BANDITRY AND ABDICATION OF DUTY IN NIGER

There are moments in history when governments prove themselves not merely negligent but spectacularly absent. Niger North, tragically, is living through such a moment. For three unbroken days, bandits turned Borgu, New Bussa, Ibeto, Salka, Atabo, and Magama into their playground—kidnapping lawyers, carting away citizens, looting cattle, and leaving entire communities traumatized. A war-like campaign, executed in broad daylight, without a whisper of interruption from those sworn to protect us. And what did the Federal and State Governments do? Absolutely nothing. Not a statement. Not a condemnation. Not even the tired and recycled assurance of being “on top of the situation.” For three days, silence reigned supreme—louder than the gunfire that echoed across villages.

Two lawyers of noble standing, Ahmed Mohammed Borgu and Isyaku Muhammad Danjuma, were among the abducted, just few days after a Magistrate and a Prison Warden were shot on the legs by bandits on the outskirts of Kontagora. If the abduction of legal practitioners, custodians of justice, does not stir the conscience of government, one wonders what possibly could. Or is it that the kidnappers have now joined the exclusive club of “untouchables” in our nation’s political economy?

The Niger-North Senatorial Zone is not merely disappointed; it is outraged. Outraged that a government that swore to defend lives can maintain such robotic indifference while its citizens are dragged into captivity. Outraged that banditry has become so normalized that operations lasting more than seventy-two hours attract neither intervention nor alarm. Outraged that Niger North has been turned into a laboratory for insecurity, where citizens provide the specimens and bandits conduct the experiments.

One might think this is satire, but it is not—it is Nigeria. In Shiroro, Tegina, Kontagora, Mariga, Magama, Ibeto, and Borgu, bandits now operate with the confidence of tax collectors. They determine who travels, who stays, who pays, and who vanishes. Meanwhile, the government’s presence in these zones is limited to campaign seasons and ribbon cuttings. Security agencies? They arrive only when the damage is complete, to count the bodies and pose for press briefings.

This is not governance. This is abdication dressed in official uniforms. It is betrayal, broadcast daily, with citizens as the audience and victims alike.

The citizens must therefore raise their voice, not merely in protest but in thunderous condemnation. Government must be told, without equivocation, that this silence is complicity, and this inaction is endorsement. Citizens are not pawns to be abandoned on the chessboard of insecurity. They are human beings whose lives are sacred, whose dignity must not be traded for indifference.

Until the Government and security agencies wake up to their primary duty, Niger North will remain under the cruel authority of bandits. And if nothing changes, history will record this moment not as the era of banditry, but as the era when government became a spectator while its citizens perished.

Baban Khalifa, Minna, Niger State