Nigeria’s Instability

Nigeria faces numerous security threats: from high rates of violent crime and enduring kidnap-for-ransom issues to long-running insurgencies in the northeast and a metastasising banditry problem in the northwest. Local assessments of these dynamics are often contested across demography and geography, at times feeding on a mix of context-specific tensions and historical inequalities. Given the influence such perspectives can have on the success and efficacy of interventions, it is essential to better understand grassroots experiences of insecurity and their associated pathways of change.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted across Borno, Yobe and Kaduna, this report takes bottom-up perceptions of violence as a starting point for analysing northern Nigeria’s threat landscape, exploring how organised crime, terrorism and other forms of insecurity are perceived at the subnational and local level. Much of the analysis is based on interview and focus group data, incorporating existing literature to caveat and contextualise respondent contributions (where possible) within a wider body of evidence. Such insights offer valuable entry points for interrogating the mechanisms that feed into and facilitate violence, and for identifying the implications they raise for domestic stakeholders and foreign donors.

Participants broadly identified four categories of violence – terrorism, banditry, petty crime and gangsterism, and corruption and extra-legal abuses – although the exact scope, mechanics and impact varied. Many highlighted how the fragmentation of violent extremism (VE) in the northeast has led to divergent forms of behaviour, with some groups seen as predatory and indiscriminate while others appeared more predictable and rational, despite the widespread conflation of terrorist activity under the generic label of “Boko Haram”. While VE was considered an increasingly ruralised problem due to the securitisation of urban spaces in the northeast, banditry seems ever-more pervasive, impacting remote villages, towns and cities, and diffusing from the northwest to other regions. The emergence of jihadist symbols and tactics – including mass kidnappings and complex attacks on military targets – has led to considerable international discussion over a prospective “crime–terror nexus”, notions of which were reflected in a small proportion of the interview data. However, respondents also highlighted the chaotic and opportunistic nature of conflict across the north and the insufficiency of existing national-legal categorisations for violence, which is often context-specific and highly localised (despite operational similarities).

Although the scale of VE and banditry means they tend to become the focus of national and international interventions, participants acknowledged the additional impact of petty crime and gangsterism on regional communities. These were identified as both a cause and a consequence of insecurity and were linked by interviewees to long-term structural issues of unemployment and undereducation, as well as to trauma, displacement and disruption caused by ongoing conflict. Similarly, local fieldwork referenced the propensities of government actors to generate insecurity – from extra-legal violence to endemic corruption – leading to chronic levels of distrust and a perception that political and economic elites benefit from continued instability. While state authorities and portions of the wider public have empowered so-called “vigilante” groups – given their apparent role as an effective security provider – several participants expressed concern over their alleged involvement in criminal behaviour and the risk of further upheaval.

Although these discrete forms of insecurity have their own thematically and spatially defined drivers and dynamics, they coexist within a shared social ecology – a broader system conducive to violent mobilisation. In the case of northern Nigeria, the cumulative impact of colonial mismanagement and neo-patrimonial governance has arguably encouraged systemic corruption, impunity and the normalisation of coercion and criminality as tools of political competition. While the scope, intensity and resonance of these variables fluctuate over time, interviewee data implies they facilitate different modes of violence at a subnational level, as do the social responses to associated gaps in state reach, capacity and legitimacy. These problems can incentivise various experiments in local self-help, encouraging the emergence of alternative authority structures (whether bandit, criminal, extremist or vigilante), which are themselves liable to become vectors of instability. Bottom-up survival strategies and coping-mechanisms have, for instance, blurred the boundaries between licit and illicit behaviour, with communities reshaping social and economic norms in recognition of the constraints afflicting everyday life under the shadow of armed groups. In doing so, they have inadvertently shifted local perceptions and parameters of legitimate and illegitimate action further away from the national-legal definitions on which donors usually rely.

Based on these findings, the authors have identified a range of policy recommendations for the donor community to consider. The first two were drawn from suggestions put forward by interviewees themselves:

• Spaces for dialogue and collaboration between civilians, state actors and security personnel may help to improve local confidence, reduce tensions, rebuild trust, increase transparency and help to instil a sense of ownership and responsibility among local people.

• Community members should be engaged in anti-corruption efforts, with bottom-up education and sensitisation campaigns accompanying top-down reforms.

The authors also flag a series of wider implications and prescriptions to inform donor approaches in the future, while acknowledging the complex and challenging reality of navigating both local and national scepticism of external interventions and barriers to programming in certain no-go policy areas:

• Porous boundaries between licit and illicit economies complicate programming. Donors may find that focusing on behaviours rather than national-legal definitions of crime and terrorism is more sensitive (and relevant) to local understanding.

• Trust deficits must be overcome to facilitate meaningful community engagement with, and ownership of, donor programming. Distrust and social fragmentation may limit the efficacy of external interventions, highlighting the need for donors to address this trust deficit through consistent engagement to better mobilise community buy-in.

• The disconnect between local and national/international understandings of insecurity in northern Nigeria needs to be addressed. Poorly informed responses risk neglecting local realities, discounting community perspectives and overlooking informal structures of governance and legitimacy.

• Interventions should be integrated and cross-cutting, ensuring that different lines of effort are mutually reinforcing and commensurate with the system-level problems they are tackling.

• Progress is hampered by minimal political appetite for reform, which can limit donor agency to enact change. Incremental reform along with support for political, institutional and civic islands of integrity may yield more success than the exogenous imposition of anti-corruption initiatives.

Introduction

Nigeria faces several “security conundrums”, from petty graft and organised crime to recurrent resource competition, separatism, sectarianism and extremism. Although the full scope of local violence is often difficult to quantify, at least 350,000 deaths have stemmed from successive insurgencies across the north since 2009, while hostilities between herders and sedentary farmers have displaced over 300,000 people along the country’s “Middle Belt”. Amid “scorched earth” tactics, vigilante violence and the profusion of ethnic militias, studies suggest inter-communal tensions accounted for six times the number of civilians killed by the Islamist outfit Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS, popularly known as “Boko Haram”) and its various offshoots in 2017. In the northwest, banditry has reportedly surged by 731%, surpassing the fatality rates of more “conventional” conflicts afflicting the northeast between 2018 and 2023. Over the past year, escalating insecurity – including abductions and extra-judicial killings – shut down three local government areas (LGAs) in Zamfara alone, with 700,000 residents fleeing their homes. Against this backdrop, 33 million Nigerians (roughly 15% of the population) now face food shortages, while the army is having to assume a “policing” role across all 36 federal states.

Despite the scale and urgency of this crisis, policy is not always seen as reflecting or directly addressing local realities, needs or concerns. While insecurity tends to affect those on the social and geographic fringes most acutely, their perceptions and experiences are rarely captured in empirical datasets, which can leave decision-makers overly reliant on elite assumptions. Drawing on fieldwork across multiple states, this report attempts to alleviate these gaps, examining bottom-up perspectives of Nigeria’s threat landscape – including organised crime and terrorism – to better inform national and international responses. This primarily involves unpacking sources of insecurity as determined by local stakeholders themselves, examining their mechanics, resonance and impact on host communities, and how, in some cases, they may be seen to diverge from state and national government priorities or from donor interests. Such insights offer valuable entry points for interrogating the broader mechanisms that feed into, and facilitate, violence. While discrete forms of insecurity have their own thematically and spatially defined drivers and dynamics, they coexist within a shared social ecology, a wider system conducive to violent mobilisation. Simply put, they are different symptoms of the same wicked problem, the scope and complexity of which needs to be acknowledged and factored into programme design and policy formation.

Understanding how this environment diminishes trust in formal governance, diffuses and normalises violence, and propels social fragmentation is therefore essential for assessing local experiences of insecurity, identifying plausible pathways of change, and developing intervention strategies. Accordingly, this report examines the following research questions:

• How are organised crime, terrorism and other forms of insecurity perceived and experienced at the local level in Nigeria?

• What are the mechanisms conditioning local insecurity?

• What are the implications for interventions by national stakeholders and foreign donors?

