Growing Insecurity And Emergent Humanitarian Crisis in The North West of Nigeria: The Next Emergencies Frontier?

The Nigeria North West geopolitical zone context is a developing and rapidly evolving humanitarian crisis, requiring urgent and proactive responses as it is impacted by several types of conflicts and forms of insecurity. This has manifested in the form of Farmers-Herders conflicts; Politically Motivated Conflicts; Ethno-Religious Conflicts, which are not necessarily inter-ethnic and inter religious, but many times also manifest as intra ethnic and intra religious depending on the issues at stake; Kidnapping for ransom, Banditry and Cattle Rustling. Banditry, in particular, which now manifests as large scale, organised and coordinated attacks by armed bandits on communities, is having the most significant and devastating impact, citizens and residents in the North West, and is the single most important factor in displacement of communities, leading to growing numbers of internally displaced persons in the zone, as well as growing numbers of Nigerian refugees in Niger Republic. 

<br><br>The growing severity of the problem of banditry, manifesting in the increasing scale and scope of displacement, is creating an incipient humanitarian emergency of increasingly complex proportions. It is reported that as at August 2019 there has been reported death of 436 persons and 210,354 persons had been internally displaced from 171 towns and villages across the three states of Sokoto, Zamfara, and Katsina. Living conditions of the IDPs were reported to be appalling with serious protection issues compounded by the absence of humanitarian actors in the affected areas. Attacks on rural communities are said to be accompanied by atrocious human rights violations of inhabitants by the bandits, and violent reprisal attacks against them once security forces that had come to the aid of the communities leave. 

<br><br>Unfortunately, the current responses by the government have proven to be inadequate. The response around distribution of relief materials has been grossly inadequate, while the approach of negotiations and offer of amnesty for the bandits glosses over the root and structural causes of the crisis embedded in failure of governance, failure in the delivery of public services, failure in the delivery of security, and the inability of governments at all levels and the communities to provision the needs of citizens and residents. In this policy brief, we make a number of recommendation on immediate responses that are viable and would progress into a more focused and viable solution.