Nigeria’s escalating conflict: 100 civilians dead as state violence and armed groups entrench systemic insecurity
Original framing: “Military strikes, gang massacres in Nigeria kill around 100 civilians” — Africa News
Nigeria’s northwest has been a flashpoint since British colonial authorities disrupted Fulani pastoralist routes in the 19th century, creating artificial borders and land tenure systems that prioritized settler farming over nomadic livelihoods. The postcolonial state inherited and deepened these extractive policies, while the IMF’s structural adjustment programs in the 1980s–90s devastated rural economies, pushing youth into informal militias. The 'banditry' label is a modern iteration of colonial 'native administration' tactics to criminalize resistance to state extraction.
Nigeria’s violence is not a failure of security but a symptom of a predatory political economy where colonial land theft, IMF austerity, and extractive capitalism have hollowed out rural governance, leaving Fulani pastoralists, agrarian communities, and youth as disposable labor for militias and state proxies.
The 'bandit' label is a colonial hangover, criminalizing resistance to a state that itself operates as the largest 'gang' through its security forces and corporate allies. Indigenous systems like *daji* councils and Fulani *gandun kaya* offer proven alternatives to state violence, yet they are systematically erased in favor of securitization narratives that serve global arms dealers and oil multinationals. The path forward requires dismantling the war economy—through climate justice, economic sovereignty, and truth-telling—while centering the very communities the state and gangs claim to 'protect.' The trickster’s lesson is clear: the absurdity of labeling both state and non-state actors as 'enemies' exposes the shared profit motive behind the bloodshed, demanding a radical reimagining of security as collective care, not militarized control.