By Joshua Odey & Ndu Nwokolo
Nigeria’s banditry crisis, once a localised security challengerooted in a complex mix of historical, socioeconomic, and political grievances, has evolved into a systemic challenge for the country and its citizens. Contemporary banditry has led to widespread death and displacement across multiple communities. Although initially concentrated in the Northwest, it has increasingly spread into the North Centraland even the North East, with states such as Niger, Benue, Plateau and Taraba emerging as new hotspots.
According to Nextier’s Security Outlook 2026, there were 599 incidents of banditry in 2025, resulting in 2,742 casualties, an increase from 256 incidents and 1,585 casualties in 2024. This is a 134 per cent increase in the number of incidents and a 74 per cent increase in the number of casualties over the previousyear. These rises reflect not only worsening insecurity and the growing dominance of bandits, but also deeper structural challenges within the state. From a state fragility perspective, Nigeria is increasingly demonstrating limited capacity to govern and secure its territory effectively, and is further down the ladder of fragile states. Its inability to provide security and enforce justice, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas, has created a vacuum that enables armed groups to emerge and expand. And as noted, “fragility is the combination of exposure to risk and insufficient coping capacity of the state, system and/or communities to manage, absorb or mitigate those risks” (OECD 2016).
The social contract theory reinforces this perspective. As Thomas Hobbes argues, a state’s legitimacy depends on its ability to maintain order, safety, and public trust. When these break down, legitimacy erodes, and citizens withdraw cooperation. In affected communities, the perception that the Nigerian state is either unwilling or unable to ensure security has pushed some communities toward survival strategies such as negotiating with bandits, paying protection levies, accommodating their presence, or even forming their own militia or vigilante groups to ward off such attacks. These dynamics point to a broader erosion of functional legitimacy in Nigeria, where state authority is judged by performance rather than formal status. As effectiveness declines, non-state armed groups exploit governance gaps and embed themselves within local security systems. Through interactions shaped by coercion, necessity, and limited alternatives, bandits acquire a constrained form of functional relevance, enabling them to expand their influence. In this edition of the Nextier SPD Policy Weekly, we examine how the banditry crisis is sustained through the interaction of state fragility, the breakdown of the social contract, and the erosion of functional legitimacy. These forces are mutually reinforcing, creating a cycle that sustains and expands banditry.
Positive Feedback Loop
A positive feedback loop is a cyclical system in which outcomes reinforce the conditions that produced them. Nigeria’s banditry crisis reflects these dynamics: ineffective state responses, a weakening social contract, and declining legitimacy interact to reproduce insecurity. The cycle often begins with state fragility, which reduces the government’s ability to ensure security and justice, especially in rural areas. This is evident in repeated failures to prevent anticipated attacks.
For instance, despite credible intelligence of an impending attack in Niger State, St. Mary’s Catholic College still experienced a mass abduction, the worst in the state’s history. While the state government claimed it issued precautionary directives, the school denied receiving them. Such gaps in communication and response have become recurring features, contributing to preventable violence in vulnerable regions. The St. Mary’s case highlights weak communication and coordination between federal and state authorities. This undermines public confidence in the government’s ability to provide security and accelerates the breakdown of the social contract. As trust declines, citizens increasingly adopt survival strategies such as negotiating with bandits or paying protection levies. While these responses emerge from necessity, they reduce the risks faced by armed groups and make their operations more predictable. Over time, these dynamics further erode state legitimacy, particularly where legitimacy is judged by performance. As opined by Grävingholt, Ziaja & Kreibaum (2015), “Fragile statehood is characterised by a wide range of dysfunctional state–society relations – states not being able to control their territory, states not being able to support their population, and states failing to convince the population that they have legitimate claims to dominate a given territory”. In some contexts, bandit groups may gain limited functional acceptance as they fill governance gaps, embed themselves more deeply within local systems, and perpetuate the cycle. In this way, weakening state authority, social contract breakdown, and declining functional relevance continuously reproduce insecurity.
From State Weakness to Embedded Insecurity
The dynamics of limited state capacity, breakdown of social cooperation, and eroding functional legitimacy of the government lead to the emergence of systematic security market failure. Security market failure in the context of Nigeria’s banditry crisis is the state’s failure to provide effective, adequate security, leading to citizens resorting to self-help strategies such as reliance on vigilantes. As armed groups transform from predatory actors to institutionalised and quasi-political actors, particularly in the communities they are embedded in, bandits criminally privatise security. Security does not become the core function of the state in a strict sense, but a commodity negotiated with criminal enterprises. This transformation is an adaptation to the governance vacuums that exist. The presence and activities of bandits become a permanent feature of some communities.
The embeddedness of bandits makes it difficult for the Nigerian military to achieve any meaningful success. These short-term victories involve dislodging bandits or destroying their camps and turn into tactical pauses rather than strategic positions (Okoli et al., 2024). This limitation arises because the military cannot adequately perform what it was created to do: confront and defend the country against identifiable enemies. However, armed groups operate within a fluid civilian-military space where there is an overlapping of informants, fighters, and victims. The complexity of bandits entrenching themselves into various communities can lead to accidental airstrikes, as in cases such as the June 2025 accidental airstrike in Zamfara state. Such outcomes becomeparticularly concerning because these airstrikes result in civilian casualties, alienating communities further from the military and sustaining a cycle of limited governance capacity, broken social contract, and declining performance-based legitimacy, which helps reinforce insecurity. Also,bandit groups immerse themselves in local networks, creating informational asymmetry, which gives them a superior advantage to evade capture and re-group after being attacked by the Nigerian military. On the other hand, communities may withhold crucial information concerning armed groups due to military operational fragmentation and lack of trust,fundamentally limiting the kinetic responses of the military.
