being experienced in other states in the North-West States. Zamfara and Katsina states just like Sokoto are presently experiencing a new height of banditry despite a negotiated peace or what is regarded as granting of amnesty to the bandits by the government of the three states. The question then is, what is fuelling this renewed banditry? Did the amnesty ever work? This axis of killings that is dubbed the \’Wild, Wild North-West\’ is also plagued by heightened ethnoreligious and farmer-herder violent conflicts as presently being witnessed in the Southern part of Kaduna State. The enduring nature of violence in Kaduna state despite efforts at resolving them demands new thinking and learning.  

The next axis of mass murder in Nigeria is the North-East region. However, instead of the Boko-Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province(ISWAP) armed insurgency in the states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) which has a dominant feature in both the local and international violent conflict discourse, this piece would examine the mass-killings in Taraba and Benue states. This violence arises out of land conflicts between the Tivs and Jukuns old-age rivalry, farmer-herder conflicts and other forms of ethnic/communal violence in the region.  In a struggle between the Shomo and Jole ethnic groups in Taraba state over ownership of fishing lake in April 2020, about 19 persons were killed, many injured and over 100 houses razed down.  Land and other forms of natural resources and indigene-settler issues are key enablers of violence in this region of the country. The Tiv and Jukun ethnic conflict which started around 1959 has continued to claim lives and property with efforts at resolving it failing each time. It is believed that the renewed conflict has since last year claimed over 600 lives and property worth millions of Naira.

The last axis of mass murder in Nigeria exists within Benue-Ebonyi-Cross-Rivers triangle, where deadly communal violence is recorded by the day. Land boundary disputes between communities in this part of the country lead to so many violent deaths, unfortunately; many of such incidents remain unreported. For instance, Ohaukwu Local Government Area of Ebonyi state and Ado Local Government Area of Benue State have many communities currently engaged in armed violence against each other resulting in mass deaths. Some of these communal violent disputes are largely intra-state as communities with cultural and linguistic affiliation take up arms against the other. As experienced recently in Cross-River State between Ebom and Usumutong communities in Abi Local Government Area, which left about 12 people dead and many injured. Therefore, as land becomes scarce due to its other uses other than for farming as this region is known for, these farming communities result in violence to maintain what they have.  

Following these killings, the root causes of this violence must be addressed; this is the first step to stopping the mass-killings in the country’s three axes of deadly violence.  Planned socio-economic initiatives and political reforms that tackle land rights and poor governance coupled with a well-developed rural security architecture will help to protect lives and property in these axes of death.  To be able to achieve this, the development of inclusive peace and political settlement frameworks which brings all stakeholders together will be particularly important.  Inclusion of the traditional institutions, the local civil society organisations, the religious bodies, women and youth in enlarged peace committees will play vital roles in instituting sustainable peace. These frameworks will, therefore, help in setting up and utilising an early warning system, which will provide intelligence to a potential outbreak of conflicts or attacks. Finally, with the re-organisation of the police as proposed, more intelligence and deployment will be needed in these axes of mass- murder.