The analysis primarily draws on participant insights, while integrating existing literature where possible, to caveat and contextualise claims and situate grassroots experiences within the wider evidence base. This is followed by recommendations for policymakers and practitioners focusing on how they can adapt their approaches to better address insecurity at the subnational level.

The report is part of a broader three-year project, “Organised Crime, Terror, and Insecurity in Africa” (OCTA), exploring local perceptions of these issues across several case study countries, including Nigeria and Mozambique. These states all face significant problems with organised crime, terrorism and related security concerns, share challenges in responding to such threats (for example, limited resources and corruption vulnerabilities), and have been large recipients of foreign assistance and advice. The project’s contribution is to complement conventional, top-down notions of insecurity – which generally privilege government and donor perspectives – with bottom-up efforts that harness local knowledge, provide a holistic appraisal of the security landscape and contribute to more effective interventions.

Methodology, Challenges and Limitations

The report is based on research managed between February 2022 and January 2024, which included an in-depth review of open-source literature and country-based fieldwork to gauge different aspects of the security context in northern Nigeria. Three partner organisations – Conciliation Resources (CR), Hope Interactive and Unified Members for Women Advancement – conducted key informant interviews (see Table 1) from August to November 2023, gathering grassroots perceptions of insecurity across three states – Borno, Yobe and Kaduna – alongside supplementary input from stakeholders in Abuja. Although planned research in Zamfara was suspended due to safety concerns, the team was able to draw on existing analysis supplied by a local academic.

Interviewees were selected using the partners’ existing networks and familiarity with the field sites, drawing from various communities based on their knowledge of local security issues. This included Nigerian civil society organisations (CSO) and NGO representatives, delegates from different social and youth groups, traditional and religious leaders, local officials, security personnel (including military and police), academics, journalists, businesspeople, vendors, union workers, and other actors.

▲ Table 1: Overview of Interviews Conducted

From the outset, efforts were made to avoid imposing reductive, externally constructed understandings of insecurity, with researchers providing a series of open-ended questions to flesh out a picture of local perceptions. Participants were asked to describe the main forms of insecurity in their locality, the type of actors they identified as responsible for insecurity, those actors they considered to be the main providers of security and the characteristics of these different individuals or groups. Researchers focused on how respondents viewed organised crime, terrorism and other expressions of insecurity, but particular care was taken to ensure initial questions did not lead with these terms. The findings were refined via a verification workshop hosted by RUSI and CR in Abuja in January 2024, integrating a mix of local practitioners, government representatives, civil society delegates and regional experts.

By collecting data across three case study contexts, and drawing on supplementary data for a fourth locality, the project sought to prioritise depth over breadth. Its analysis does not cover every form of insecurity across a state as large and diverse as Nigeria, concentrating instead on specific hotspots in the northeast and northwest. However, by combining interview-based research in areas afflicted by chronic instability with wider political-economy analysis, the project identifies trends and patterns that may also be relevant across other parts of the country.

While most discussions with officials and civil society organisations were conducted in English, many other stakeholder engagements featured a mix of local languages and dialects (Hausa, Kanuri, Fulbe and Karekare). Extensive notes were taken, but data collectors did not produce full transcripts (based on audio recordings) due to security concerns. As a result, participant input may be paraphrased in places, but the authors have attempted to cross-check and corroborate the meaning where relevant. In light of the sensitivity of the topic and the potential risks involved, all participants have also been anonymised. Finally, references made to donor perceptions, narratives and interests help to supplement and contextualise local perspectives and experiences, but should not be seen as an exhaustive appraisal of external or national interventions, which would go beyond the scope of this study.

Structure

Analysis of the data is organised into three chapters. Chapter I disaggregates key sources of insecurity as viewed by community-level participants, examining their mechanics, resonance and impact; the factors potentially shaping these experiences; and, where relevant, perceived discrepancies between the priorities of local, national and international stakeholders. This is contextualised within secondary literature to help to interpret respondent feedback in relation to the existing evidence base. Chapter II explores the mechanisms conditioning these examples of lived insecurity, assessing how they fit within a wider system of violence and instability. The report concludes with a series of policy implications and recommendations for government and donor approaches, suggesting improvements for how they collectively respond to violence in northern Nigeria.

I. Local Perceptions of Insecurity

This chapter examines local perceptions of Nigeria’s threat landscape, drawing on interview data from community networks across Borno, Yobe and Kaduna to gauge the mechanics and impact – whether real or imagined – of different forms of violence, while also considering any juxtaposition with established donor and governmental narratives.

Importantly, the modalities outlined below offer a snapshot of sentiments across three specific states and should not be treated as a comprehensive or entirely representative reflection of national realities. These findings are subject to environmental sensitivities, personal proclivities, imperfect knowledge and political interests, resulting in an authentic, but inherently reductive, interpretation of lived insecurity across particular moments and spaces. At the same time, Nigerian social discourse and its attendant assumptions are often conditioned by what Andrew Walker calls a “continual crisis of epistemology”, with information refracted (or filtered) through informal associations and ethnic affiliation rather than “reliable institutions of record”. According to Walker, “how one knows something … [consequently becomes] as much to do with who you are, as what it is”, leaving the veracity of local claims sometimes hard to discern. Given the importance from a programmatic and policy perspective of appreciating how rumour and supposition can have a material effect on Nigeria’s social relations and the viability of external engagement, efforts have been made to corroborate, caveat and contextualise these (sometimes competing) narratives within the wider literature where possible.

Violent Extremism

Despite almost two decades of counterinsurgency across Nigeria’s northeast, and claims that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” in 2015, extremism – in its various guises – remains a widespread concern among respondents, especially for those in Borno and Yobe. While their modality, distribution and intensity may fluctuate, rampant levels of violence – such as suicide bombings, sexual abuse, kidnappings, arson, looting and assassinations – persist, with descriptions of sundry attacks against military instillations and civilian targets, from “mosques, markets and motor-parks” to clinics, schools and telecommunication infrastructure. Abductions, “mass-casualty” events, and the burning of villages appear routine, perpetrated by “swarms” of young men traversing Borno’s scrubland on cheap Chinese motorcycles. Media reports substantiate these accounts, cataloguing “almost-daily” incidents as militants “roam the countryside with impunity”: deploying drones and makeshift roadblocks, raiding hospitals, and employing hit-and-run tactics. At the same time, local interviewees maintain that “tax-tortion” – whether in the form of cash (naira and/or CFA francs), cattle, crops or fish – continues unabated, occasionally elicited under the rubric of “Zakat” or “Jizya” (protection levies on non-Muslims), but more often coaxed via blackmail or intimidation. As one resident summarised: “most people in the northeast have had to contribute something to [Boko Haram] … just to be able to keep on their way”.

That said, there have been important shifts in the insurgency’s scope, tactics and disposition over time, with several respondents distinguishing between metropolitan and rural experiences. Originally drawn from a cluster of youth gangs and dissident sects in the provincial capital of Maiduguri, Boko Haram’s complexion and capabilities have continually fluctuated in response to internal politics and exogenous pressures. Mohammed Yusuf’s “imaginary state within a state” – a network of Sharia courts, religious police, businesses and rudimentary social services – differed from the hijrah (migration) characterising offshoots like the “Kanamma Commune” (later dubbed the “Nigerian Taliban”), and its rustic enclave in Yobe. This early (and legal) incarnation of Boko Haram – the Yusufiyya – was effectively a “counter-elite” enmeshed in the city suburbs, able to “swim with Maiduguri’s social currents” and exploit highly localised grievances. Its cosmic tropes and radical ideology – an aberration of mainstream Salafism – were similarly considered an “urban phenomenon”, diverging from syncretic forms of Islam popular in the “bush”. Additionally, despite widespread notions of almajirai (Quranic students with an apparent “lack of marketable skills”) – forming much of its initial membership, the group’s profile was fairly diverse (if oppidan), attracting a small minority of secondary school graduates and university dropouts alongside the occupants of satellite shantytowns.

