Kidnappings have become a key moneymaking strategy for armed groups in Nigeria, including jihadists in the northeast and non-ideological gangs locally known as bandits who dominate the northwest.
An armed “bandit” gang kidnapped more than 40 people in northwestern Nigeria over the weekend, a survivor of the attacks and a local government chairman told AFP on Tuesday.
Kidnappings have become a key moneymaking strategy for armed groups in Nigeria, including jihadists in the northeast and non-ideological gangs locally known as bandits who dominate the northwest.
Alhaji Lauwali Abdullahi, a resident of Mayanchi district in Zamfara state’s Maru local government area, said a gang attacked 11 villages in a series of raids between Friday and Sunday.
Abdullahi blamed the attack on a bandit leader known as Kachalla Sa’idu.
“As I am talking to you now we have over 40 of our people who are in Kachalla’s den,” he said, citing raids in the communities of Tashar Mayanchi, Gwargawo, Jidda and Garagi.
Bello Jabaka, chairman of the Maru local government area, confirmed the abductions to AFP, saying he was working to “lodge a complaint so that we will get additional security outfits in the area”.
A police spokesman in Zamfara did not respond to a request for comment.
Bandit gangs operate across swathes of rural northwest and central Nigeria where state presence is weak.
They are known to levy “taxes” on farmers, rustle livestock, raid villages and are implicated in illegal mining operations.
The gangs can be massive in size: Nigerian troops killed over 300 bandits in Zamfara state in two days of operations in July, a state official said earlier this month.
Across the country’s various, often overlapping security crises, abductions have proved lucrative.
Kidnappings raised some $1.66 million in ransom payments between July 2024 and June 2025, according to a tally by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based consultancy.
A mass kidnapping of schoolchildren in Oyo state, in the country’s relatively safe southwest, sent shock waves through the country in May.
The more than 40 students and teachers — allegedly kidnapped by jihadists — were rescued in an operation earlier this month.
