Banditry and “captive population syndrome” in northern Nigeria

Abstract

The banditry crisis in northern Nigeria has been associated with dire implications for human population and settlement. Scholarship on the subject area has largely failed to foreground the nexus between banditry and population dynamics in the context of threat-induced migration, displacement, and bond-settlement patterns. Although there are diverse media and policy-based insights pertaining to the impact of the banditry crisis on the settled population, the conditions of persons, households and communities displaced or subjected to various forms of captivity by the crisis have been almost entirely unexplored by way of organized research. Using a combination of primary and secondary data, this paper examines the population-in-captivity dimension of the banditry crisis in northern Nigeria. It posits that the banditry crisis has, among others, created a captive population(s) who are exposed to complex, mortal existential threats, and vulnerabilities in the context of Nigeria's burgeoning un(der)governed spaces and state fragility syndrome.