Following a violent security crackdown in 2009, the extrajudicial killing of Yusuf himself, and destruction of the Ibn Taymiyyah Centre (Boko Haram’s first nucleus), the movement – reassembled under the leadership of Abubaker Shekau – conducted a spate of assassinations across northeastern municipalities, targeting military officials, religious authorities, and politicians affiliated with the ruling All Nigeria Peoples Party. Often concentrated in impoverished, ethnically mixed and “poorly serviced” neighbourhoods – such as Bulumkutu, Bulabulin and Gomari – these patterns indicated both a “well-developed” web of informers and a focus on “settling local scores”. Gradually, however, reports referenced a surge in robberies, prison breaks and attacks on so-called “immoral spaces” – churches, bars and schools – across Maiduguri, Potiskum and Damaturu. Violence seemingly increased in proportion to “military repression” and assumed a “less discerning and [ever-] more brutal” methodology marked by bombings in Jos, Kano, Kaduna and Abuja (including strikes on the Federal Police headquarters and UN building in 2011).

The imposition of emergency measures accelerated this diffusion, exporting instability to the countryside. Establishing safe havens across the Sambisa Forest, Gwoza Hills, Kirenowa and Guijba, the group raided “garrison towns” and local outposts, opting to coerce compliance from a “wary peasantry” and exercise “semi-territorial control” in areas vacated by Nigerian security forces. The transition from street thuggery to rural insurgency probably accounts for a concurrent “surge in civilian fatalities” – the Global Terrorism Database catalogued 1,153 incidents between 2012 and 2014, the majority featuring soft targets and private property – as well as “Boko Haram’s … growing reliance on conscription and monetary compensation to replenish its ranks”. In many cases, jihadist governance became synonymous with “wanton destruction and plunder” – abductions, sexual violence, cattle rustling, extortion, vandalism and the persecution of village elders (bulamas and lawans) – although studies identify at least some variation. Across northern Cameroon, for instance, militants supposedly “spent large sums buying the support of traditional chiefs”, while Hilary Matfess describes disparate experiments in local administration, from the roll-out of Quranic schools to marriage ceremonies, food distribution, and eclectic forms of pseudo-civic largesse.

The logic and scale of coverage shifted again, peaking between 2013 and 2015 with complex attacks on military bases and the capture of several urban centres including Madagali, Bara, Banki, Mubi, Gwoza and outlying districts of Maiduguri. Spanning a region roughly the size of Belgium (encompassing 70% of Borno and tracts of Yobe and Adamawa), this new polity – “Boko Haram Land” – reflected both a concerted attempt at “state-building” – imitating the language, aesthetic and iconography of the Islamic State – and a fragmentation of the group’s internal structure. Beneath a general increase in violence – responsible for approximately 20,000 deaths in 2014 alone – experts cite territorial expansion as driving the proliferation of different cells led by “emirs” with “very little relationship to one another”. Those along the Lake Chad shoreline, for instance, appeared far more “commercially oriented” than franchises further south, offering a precursor to later splits between Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) and a rump outfit – using the JAS moniker – under Shekau.

Following the Multi-National Joint Task Force’s intervention in early 2015, accompanied by the further mobilisation of local militiamen, Boko Haram’s statelet quickly contracted. The corollary seemed to be a precipitous (if temporary) decline in fatalities – 2,000 people per year were killed between 2016 and 2018, a fifth of casualties in 2015 – with operations largely confined to Sambisa, Gwoza and marshlands around Lake Chad. These assessments chime with feedback from interviewees, which drew a sharp contrast between the comparative stability of downtown Maiduguri – “the situation … is now probably as good as it has … been in the last 10 years” – and the ongoing vulnerability of “hard-to-reach” LGAs such as Damboa, and tumbuns (islets) across Lake Chad itself. Although residents can “move … freely” and no longer experience “bomb blasts [or] open killings” in the city centre, the security context remains “dynamic”, with insurgents intermittently cutting off road access and necessitating “military escorts” for commuters. Others referred to kidnappings, car thefts and ambushes along major highways, particularly the Maiduguri–Nganzai–Monguno axis, with spikes evident during the rainy season. The introduction of so-called “super-camps” – fortified urban strongholds – exacerbated these issues, reducing much of the northeastern interior to a “no-go” subsidiary of Boko Haram’s “protection economy”. As Jean-Herve Jezequel and Vincent Foucher corroborate: “African armies and their allies were often unable to restore security in the countryside … civil servants could or would not follow the military into insecure zones, leaving vast areas run by skeleton administrations and few, if any, public services”. Against this backdrop, interviewees described widespread taxation via “fake” or improvised checkpoints, with accounts from northern Yobe, including Yunusari and Yusufari, citing specific demands for “new naira” (so fighters could replace outdated notes and foreign currency). Reporting from Zabarmari offers a similar vignette, with subsistence farmers reliant on “peace-deals” (and accompanying payment schemes) to work their rice fields, which left them susceptible to extreme, often unpredictable violence. Ironically, reductions in aggregate levels of conflict have compounded the problem, enticing rural internally displaced persons (IDPs) – loggers, herders and fishermen – to return home, and thereby expose themselves to renewed forms of harassment and intimidation. Others have allegedly been compelled by state authorities and local “big men” who are keen to project a sense of normality, precipitating massacres in far-flung villages like Mafa.

In this context, Boko Haram – as a messy constellation of sub- and splinter groups – continues to be seen as a dexterous, highly resilient insurgency, despite the impact of military attrition, internecine fighting, and defections via Operation Safe Corridor (a government-run demobilisation programme). At the same time, respondents acknowledged rural “hardships” and “dwindling food supplies” stemming from the conflict, with many communities “too scared” to cultivate outside the perimeters of nearby military bases. Disrupted harvests, poor yields, seed shortages, shock pricing, the lack of mechanisation and adaptive practices, and limited access to provincial markets or water-points have in turn accelerated a collapse in agricultural output, leaving 3.8 million people across the northeast facing starvation. Accentuated by longstanding ecological stressors, several interviewees tied this malnutrition to a concerted rise in local crime rates, reflecting a vicious cycle of vulnerability shaped, but not defined, by violent extremism (VE). As one resident summarised: “food insecurity, increases in poverty, population growth, … lack of jobs and unemployment. These were … issues [that] drove the insurgency in the first place, but the insurgency has only made … these things worse”.

Contested Understandings of Culpability

Despite the fixation on terrorism in Borno and Yobe, many participants were vague about notions of agency and culpability, conflating rival outfits – JAS, ISWAP, Lakurawa and Ansaru – under a generic “Boko Haram” label or lumping them together as those “in the bush”. While not universal, these ambiguities are analogous with past studies, which preface that “[national and international stakeholders] had opinions [on the nature of VE] … often at variance from one another”. As Walker acknowledges, “the experiences of Boko Haram are so [diverse] that it has led to general confusion over what they actually are”. Inherent methodological issues offer a partial explanation (for example, security restrictions, limited trust, self-censorship or insufficient sampling). The realities of a congested, highly unstable social ecosystem may also be to blame, as appellations are adopted, imposed or shed when expedient, and the membership of different groups remains fairly fluid. Stig Jarle Hansen similarly cites an early propensity for “inflating attacks supposedly conducted by Boko Haram but [really] committed by local strongmen and conflict entrepreneurs”, leaving the insurgency a convenient branding exercise for eclectic actors and interests. Crucially, many of these narrative “genres” are partisan and identity-based; a form of mythmaking “repeated in … echo chambers … until eventually so many people believe it that it becomes – functionally … true”. The result is a contentious, heavily politicised information environment, one criticised for being “big on speculation, short on evidence”.

