The Return Of Terror Bandits To Zamfara, Others
Story of Rapes, Abductions, Killings
For Kamilu Sani, nothing in his life is as horrific as seeing his father burnt alive by armed bandits who stormed his village of Tungar Kahau in Zamfara State. He had been on a stroll on the outskirt of the village when he and a friend, Musa, spotted a band of armed men riding on motorcycles in the direction of their village. His friend ducked into the bush but Kamilu ran to warn his brother.
“To my surprise some of the gunmen had already arrived there firing at residents,” he said.
His father was in front of the shop where the bandits met him and shot him. But he was still alive and managed to crawl into the shop and closed the door behind him. The bandits set the shop on fire, burning the man alive.
But this brutal attack was not isolated toTungar Kahau. In villages like Maikamar Rini, Mallamawa and Gidan Anna in Shinkafi and Maradun local government areas of the state dozens were left dead with residential houses and local siloes burnt, throwing the survivors into a major humanitarian situation with a looming threat of hunger.
What the attacks have in common is the brutality and the casualness with which the bandits plundered the communities, carting away cash and cattle and throwing families into disaaray.
Yahaya Barau of Tungar Kahau has been searching for his wife and five children since the attacks.
“When the gunmen arrived, my wife and the children ran to the forest screaming for help. I still don’t know their whereabouts. I can’t ascertain whether they were intercepted and killed in the forest,” he said.
Attacks by bandits in Zamfara, and much of the North-West region have resurfaced with a vengeance after a year’s lull. Much was made of the amnesty granted by the government to the bandits, led by one Buhari Tsoho, otherwise known as Buharin Daji (Buhari of the forest) in a much publicised peace talks. But less than a year after, the armed bandits have returned, operating under different codes in different villages.
At Sububu village for instance, the armed bandits carted away more than 100 cows, burgled shops and then went away.
And in other places, they have taken to sexually abusing women.
“We have suffered a lot at the hands of the gunmen,” Musa Ali said, “They are sexually harassing our women. Sometimes they would ask a resident to take his daughter or wife to their camp to rape. No one dares to stop them.”
Some of the women spend days in the bandits camps being raped and upon their release to return to their village, they are often intercepted by other gangs of gunmen, according to Musa Ali.
“What I told you now had happened to my neighbour,” he added. “If [a woman] is nursing, they would ask her to keep the baby and then go with them. There is nothing more humiliating than this. We have suffered enough,” he concluded.
Basiru Idris from Maikamar Rini village told Daily Trust on Sunday that the bandits would often laugh at terrified women during their operations.
“Sometimes they would laugh at women trying to run away. They laughed at one heavily pregnant woman when she was busy parking her children in order to escape the carnage,” he said, adding that both women and the elderly are not spared from the brutality of the bandits.
“One old man clung to his grandson [during a raid]. They cut the old man’s hand and then shot him dead. No elderly person was spared,” he said.
Sometimes women and girls are killed in cold blood as witnesses have described seeing
a girl being shot to death while grieving over the corpse of her gunned down father.
Some of the women taking refuge at the Umaru Mafara Primary School in Shinkafi town corroborated the allegations. They say the rape of women is a systematic weapon being used by the gunmen.
Rukayya Abdullahi said whenever the bandits raided the villages to take away women, they would laugh and say they want to have future generations of bandits.
Some of the women are lucky to escape the ordeal like Nusaiba Sanusi.
“They arrived at night and bulldozed their way in to our living room and told me that I must go with them at gunpoint,” she said. “My husband pleaded with them and they took money instead.”
They bandits seem to enjoy taunting their victims as another witness, Lami Abubakar from Tungar Kahau, said. After raiding her village, she saw the bandits set ablaze a mosque after the men of the village had escaped into the forest.
“The gunmen then started shouting, ‘We heard that there are real men in this village! Where are the men?! Come out and fight like men why are you running away?” she remembers them saying.
Like Nusaiba Sanusi, some of the men are also lucky. One of them is Shuaibu Ali who escaped death by whiskers when he was shot through the shoulder during the raid. He fell on the ground and played dead.
“They came to where I was lying thinking that I was dead, shouting Allahu Akbar! Al -jihad! Al-jihad!” he said.
