In Nigeria’s troubled northwest, phone blockades hurt locals

LAGOS, NIGERIA — Mobile phones have been lifelines for residents of northwestern Nigeria who have relied on warning calls to escape escalating bandit attacks.

But recent blockades on mobile telecommunications by authorities have left many rural people cut off and more vulnerable, say residents.

The bandits — armed groups whoplundervillagesandoften kidnap, rape and kill — are increasing their attacks in Nigeria’s northwestern and central states. At least 2,500 people were killed in the first half of 2021 in the northwest and central regions, according to the US Council on Foreign Relations, which collates daily media reports on such attacks.

The widespread banditry in the northwest is in addition to the 10-year Islamic extremist insurgency in northeast Nigeria.

Responding to the surging violence, the governors of five northwestern and central states have blocked mobile networks to prevent the outlaws from communicating with collaborators.

While the communications blackout has had some positive effects, it also hampers local communities, according to multiple interviews with residents, officials and security experts.

The telecommunications blockade was first imposed last month in Zamfara state for an initial period of two weeks. Mobile phone service has been restored to Zamfara’s state capital, but its rural areas remain cut off. Katsina, Sokoto, Niger and Kaduna states have also banned mobile networks in recent weeks in areas where killings and abductions continue.

Authorities credit the blackouts for helping them to corner the bandits and free hostages including more than 180 captives freed in Zamfara earlier this month.

However, the killings of civilians have “worsened” in some areas since the start of the phone blackouts, local officials told The Associated Press. More than 100 people have been killed across northwest and central Nigeria in the last two weeks, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Many other deaths have not been reported, say some officials.

“We are trapped,” Amina Al-Mustapha, a state lawmaker from the violent hotspot of Sabon Birni in Sokoto state, told AP.

“Every day, they attack our people and we have no way to talk to our people,” Al-Mustapha

said. “No single village has not been attacked ... We are suffering now.”

At least 32 people were killed in the Munya area of Niger state earlier this month when a band of gunmen stormed villages and ransacked them for hours while no help arrived.

The Munya area villagers could not send out alerts about the attacks because of the telecommunications blockade, Garba Mohammed, the area’s chairman, said. Police and other security agencies only learned of the attacks hours after the killings had occurred, he said.

Previously communities would get phone warnings and people were able to “run for their lives,” he said.

In addition to blocking telecommunications access, the northern states have also shut down markets, imposed night curfews, limited vehicular traffic, closed major roads and banned motorcycles as they battle to restore order.

Nnamdi Obasi, the International Crisis Group’s Nigeria Senior Adviser, told AP that because the security situation in the northwest has been “deteriorating dangerously” and is “suffocating” on local economic activity, Nigeria’s government and the military are pressed to “do something different.”