Against this backdrop, several respondents nevertheless identified important discrepancies in the behaviour and approach of different conflict parties, which seemingly conditioned how communities navigate, and interact with, competing conceptions of militant authority. Some, for instance, described JAS as comparatively “aggressive”, killing “indiscriminately” and relying on kidnappings to compensate for the lack of new recruits (and closure of rural banks). Such accounts align with the wider literature, suggesting the group “rarely prioritised the provision of [local] services” under (or after) Shekau and made “no [real] effort to [offer] a vision of a future society or concrete benefits … [to secure] public support”. With little investment in administrative structures or attempts to “win over hearts and minds”, JAS lacked the institutional capacity (and inclination) to rule beyond intimidation, “control, and compliance”. At the same time, Shekau’s hyper-extreme interpretations of al-wala wa-l-bara, takfir, and ghanima left a narrow “constituency” incapable of sustaining populist strategies common among other Salafi-Jihadist organisations. As Michael Nwankpa and Abdulbasit Kassim argue, JAS is more akin to the socially insulated “personality cult” of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, relying on forced conscription, coercion and spoils to offset the immaturity (or absence) of its state-building project. Following the collapse of hideouts in Sambisa, and Shekau’s death in 2021, these dynamics have persisted, with loosely coordinated cells acting like “roving bandits”. As one interviewee summarised: “they are ignorant, many of them don’t even know what the caliphate is, they don’t understand politics or governance systems”. Another respondent elaborated:

I don’t think it is about jihad anymore. A lot of the fighters … were drawn into it not because of ideology but opportunity. That opportunity has [reduced] as the group weakened … the remnants don’t have any … aim, they are just … looting … for survival … This is criminality under the label of a terrorist group, [but] it doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

And a third stated that:

constant attacks by ISWAP and the security forces … have left [JAS] with no options other than to resort to basic criminality like theft, kidnap-for-ransom, and armed robbery.

Conversely, ISWAP was considered more “predictable”, prioritising operations against the Nigerian army over the persecution of local Muslim populations. Multiple respondents claimed “[Islamic State]-controlled areas are better … [they] are still trying to recruit people through indoctrination, … trying to get people to join them”. Drawing on statistics from the Global Terrorism Database, Edward Stoddard shows clear disparities in coverage and casualty rates, with 61.4% of attacks up to mid-2021 focusing on military and police targets and only 27.4% launched against civilians, an almost perfect inversion of those perpetrated by JAS. Studies indicate the “trappings of an IS-Central like aspirant pseudo-state”, with the group mimicking a manhaj approach to “provisionary governance” and “eudaemonic legitimation”. Having centralised much of its decision-making, ISWAP’s day-to-day activities appear comparatively “rational” and bureaucratic, allowing greater consistency in the supply of education, healthcare, judicial mediation, price-capped goods, and protection from bandits and “corrupt officials”. This is not to imply a benign form of civic management or cohabitation – numerous reports recount massacres of communities blamed for contravening the group’s strictures – but a concerted effort to co-opt and consolidate, wielding taxation as a “technology of rule”. In contrast to the “sectarianism and predatory violence” of “parent and parallel organisations”, ISWAP has purposefully enmeshed itself into the mainstays of Lake Chad’s economy, from farming and fishing to pepper cultivation. Digging wells, disseminating fertiliser, creating provincial “councils”, preventing cattle rustling, resolving disputes and reviving lapsed policies – like distributing micro-loans – all enable insurgents to maximise (and exploit) regional trade as a sustainable basis for their financial model. This comes with collateral benefits – such as basic services, security, mobility and land access – which are attractive to residents starved of any real alternatives, meaning conformity should arguably be understood as a coping mechanism rather than a signal of wholesale support. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests ISWAP has developed a far more symbiotic relationship with its host population than JAS, extracting rent from households that in turn profit from a relatively stable commercial environment, while avoiding the “excesses” of Nigerian security forces. As a result, locals may have (incidentally or deliberately) acquired a stake in the group’s success, leaving it increasingly difficult to “dislodge”.

In an environment where “virtually all violence” has become homogenised under the “Boko Haram umbrella”, these are nuances with profound implications for how extremism is perceived, navigated, and sustained among the grassroots. Making the case that terrorist organisations are not monolithic, Alex Thurston, among others, emphasises the importance of disaggregating between local experiences of militancy to ensure that interventions respond to the motivations, strategies and social dynamics conditioning jihadism across different areas. This is easier said than done – especially given the discrepancies in language used between policymakers and local stakeholders, and within communities themselves – but remains essential for the relevance, resonance and performance of national and international approaches.

Banditry

With VE (largely) relegated to peripheral townships or the “bush”, public and governmental attention has gradually shifted on to other forms of insecurity, most notably “banditry”, a “composite crime” (encompassing cattle rustling, kidnap-for-ransom, blood minerals, extortion rackets, pillaging, and sexual and gender-based violence) proliferating across the northwest and stretches of north-central. Incidents have risen from 124 in 2018 to 1,031 in 2022, conducted by itinerant, heavily armed gangs strung along the margins of Kaduna, Sokoto, Katsina and Zamfara. Echoing accounts from other interviewees, a youth leader explained: “[they] invade communities openly and kill people recklessly, they forcefully take their victims … into the thick forest … They can attack you on the road, in the community, on farms, or at school”. Mounted on motorbikes (okadas), the mobility, weaponry and (amorphic) pathology of these groups have induced widespread fear across communities, with claims gunmen “can reach anywhere … whenever they want” and “kidnap at their own discretion”. Acknowledging the scale of hostilities, one vigilante admitted “there is no day that you don’t hear of a bandit attack … we are doing our best, but it is out of control”, while another respondent suggested up to “80% of [their neighbourhood] had been destroyed”. Even politicians are reportedly “lobbying airlines to add flights … from Abuja” so they can avoid taking federal highways. Crucially, the coverage seems to have diffused across rural and urban areas alike, adapting to (and creating) new forms of social upheaval. One security stakeholder said:

People moved to the villages to escape [banditry], [but] then it followed them there, so people moved to towns, only for attacks to them reach there. Now it is … possible in the big cities – Kaduna and Zaria.

And another noted that:

They threaten the whole of the north.

Despite its intensity, the actual dynamics of this “epidemic” remain contentious, due in part to donor fixations on jihadism (and a related lack of empirical data for other iterations of violent behaviour) and the ephemerality of “banditry” itself. Regional instability is not new – armed robbery has afflicted trans-Saharan caravan routes since the early 1900s – but the breadth and commercialisation of recent violence does appear distinctive. In the past decade, disputes over wetlands, grazing rights, ecological pressures, and the ready availability of firearms (particularly after Libya’s collapse in 2011) have seemingly led to increasing resource competition between Hausa farmers and Fulani herders in localities like Igabi. Crucially, these tensions coincide with long-held views of pastoralists as social “outsiders” and “settlers” in the northwest (colloquially dubbed the “Wild Wild West”), where nomadic communities are often among the “poorest inhabitants” of the most deprived areas, with limited access to schooling or employment. They also have little clout over policymaking, with land reforms in favour of sedentary practices and infrastructure projects coming at the expense of Fulani hamlets and cattle tracks. Accentuated by bureaucratic mismanagement and the institutionalisation of “autochthonic” policies, herdsmen have arguably been forced into “pursuing alternative means” to survive, with some taking up arms to protest their “conjugated oppression”, occasionally through brigandage. Importantly, while this is one symptom of a far wider crisis involving inter-communal violence across Nigeria’s Middle Belt (much of which lies outside the bounds of this research), interviewees from the three focal states generally interpreted such issues through the specific prism of banditry.

Marked by a profusion of “self-defence” militias (such as Yan Banga, Yan Sa Kai and Kato da Gora) and so-called “jungle justice”, these cycles of conflict have gradually assumed an ethnic flavour, with popular anxieties around “indigenes’ rights” – spurred on by elite demagoguery – leaving many residents preconditioned to blame Fulanis for latent social problems. Several interviewees from Kaduna, for instance, used “bandit” and “Fulani” synonymously, reflecting a wider conflation of pastoralism and criminality in Nigeria’s civic discourse. However, the threat also seems to “defy neat categorisation”, with a patchwork of 80 to 120 different gangs, mostly based in Zamfara, displaying their own tactics, behaviours, and motivations. As James Barnett and Murtala Rufai argue: “[they] do not constitute … a coherent insurgency of any sort”. In some cases, chauvinism, kinship and social solidarities were salient in attracting young nomads and co-ethnic “outsiders” from Mali, Senegal, Niger, Guinea and Cameroon. Elsewhere, clans neither spoke Fulfulde (a common dialect among Fulani communities) nor had any compunction in attacking one another, with polyglot support drawn from Berbers, Tuaregs, Kanuri, Kanembu and Yedina. Despite genealogical ties to the pastoral economy, banditry is not exclusive to, nor necessarily a symptom of, pastoralism itself, but involves an assortment of occupational and ethnic groups, many of which deliberately target local herders given their liquidity and geographic vulnerability. In reality, the operative logic of these militants often seems pecuniary, incentivised more by “profit, personal enrichment, and money-making” than any clear or consistent sense of identity and/or ideology. As a security official summarised: “[they] are not religiously inclined and don’t have a political programme or ambition as a collective”.