“Some of them were clad in military uniforms and boots. I also saw some with plaited hair and ear rings. They just passed by and continued chasing residents from farms. Many of the residents were killed while working on their farms,” he added. Not playing ball Not all villagers are quite ready to roll over and die for the bandits, even if they remain outgunned and almost entirely defenceless.
In Girnashi Tsohon Gari of Isa Local Government of Sokoto State, life has not been the same since the bandits issued a demand for ransom from the residents a week ago.
They are demanding an unspecified ransom from the village or else they would attack, going as far as leaving behind a phone number through which the villagers will arrange to make the payment.
Our correspondent who visited the area on Saturday gathered that the villagers had notified the Sarkin Gobir na Isa, who advised them to calm down the bandits until the authorities intervene.
The councillor representing the area had also promised to report their case to the area police command, raising hopes that some kind of intervention will happen before the bandits strike.
“The bandits are still calling us for an update and we are asking them to exercise patience as we are still collecting money from the people to pay them,” one of the villagers said.
Some of the leaders of the bandits are known to the villagers as they report that one Ali Oga of Kaka Taha village is the leader of the bandits issuing the threats while another bandit identified as Mandi Dan Riyoji, who grew up in the village is the one negotiating with the villagers for the ransom.
Terrorised villagers have had to send their wives and children away to neighbouring villages for fear of what might happen if the bandits strike.
One of the villages is Garin Abdulkareem, where Malam Abdullahi Adamu is the head. He confirmed this to Daily Trust on Sunday that they hosted over a hundred women and children from Girnashi.
“I alone accommodated over 50 of them but they have all returned to their village Friday night,” he said.
However, as the threat of attack looms, the people of Girnashi are not giving grounds.
“We will not abandon our village because of their threat,” a resident said, “we will remain there and protect it from any attackers. We know Allah is by our side and if we die in the course of doing that He will reward us with paradise because we died protecting our wealth and the dignity of our families.”
Despite the boldness, the resident appealed to the government to come to their aid in the face of this threat.
But if what happened in Girnashi is anything to go by, this appeal will most likely go unanswered.
Malam Usman Nakaye of Isa Town who is playing host to displaced persons from Garnashi said, “The attackers usually give notice before they launch their attacks. What they normally do is they sneak into a village in the nigh and paste a notice in a public place. They will say they want the people of that village to raise so and so amount of money within so and so time or risk their attack. If you fail to raise that money within the stipulated time they will attack you, burn down your grains and rape your wives and daughters,” he said.
“Currently I have 22 refuges in my place who were victims of Malamawa and Tungar Kahau, the two villages attacked in Shinkafi local government area of Zamfara state,” he said
One old man clung to his grandson [during a raid]. They cut the old man’s hand and then shot him dead. No elderly person was spared
Six of the victims he said are female, including his own daughter who is married in one of the villages and the remaining ones were children.
He said that it took the support of the former chairman of Isa Local Government area and his neighbours to feed the displaced persons.
“As I am speaking to you, three married women from these villages were receiving treatment in hospitals because they were raped and they inserted batteries into their private parts after raping them,” he said.
Nakaye said until the Zamfara state government employs “Yan Sa kai”, a kind of vigilante group famed for using charms and bush patrols, this attacks would continue.
The chairman of Isa Local Government Area, Col. Garba Moyi (rtd), said the threat was issued by the bandits who attacked some Zamfara villages about two weeks ago because the people of Girnashi have taken in displaced persons from the attacked villages.
He added that security agencies have been notified and patrol teams have been deployed.
According to Moyi, the attacks on the Zamfara villages was a reprisal over what vigilante groups did to the Fulani people four years back. He insists that Girnashi is only being threatened for hosting those the bandits considered to be their enemies.
What happened to the peace?
The attacks coming in the wake of last December’s peace talk between the government and the bandits following another wave of violence from 2011 is alarming villagers.
Leader of the bandits, Buharin Daji along with his lieutenants Kankara and Damina have since reneged on the agreement.
Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State said Buharin Daji decided return to the forest following disagreements with his boys on whether to accept the terms of the peace deal or not.
According to Yari, after a peace deal was struck between the bandits and the state government, an amnesty was granted to them and they were asked to surrender their weapons. But some of the bandits, especially those from the camp of the notorious cattle rustling kingpin decided to do so..
