Armed Banditry and Arms Trafficking in the Northwestern Nigeria

Armed banditry constitutes not only the most serious threats to the Nigerian state’s peace and security but also threats to the corporate existence of Nigeria. The threats are multifaceted, multifarious, and multidimensional ranging from kidnapping, political assassination, ritual killings, terrorism, armed banditry, separatist demands, and armed robbery to mention a few. More than any geopolitical region, the northwest has been mostly affected by armed banditry coupled with the attendant humanitarian crisis. This chapter anchored on “Failed State Theory,” asserts that the Nigerian state has lost her power of monopoly on legitimate use of violence in its territory. The data for this chapter was sourced using documentary sources and analysis through qualitative approach. Scholars have implicated climate change, poverty, unemployment, jungle justice, and/or injustice as the precipitating factors. Beyond these are international complicity, porosity, and poorly secured borders and the epidemiological effects of crisis in Libya and the Lake Chad Basin. In the context of this chapter arms trafficking is conceived as a means of sustaining and exacerbating armed banditry. The chapter submits that a large cache of weapons in the hands of armed bandits and other criminal elements in the region has resulted in the destruction of lives and properties.