Their modes of accumulation similarly vary, depending on circumstance, context and the idiosyncrasies of specific Kachalla (leaders). While livestock raiding was previously considered a seasonal (and sustainable) staple of pastoral culture and rural masculinity, its scope rapidly expanded after 2011, emerging as an organised, highly industrial enterprise. For example, reports reference a surge in “black cattle markets” (selling illicit stock at cut-rate costs) across Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara, tied to complex supply chains that reached outlets in Ibadan and Lagos, middlemen along the border, and dealers in Benin and Niger. Falling beef prices, depleted herds and widespread displacement have, however, diminished these margins since 2019, with Kingsley L Madueke and others noting that the largest cattle owners across the northwest are now bandits themselves. This likely explains interviewees’ (almost exclusive) preoccupation with abductions, as militants have sought to diversify their revenue streams. Official figures claim 16,016 people were kidnapped in Zamfara between 2015 and 2022, with incidents rising by 1,498% over a seven-year period, although the actual numbers are likely higher given chronic levels of under-reporting. Originally focused on specific individuals, mass attacks have become increasingly common due to their greater leverage and pay-outs, conditioned, in part, by gendered dynamics, as interviewees acknowledged. One stated that:

Once they attack, they will kidnap lots but also kill people. From my understanding, they will [usually] kidnap people they think are easy targets, who won’t pose much resistance, so it is often women or children … they are more likely to kill men, particularly active aged men they may think are a threat.

A second respondent indicated that:

Their main targets [are] those that they can get money from … they target women and children because they are easier to take, but also because the men normally control the money and so can get the funds to [cover] the ransoms.

And another said:

Men can be killed as they are viewed as a potential threat, but they can also be kidnapped. Women and children are kidnapped, raped and taken hostage.

Broad trends may be discernible – high profile, targeted abductions appear to be more typical in metropolitan settings or transit hubs, whereas “opportunistic raids” characterise outlying roads, schools, communes and remote villages – but the modalities are flexible. Bandits collaborate with local informants in certain areas, and rely on overwhelming force – including “gun-trucks”, “large numbers” and indiscriminate seizures – in others, with participants recalling repeated “invasions” of the same villages across Kachia, Kajuru and Chikun. Elsewhere, they have reportedly ventured into goldmining, imposing “protection fees” on concession companies, setting up their own operations, or appropriating land and assets.

Although much of this activity was interpreted as predatory and extractive, past studies also present examples of rent-seeking behaviour that have almost become “proto-statal”, with “criminal sovereigns” assuming “responsibility for security, arbitration, and the means of production”. James Barnett, for instance, cites figures like Dogo Gide, a notorious Kaduna kingpin, “regulating farming through neo-feudal sharecropping arrangements”, while another, Kachalla Bello Turji, “builds mosques” and “dispenses harsh justice against petty criminals”. In Zamfara, so-called “coupeurs de routes” or “road-cutters” not only act as highwaymen but have launched their own shuttle services, exploiting (self-induced) instability to monopolise local trucking and transit markets. Of course, these anecdotes do not necessarily contradict respondent perceptions, as they depend on, and are regulated by, coercion. Additionally, any experiences of incipient “governance” are clearly disparate, parochial and small-scale – akin to the eccentricities of what Mancur Olson calls “stationary bandits”, where groups “stop roaming and start erecting tax infrastructure” in exchange for public goods, rather than a coherent political project. Crucially, however, they also allude to a heterogeneous landscape in which militants can, at times, be seen to either offer a more plausible and immediate form of security than the state itself or compel residents into agreeing bilateral “peace pacts” (that ignore the state entirely) as a means of mitigating local brigandage, as a police officer conceded:

Villages outside town do make payments to bandits … it is not so much about providing security but … ensuring they are not attacked. [They] view it as necessary for their survival … during harvest season you will see that they pack away some of the crop in lieu of financial payment. I know that some families have also married their daughters to the families of people in the bandit groups in the expectation that connection will guarantee their safety.

This cooperation, even as a coping mechanism, can reinforce the exclusion and persecution of suspect communities, particularly rural herdsmen who are assumed to be complicit in bandit activity given their need to traverse and occupy the same spaces – leaving vulnerable constituencies trapped in a cycle of intimidation and incrimination.

A Bandit–Terror Nexus?

Given the plurality of “loose, opportunistic … and adaptive” bandit networks continuously splintering or subsuming one another, clear linkages with violent extremists are hard to determine. Government officials, donors and regional commentators often express concern over a possible “jihadisation of banditry” in the northwest, mimicking familiar methodologies used by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates across the Sahel, and creating a “land-bridge” between discrete VE insurgencies. At the same time, the scale of violence and insecurity has already precipitated legislative and policy changes, with federal authorities enhancing security coverage and proscribing gangs such as Yan Ta’adda and Yan Bindiga as terrorist organisations – meaning law enforcement does not have to “catch” members committing specific “acts”, as any association with these outfits is now an offence. But the realities of this relationship are murkier.

Extant evidence, and feedback from interviewees, suggest three (likely overlapping) possibilities:

1. Disillusioned “Boko Haram” fighters are migrating northwest due to military pressures in the northeast.

2. There is a mutually beneficial connection between bandit and extremist circles.

3. Committed elements of Boko Haram are proactively trying to establish a new cross-regional frontier.

Studies describe the longstanding coexistence of brigands and VE sub-groups across northwest and north-central. Ansaru relocated its operations to Dansadau, Kwasa-Kwasa and Old Kuywello in 2014, for instance, while JAS cultivated offshoots around Kano a year later, and eventually shifted its “bomb fabricators” to Rijana, Igabi and Chikun in 2021. Interviewees have also recounted ad hoc episodes of cooperation – usually functional or mercenary in scope – related to “arms trafficking, intelligence sharing, smuggling and outsourcing … [along with] logistics, exchange of currencies, and guerilla training”. Facilitated in part by shared geography – daji ya hada su (“the forest connects them”) – much of this seemingly coalesced around specific personalities, exemplified by Adam Bitri, an acolyte of Yusuf, “teaming up” with local bandits to form a “crime–terror syndicate” across Zaria, Birnin and Gwari in 2019. That said, the “embryonic and intermittent activity of [such] … entities [often] made it difficult to [fully understand] their ideology [and] objectives”.

With a renewed army offensive and internal feuding between ISWAP and JAS now shrinking the space available for extremists in the northeast, these dynamics may be evolving as fighters are pushed further westward. Military commanders have increasingly warned that: “jihadists and terrorists [are] infiltrateing the ranks of bandits”, and suggested “banditry is … heading towards terrorism”. Several respondents likewise outlined “creeping” signs of VE influence – “black flags”, religious tropes and cosmic imagery – transforming or acculturating criminal outfits across Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara, and leading to an apparent conflation of moral and discursive boundaries in various areas as rural thugs use “Islamic chants” to legitimise their activities or rally support. At the same time, stakeholders identified growing similarities in the tactics of different groups, with kidnap-for-ransom operations increasingly resembling Boko Haram’s methods in Chibok and Dapchi. Notably, interviewee and media testimony both repeatedly drew on the same incident – the mass abduction of 300 schoolboys in Kankara – to substantiate this point, although Al Chuckwuma Okoli and others also cite bandits downing a Nigerian fighter jet and launching complex assaults on military targets as being indicative of “audacious attacks that were hitherto restricted to insurgents”.