Survival strategies such as negotiations with bandits, undertaken by some communities, are not merely survival tactics but can be viewed as a form of strategic resignation expressed through rational accommodation. In this sense, the payment of taxes and protection levies by some communities, though done under duress, reflects a de facto disengagement from state authority. By negotiating with non-state actors, these communities indirectly recognise the functional legitimacy of bandits. This indirect recognition of bandits’ authority does not occur alongside state failure and the decline of social order; rather, it accelerates and bolsters bandits’ grip on the community in which they reside. This ultimately sustains bandits’ operational capacity, allowing the issue to persist with no concrete solution in sight.
Over time, these dynamics can potentially normalise and institutionalise violence in affected regions. As banditry continues to persist, and people adapt to the presence of non-state armed groups, such adaptation will become routine rather than an exceptional response to insecurity. The gradual normalisation of violence leads to the transformation of insecurity from a temporary disruption of social order to the condition of everyday lives of the individuals in affected areas. Normalisation of violence not only entrenches the operational stability of bandits but also potentially weakens the restoration of state authority to conflict zones. Also, reversing insecurity becomes more difficult the longer it persists, as it reshapes local expectations of governance, authority, and security. In this sense, insecurity not only reproduces but also becomes established, reinforcing its self-reinforcing nature across Nigeria.
Recommendations
To break the cycle of insecurity and the dominance of banditry, the Nigerian federal government must implementcritical measures. These measures will require a shift from reactive and often passive interventions to strategies that proactively target structural factors that reinforce and sustain banditry. Banditry is not merely an isolated case caused by security failure, but a crisis sustained through the interaction of governance failure, declining public trust, and diminishing state authority. Policies must adequately disrupt feedback loops that enhance and sustain non-state actors.
- Transition to a Human Centred Approach: There is a need for security to become more human-centred than state-centred. A human-centred approach must involve a decentralised response system. This system will enable fast response to early warnings in high-risk communities. Also, proper coordination is required when carrying out a military intervention against bandits. Interventions such as airstrikes must be done with precision. There must be transparency and accountability about such operations.
- Make Civil Protection a Core Success Metric:Civilian protection must be a core measure of success. All security operations should be measured by rapid response, community safety, and reduced civilian harm. The federal government must invest significantly in military-civilian operations, including regular community meetings and joint security forums. These allow people in affected regions to voice concerns, creating transparency and understanding. There must also be efficient synergy between the military, police, and vigilantes to ensure an effective response to threats. Finally, protecting and caring for informants is essential to building trust between the state and affected communities.
- Invest in Rural Infrastructure and Technologies: Proper rural infrastructures will be crucial in breaking the cycle that sustains banditry. Establishing command centres and a robust road network will ensure swift responses. The Nigerian federal and state governments must consistently invest in technologies such as geospatial intelligence and threat mapping in high-risk regions. These technologies will enable security forces to monitor bandits’ movements and attack patterns, as well as those of vulnerable communities. Investing consistently in rural infrastructure and technologies will make communities safer, disrupting the cycle that sustains armed groups.
- Address Root Causes of Banditry: It is clear that kinetic methods alone cannot end the growing dominance of banditry in Nigeria. Though military operations against armed groups have yielded some successes, these successes are short-lived. Bandit groups adapt and recalibrate, causing even more havoc in citizens’ lives. Therefore, addressing root causes such as poverty, unemployment, and other socioeconomic downturns will be crucial in breaking the cycle that sustains banditry. Without adequately addressing these issues, especially in rural areas, insecurity will thrive, and any success will be temporary.
Policy Recommendations
- The Office of the National Security Adviser should institutionalise a decentralised, human-centred security architecture with accountable and precision-led military operations.
- The Federal Government should adopt civilian protection, rapid response, and community safety as core performance metrics across all security operations.
- The Federal and State Governments should prioritise sustained investment in rural infrastructure, command centres, and geospatial technologies to enhance threat detection and response.
- The Federal Government should implement integrated socioeconomic interventions targeting poverty, unemployment, and rural underdevelopment to address the root causes of banditry.
Nigeria’s banditry challenge has transformed from a localised problem to a self-reinforcing crisis. Banditry, as a self-reinforcing system, is driven by significant state weakness, a broken social contract, and a legitimacy problem. These dynamics interact with one another, enabling and sustaining each other. This, over time, has made banditry difficult to overcome because armed groups exploit various weaknesses,such as governance gaps. Disrupting the cycle that sustains and enables armed groups will require moving beyond mere kinetic responses. It calls for the need to build local legitimacy and restore state presence and trust. Taking such a step will bring long-term peace and stability to affected areas.
(Joshua Odey is a Policy and Research Analyst at Nextier: while Dr. Ndu Nwokolo is a Managing Partner at Nextier and a Reader (Associate Professor) at the Institute for Peace, Security and Development Studies, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. He is also a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security at York University, Canada)