“We learnt that there is a disagreement between Buharin Daji and his boys after he initially agreed to all the peace terms with state government. We are calling on the people in the state to cooperate with relevant stakeholders to safeguard lives and property,” he said
However, a highly placed source in the government told Daily Trust on Sunday that the peace pact was jeopardized after a very close associate of Buharin Daji called Dogon Bangaje was intercepted, arrested and detained by the DSS.
The source which is privy to the peace process said apart from that, some of the repentant bandits were also arrested at the airport upon their return from Saudi Arabia for Hajj.
“Even the recent attack on Federal Road Safety Corps office in Tsafe Local Government area was carried out by the bandits thinking that it was a DSS office. You know they can’t differentiate between different securities outfits,” the source added.
Recently armed bandits in Buharin Daji’s camp told resident in troubled communities that the peace deal brokered between them, local vigilantes and the state government on the other hand was on the killing of innocent people but not on cattle theft, saying nothing would stop them from stealing cows.
Until last year, when Buharin Daji decided to come out of the bush and embrace peace, he had remained a shadowy figure as very few people could identify him.
The Senior Special Assistant to Governor Abdulaziz Yari on Security matters Alhaji Sani Gwamna Mayanchi told Daily Trust on Sunday that the security situation in the state is being reviewed and new measures are being adopted.
“Our synergy with other neighbouring state of Katsina, Kaduna, and Niger states is intact and you know there are things that we cannot explain on the pages of newspapers,” he said.
He said the peace deal was not violated by the state government but by some selfish and unscrupulous elements among the armed bandits. He, however, said bandits in other parts of the state abided by the term of the agreement and are living with neighbours peacefully.
However, the commitment of other state governments to the pact they had to tackle banditry has been called into question resulting in the resurgence of the bandits.
A member the North-West governors Forum committee on cattle rustling and banditry said nonchalance from state governors has virtually collapsed the operations of the committee.
Seven North-West states comprising, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, have agreed to pool resources together to fight the menace, especially along the 220km dreaded Rugu forest that cuts across most of the states. The forest has for long served as hideouts for bandits and criminals who intermittently attack unsuspecting communities.
The member who preferred not to be named in the report said despite an agreement among the states only Katsina State had contributed the N211m each state agreed to pay to fight the menace.
“The plain truth of the matter is lack of cooperation of other states,” he said.
‘The GOC in Kaduna, who is coordinating the Sharan Daji operation, got frustrated and asked each state to go and coordinate on its own,” he added.
In Kaduna State, where the governors of the region had met in 2015, barely a month after coming into office, to brainstorm on tackling the security challenges posed by the bandits, the collapse of the arrangement is already manifesting in the forms of random attacks particularly in communities along Kaduna-Abuja Highway and along BirninGwari Road.
Armed bandits and kidnappers have been terrorizing Sabon-Gaya, a community along Kaduna/Abuja highway. One of the recent attacks led to the killing of civilian joint task force leader in the community, Haruna Halilu.
Armed men, suspected to be kidnappers, on Monday night attacked Konti, a village after Tsohon Gayan and Ungwar Ayaba along Kaduna-Abuja highway, killed two men and abducted three women.
A day after the attack, the bandits waylaid and killed one of the people who went to sympathize with the deceased family.
A government official in Kaduna who does not want his name mentioned told our reporter that the issue of the alliance formed by the governors was purely a security arrangement.
While he noted that the state governor is worried about curbing insecurity around the state borders, he lamented that some of the states who are supposed to jointly fight the insecurity are not committed. “Only few of the states are committed,” he said.
Relief, however, may come to the affected communities soon, as President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a military crackdown on bandits operating in rural communities in Zamfara State following fresh attacks on some communities in Shinkafi and Maradun Local Government Areas.
To enable the army carry out this new mandate, the President approved the request of the Minister of Defence, Brig-Gen. Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) for the stationing of a full battalion of Special Forces in Zamfara State and the operationalization of the newlyestablished 8 Division of the Nigerian Army in Sokoto in the new Order of Battle (OBAT).
The President has also approved the movement of the 1 Brigade of the Nigerian Army from Sokoto to Gusau upon the takeoff of the 8 Division.
However, the Commanding Officer of the 223 Light Tank Battalion in Gusau, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Ibrahim Jibrin, said the movement Brigade Command to Gusau was yet to take off. “Not yet, not yet,” he told our reporter Friday.