However, this does not necessarily imply convergence or capture at a corporate level, as referenced by several experts who attributed the appearance of extremist iconography to specific individuals (usually suspected migrants from the northeast) acting within, rather than on behalf of, wider groups. Elsewhere, Barnett, Rufa’I and Abdulaziz argue that the perpetrators of Kankara – a provincial gang led by Auwal Daudawa – invented a VE connection to “up the ante” in ransom negotiations, while their previous attempts to formalise a bond with JAS collapsed due to “stealing, rustling” and drug abuse. Additionally, evidence suggests bandits may recycle, imitate or appropriate Boko Haram’s rubric and symbology as a convenient way of threatening communities and raising their profile, but show limited appetite for actually “adopting a jihadist ideology or political economy”. As one study observed, the power of these cartels leaves them with “little to gain – and much to lose – by subordinating themselves to a [sectarian] organisation and its rules”, while their polycentric and volatile disposition undermines the durability of any alliance. In some cases, interviewees suggested the inverse is more apparent, with extremists displaying bandit-like tendencies. This shift is perhaps contingent on circumstance, rather than strategy, as displaced fighters become subsidiaries of local gangs or request permission to operate on their turf. As an NGO worker summarised:

Those in the northeast had the opportunity for terrorism, [and] the northwest now offers an opportunity to make money in the form of banditry. These people are used to living in the bush, know how to fight, and have a disregard for human life. So, they use it as an opportunity and flee [west].

That said, indications from Zamfara also allude to a parallel process of organisational outreach, with ISWAP (rather than JAS) attempting to “sell” their expertise as part of a wider effort to fundraise and facilitate access to regional smuggling routes. In contrast to arrangements in the northeast, where criminal networks are usually subservient to, or extorted by, Boko Haram’s offshoots, stakeholders also implied these “official representatives” may be explicitly instructed to abide by the rules of, and appease, their hosts, potentially reflecting a shared understanding over spheres of authority and control.

Amid these evolving conflict systems, the data therefore exposes ongoing gaps in governmental and societal understandings of bandits’ organisational structure, operational strategy, and leadership, with numerous stakeholders describing their difficulty distinguishing between terrorism and organised crime:

[Nigeria has] myriads of violent conflicts ongoing … at the same time … it is so confusing, and many people lack the understanding to properly categorise these conflicts to identify the proper intervention to be given.

While this arguably reflects the fungibility of different forms of insecurities, with overlapping membership, tactics and discourse characterising VE and provincial banditry, these analogies are often context-specific and conditional. Given the heterogeneity of criminal networks across the northwest, and the jumble of cells and splinters operating under the Boko Haram umbrella, there is consequently a risk in over-extending the “terrorism” label without a sufficient appreciation for the discrete logics shaping violence across disparate areas, even if they share similarities.

Petty Crime and Gangsterism

Alongside high-profile threats such as VE and banditry, participants from Borno, Yobe and Kaduna all emphasised more quotidian concerns over the impact of gangsterism and juvenile delinquency on city life. Prosaic expressions of “urban banditry” – muggings, phone-snatching, burglary, harassment and rape – appeared common across subaltern neighbourhoods of Maiduguri, with groups of young (often vicenarian) men extorting residents and running prostitution rings. While the fear and “effects” of this insecurity were ubiquitous, respondents described particular “hotspots” of illicit activity, usually concentrated in dense, low-income districts – for example, Gwoidamgari, Bolori, Dala, Maisandari, Railway and Gwange – characterised by poor social amenities and a lack of basic infrastructure. Partially mapping on to old Boko Haram recruitment hubs, these areas were disparaged by respondents as “criminal enclaves”, with surrounding communities criticised for their apparent “complicity” in deviant behaviour. Although the specifics tended to be highly localised, interviewees offered a ready-made topography of social ills, ranging from alcoholism (in Old Maiduguri), cocaine and “Penta” injections (in Mafoni Green-House) to cheap marijuana (in Galadima), scammers and fraudsters (in Barka de Zuma), and turf wars (in the New Government Reserved Area). One security officer conceded that “it is now anathema to build or live in the outskirts as you become a target”, with other stakeholders citing “rampant” violence around the post-office, Monday Market and various bridges and bypasses. Analogous trends were supposedly evident in municipalities like Potiskum and Damaturu, with participants referencing pervasive crime rates across slumlands and outlying estates (such as Tashan Kurma, Pompomari and Nayinawa), commercial zones, water points and major roadways.

It should be prefaced that anecdotal data may not always amount to objective reality. Like many other countries, Nigeria’s public discourse routinely frames young, impoverished and/or unemployed men as drivers of disorder and insecurity, suggesting respondents might be predisposed to blame youth culture for any infraction or social grievance. These sentiments are fed, in part, by the propensity of elites to induce “moral panic”, manufacturing so-called “folk devils” to criminalise or disenfranchise specific groups – from street children and almajirai to displaced populations, alleged drug addicts, and/or poor communities – as a means of projecting or preserving power. Although such (“gerontocratic and patriarchal”) methods of social control assume different forms and flavours, they often have a shared resonance, influencing media coverage which can in turn reshape the local imaginary. While this does not void the authenticity or legitimacy of participant input, their perceptions may therefore be conditioned by, and instrumentalised within, a wider discursive landscape that is not always substantiated by empirical evidence.

Against this backdrop, many interviewees attributed neighbourhood criminality to the same structural problems: unemployment; rapid, unregulated urbanisation; deprivation; mounting living costs; and lags in education. Such dynamics pre-date Boko Haram, with officials estimating 30% to 35% of Borno’s population had already coalesced around Maiduguri by the 1990s, due (partially) to desertification and reductions in arable farmland. The demographic shifts and social tensions accompanying this “unplanned sprawl” not only undermined the ability of state institutions, or coterminous patronage networks, to satisfy local expectations but accelerated the decline of hereditary rule (in terms of moral authority and popular legitimacy) and its associated surveillance systems. The resulting lack of leadership, direction and opportunity has arguably pushed many inhabitants into the informal or (much smaller) illicit economy, with one study summarising: “[people] come to the city in search of a livelihood, the bubble burst and they realise there is nothing there. That’s when they become easy prey for militant organisations”. Successive decades of insurrection and counterinsurgency appeared to exacerbate these trends, contributing towards an (unmanaged) influx of IDPs (reportedly around 800,000 by 2014/15) and a concurrent collapse of provincial industries. As a consequence, affluent boroughs have “virtually merged with poor [given the] increasing rate of poverty even among government workers”, while numerous respondents cited the “desperation” motivating residents “to do bad jobs for a small token of money”.

Similar conclusions were evident across Yobe, with young people considered “trapped”, or having to consort with criminal syndicates for “meaning, purpose, community and [access to cash]”. In describing the scale of urban blight, a vigilante conceded: “[households with] nothing to eat venture into criminality for survival. But [crime] also [grants] them status and meaning … it gives them a social [circle] and [a] form of power”.

The conditions shaping juvenile delinquency can subsequently be seen as a product of both change and continuity, with the cumulative effects of trauma, dislocation and violence associated with Boko Haram leading to a generation of “street children” reliant on “unconventional” coping strategies, from begging to petty crime (“stealing, shoplifting, snatching, and drug dealing”). Two law enforcement personnel summarised the problem, with the first noting that:

The past ten years … have provided space for the proliferation of small arms, thereby resulting in … violent activities including … gangsterism among the youth in Maiduguri. The scourge of Boko Haram … [has] brought about near anarchy and lawlessness.

The second said:

[Local] criminals are virtually an offshoot from the impact of [extremist] violence experienced over the years.

Interviewees additionally referenced an apparent surge in substance misuse as a symptom and propellant of insecurity, framing the consumption of narcotics (or cheaper derivatives) as a convenient (and steadily normalised) way of “suppressing pain and hunger”. This remains a controversial claim, especially given chronic data deficits, the politicisation of Nigeria’s drug trade and ongoing contestation over the scope and ontology of “addiction” itself. Nevertheless, both respondents and past studies suggest the insurgency and counterinsurgency have not only supplied cover for illicit opioid sales (for example, of Tramodol, codeine and cough syrup), but continued to drive the use of cannabis, Rohypnol, Methamphetamine (colloquially dubbed “Ice”), marijuana and alcohol, alongside an assortment of crude knockoffs (manufactured from Tom-Tom sweets, soda “cocktails”, pawpaw leaves, and/or dried neem or Dogo Yaro). Initially confined to IDP camps and marginal wards like “Kaleri, London Ciki, and Shehuri North”, the problem is now seen as a “crisis within a crisis”, facilitated by militants, pharmacists, police officers and elements of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) allegedly either peddling drugs themselves or enabling their transit and distribution. The outcome is arguably a vicious circle, with Maiduguri emerging as a conduit for narco-trafficking (reportedly experiencing an increase in trade between 2012 and 2021), which has in turn fed surrounding markets and created widespread physical and financial dependency.

At the same time, street thuggery was considered endemic, with decades of conflict lowering the practical and normative barriers to violent behaviour. While this mobilisation often takes the form of ad hoc peer-to-peer networks, coalescing or dissipating at particular moments based on need and expediency, other affiliations appear more organised. Razor gangs such as G44, G19, the Shilla Boys or the Marlians (named after the British-Nigerian singer, Naira Marley, who is not associated with the group) were described as hierarchical or cult-like, with different “clusters” or neighbourhood franchises sharing a similar aesthetic and coordinating their attacks. This raised questions over leadership: their composition may be local – drawing on a disillusioned under-class of orphans, school dropouts, road-side touters and scavengers – but several interviewees inferred a degree of top-down control, with one respondent describing “shadowy godfathers” “plying [youths] with drugs and money” in exchange for loyalty. How far such entities can therefore be understood as a proxy for elite competition, rather than an organic response to peri-urban insecurities, remains unclear.

While these explanations allude to a permissive environment created in part by the effects of VE, local criminality cannot be solely attributed to Boko Haram or its legacies. References to despondency, social frustrations and financial pressures resemble tropes from the 1980s, as do claims of “parental negligence” and a lack of domestic supervision. Despite emphasising the moral failings of “Yaran Zamani ne” (“children today”) for example, respondent preoccupations with a break-down of the family unit reflect cultural anxieties evident in “Hausaland” for generations. Disorder has likewise been a recurrent feature of Nigeria’s prebendal politics since the late 1990s, with street gangs conjured up or rented out as accessories of electoral campaigns. Numerous studies reference the use of young men as disposable muscle, deployed to “smash … polling units and intimidate voters”, “browbeat people to attend rallies”, “fill ballot boxes”, and carry out the “errands and dirty deeds” of gubernatorial and/or federal candidates. Although disproportionately concentrated in the South-South, interviewees across Kaduna, Borno and Yobe cast this hooliganism as the latest iteration of a well-established “thug-for-hire” industry – managed, funded and occasionally armed (with rifles, machetes and makeshift clubs) by the country’s “political class” (the so-called “Ogas-at-the-top”). Governors, in particular, have a long history of “running their states like personal fiefs”, with some in the north allegedly re-hatting militiamen as “forest rangers” or recruiting muscle through government-backed “rehabilitation” schemes. Other respondents framed gangs as youth organisations or party cadres, with their leaders disguised as “chairmen” or “secretaries”. Whatever the packaging, these linkages often appear transactional and transient, with the likes of Ecomog, Yan-Kalare and Yan-Daba receiving stipends as a retainer during election seasons. However, such arrangements also have longer-term implications, with spates of impunity – and related surges in resourcing, equipment and manpower – helping to facilitate access to other illicit markets (including drug dealing, racketeering, kidnapping and, further south, oil-bunkering and piracy). The outcome of this political–criminal nexus – which Michael Bratton brands a “theatre of violence” – is not just incentivising local groups to offset (fleeting) largesse with additional income-streams, but licensing (or actively enabling) them to exercise new forms of predatory behaviour. As a CSO member summarised:

Youths are given a lot of cash … during campaigns … this … comes easy to them and when it stops they look for avenues to continue getting easy money. This makes them organise themselves as like minds to commit crimes in the community.

Graft and Extra-Legal Violence

The Nigerian state has deployed a range of tactics to address these multifaceted, variable and localised forms of insecurity, yet interviews from across Borno, Yobe and Kaduna highlighted how government actors and their affiliates have both directly and indirectly served to generate instability, often through the very measures intended to address it.

Official responses to local insecurity have previously been criticised as heavy-handed and inconsiderate of the needs of recipient populations, thereby worsening conditions for many communities. For instance, the military’s ban on fishing along the Nigerian shoreline of Lake Chad due to the industry’s apparent financial ties to VE ignored the fact that “people have no alternative”. Shutting down cattle markets similarly contributed to the impoverishment of regional neighbourhoods, while motorcycle bans – intended to temper the mobility of bandit groups and insurgents – restricted residential livelihoods and pushed some into “criminal activity”. Interviewees also attributed the closure of brothels by police in Maiduguri to a concurrent increase in prostitution and crime. This failure to consider the second-order effects of blanket crackdowns highlights the state’s antagonistic response, which has shown little long-term benefit and simultaneously harmed the people such interventions were designed to serve. Violence continues in the northwest despite communication blackouts and prohibitions on livestock transportation or bike use. The consolidation of “garrison towns”, as outlined above, has likewise left rural areas unprotected and having to “contend with payment of taxes to … insurgents”, while an influx of IDPs – often as part of government relocation initiatives – has placed increasing strain on local services and resources, creating tension with host communities. Across Borno, several respondents blamed these displaced populations for surges in economic hardship, drug misuse, criminality and violence, suggesting a popular narrative that state responses have further contributed to cycles of insecurity.

Heavy-handed approaches, however, extend beyond poorly thought-through interventions to the active participation of government actors in insecurity- generating behaviour. The military has been accused of extrajudicial violence, including the targeted murder of male children, sexual violence, torture and the destruction of villages and crops throughout its activities against JAS and ISWAP. State-perpetrated abuses were particularly acknowledged in Borno, where respondents referenced “indiscriminate” security operations that allegedly included the “widespread” killing of “innocent people without proper investigation”. Violent crackdowns which “failed to distinguish between civilians and jihadists” in the early days of JAS were said to have propelled local radicalisation and recruitment, leaving a legacy of fear and mistrust that continues to constrain civic engagement with state security structures. This is despite improvements in community outreach and official networking.

Chronic mistrust is further exacerbated by “endemic corruption” across the three focal states, which was seen as accentuating insecurity at all levels:

From the underlying cause [of insecurity], to the politicisation of resources or lack thereof, to the allocation of resources, to the way that those resources are then even siphoned off, to turning a blind eye [to corruption] and the complete impunity in the justice system. The leadership of this state and country are culpable for the suffering of ordinary people.

At the community level, bribes are commonly paid to receive security coverage (intensifying insecurity for deprived neighbourhoods), and at checkpoints (raising concerns that the security services are profiting from, rather than policing, criminality). This has resulted in a highly unequal provision of security, as “there [is] more … attention given to rich and official or political leaders who live in secured areas, some of who have police escorts as they move about”. Meanwhile, for those who are poor, “either you wait for escort time, if any that day, or be on your own and risk being killed, kidnapped or robbed”. Scholars note that these local modes of corruption, verging on privatisation, are partly incentivised by high-level graft – including the diversion and embezzlement of funds intended for the security services – a view shared by interviewees. Such dynamics have reportedly led to the underfunding and under-resourcing of Nigeria’s military, thereby disincentivising lawful behaviour and motivating low-level criminality to cover basic provisions and salaries. This grand corruption is embodied by the Dasukigate scandal, which saw the former Nigerian National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki accused of embezzling money intended for the procurement of arms to fight against Islamist insurgencies. Dasuki was first arrested and arraigned in 2015, with his trial most recently adjourned until July 2025. The exploitation that local people are exposed to from the security services has also resulted in the blurring of boundaries between different (in) security actors, as “people will pay at security checkpoints, at insurgent checkpoints, they will pay kidnappers, they will pay criminals to leave them alone”. This subeconomy of illicit payments means that communities are exploited on multiple fronts, compounding pre-existing issues of poverty and unemployment.

Additionally, rampant corruption appears to have entrenched Nigeria’s security services and political and economic elites in the northern war economy. Across Borno, Yobe and Kaduna, respondents alleged that politicians, government officials, businessmen and members of the police and military were collaborating with, benefiting from or actively backing armed and criminal groups, including those engaged in banditry and/or VE. This was seen as contributing to the persistence of violence and the escalation of insecurity. Interviewees warned that “lots of people have got very rich from the war” and therefore “it is now in their interest to sustain it in order to ensure the continued flow of money”. Research has echoed these claims, highlighting apparent links between various Nigerian elites, illegal mining and banditry; the military’s integration into and control over local economies; and the impact of godfatherism. Accordingly, Emeka Njoku describes the role of “shady practices by military elites in creating and sustaining an atmosphere of violence as a way of ensuring the continued rationale” for funding their presence.

Crucially, the weakness or absence of formal services has also driven the proliferation of non- or pseudo-state forces, from community militiamen to organised vigilante outfits like the CJTF. Displaying divergent levels of training, capabilities, and kit (including modern small-arms, spears, cutlasses, Dane guns and rudimentary muskets), these stakeholders were widely considered paramount in restoring neighbourhood security. Cast by many as “heroes, saviours, and champions”, interviewees emphasised the value of their “knowledge of the local landscape”, intelligence gathering capabilities, and community relationships in recapturing and holding territory (as further explained in Chapter 2). This attitude constituted a sharp contrast to local perceptions of police and army personnel. Law enforcement officers must serve in the state they are from, but were still observed to distance themselves from their local community as “they will pretend to not even know you”. In contrast, military units cannot serve in their home state and are therefore seen as outsiders that “don’t understand the community” and “discriminate against the community members”. As a result, they were generally viewed as extraneous, extractive, predatory and/or insulated from those they were ostensibly protecting. That said, such experiences remained highly localised, contingent in part on demography and geography. At the same time, the prominence of vigilante outfits has also allowed some to allegedly embed themselves in the war economy. Numerous commentators now warn that various groups are engaging in extortion and illegal taxation, sexual extortion, drug trafficking, cattle rustling and kidnapping, thereby exploiting the conflict as both security-providers and generators of insecurity. Some in northern Nigeria have also been accused of a wide range of human rights abuses including torture, rape, forced disappearances and public executions. In Borno, interviewees tentatively referenced these links, suggesting possible connections between the CJTF and JAS, and their involvement in “evil activities against community members”, and cases of vigilantes participating in “youth gangs”. As one participant summarised, CJTF members are “respected and appreciated … [but] they are also feared due to a history of impunity”. Their alleged involvement in, or collusion with, criminal networks raised concerns among respondents that elements of the CJTF may be a “potential threat to … peace and security … in the nearest future”.

II. Wider Systems of Violence

As noted, the forms of insecurity outlined in Chapter I are primarily based on community perceptions across three specific federal states. While efforts have been made to triangulate and contextualise claims where possible, they remain susceptible to the same biases and imperfections characterising all anecdotal data and do not necessarily reflect experiences across Nigeria as a whole.

Additionally, these threats do not always share the same mechanics or basic logic. For instance, several experts have criticised the presumption that “criminality and jihadism naturally converge simply because both are ‘bad’”. Narratives alluding to a linear transition from one to the other – for example, that criminals are “graduating to terrorism” – similarly neglect the iterative processes defining radicalisation and recruitment, and the variation in “pathways” between discrete forms of violent behaviour. As Christopher Hockey and Michael Jones argue, the normalisation and use of violence is not always synonymous with “accepting an extremist moral system”. Conflating different illicit activities likewise assumes actors “[see] the risks associated [with joining a gang or VE fraternity] to be little different; and … equally viable logistically”. At the same time, Lauren Van Metre has described the impact of so-called “negative resilience” on whether these entities occupy the same spaces. Referencing specific neighbourhoods or “mafia-towns” in Kenya, she outlines how municipal bosses with a “monopoly on violence … viciously protect their turf”, boxing out competitors from an otherwise favourable operating environment. Barnett and others draw similar conclusions in relation to tracts of Nigeria’s northwest: “criminals can be a stubborn lot who do not necessarily turn to jihadism simply because they are Muslim and dislike their government”. Referring to rural militancy, Promise Ejiofor agrees: “there is … insufficient data to [suggest] … bandit groups intend to impose Islam on the local communities they attack. If anything, bandits [cohabit] – and sometimes collaborate – with [extremists] but both groups are, stricto sensu, not the same”.

That said, cross-pollination is evident in certain contexts. Interviewees described youths leveraging Boko Haram as “cover” for their own activities: appropriating its branding to extort protection payments, fleece residents and facilitate cross-border smuggling. Speaking in Yobe, one elder noted: “during the [conflict], criminals started killing non-Muslim shopkeepers and stealing their goods … they would pose as [JAS or ISWAP] to exploit people because it made them more fearful”. Others reportedly arranged kidnappings to avoid satisfying debts or to resolve personal grudges by either denouncing their enemies as terrorists to the authorities, or as informants to the insurgents. Elsewhere, street outfits like Ecomog were allegedly folded into Boko Haram wholesale, including political thugs previously used to help Borno’s elite “strong-arm elections”. As Walker explains: “these men … had not been known for their Islamist dogma so much as their cultish beliefs … [but] the attraction of being able to loot and rob with impunity under the banner of Jihad … was obvious”. Alternatively, gangs in Maiduguri and smaller frontier towns have also partnered with extremists when expedient, regardless of “ideological conviction”, leaving the rank-and-file membership of such networks somewhat porous. This transactional logic cuts both ways, as militants sub-contracted violence to provincial proxies – providing “bicycles, money, computers, and weaponry” – as a means of projecting power or infiltrating government-held areas. Emphasising the nuance of local insecurity, a NGO worker summarised:

Attacks happen under the name of Boko Haram but are actually [conducted] by criminal groups who essentially hire themselves out … for a particular [task]. It makes Boko Haram seem bigger … even if they’re miles away.

Alongside the discursive and operational convergence, studies also identify analogies between the dynamics and demographics of crime and terrorism, especially in peripheral communities afflicted by hardship, a lack of security or basic services, a reliance on collective solidarity, and a proliferation of firearms. While recruits joining African jihadi movements are often described as uneducated and poor, this profile routinely characterises militancy of any kind. Theoretical assessments corroborate these conclusions, with Noémie Bouhana’s S5 framework suggesting the “crime–terror nexus” should really be considered a “crime–crime nexus”, given extremism and criminality are usually conditioned by similar social ecologies. The “public health model” advocated by Jonathan Challgren and others likewise finds parallels between meso-level variables (including economic deprivation and marginalisation), motivating VE alongside other social ills.

Explaining the background to the locally defined insecurities outlined in Chapter I therefore requires an understanding of the broader systems that may feed and facilitate them. Although qualitatively distinct, terrorism, criminality, banditry and extra-legal abuses can be seen as different (sometimes overlapping) symptoms of the same wicked problem. They coexist in an arena conducive to violent mobilisation, one shaped by what Bouhana calls “socialising affordances”, such as the normalisation of violence, societal fragmentation, and a lack of legitimate or effective law enforcement. These dynamics inform the “settings” where people socialise and act, framing the moral norms, rules of conduct and governing mechanisms that influence how ideas and discourse are received and internalised, such as whether polarisation and conflict are perceived as acceptable or deplorable. They are not deterministic in isolation – violent behaviour is also contingent on personal susceptibility and group selection, among many other factors – but they offer a permissive environment which is amenable to such responses.

In the case of Nigeria, the cumulative impact of colonial mismanagement and decades of neo-patrimonial governance have encouraged a diffusion of violence: with competing authority structures, an often exclusionary or inegalitarian social contract, and a widespread “culture of impunity” all contributing to cycles of instability. While the scope, intensity and resonance of these variables fluctuates over time, interviewee data implies that they continue to facilitate different forms of insecurity at a local level, as do the social responses to associated gaps in government reach, capacity and legitimacy.

What follows is not an analysis of specific drivers, which goes far beyond the scope of this report. Instead, the following sections examine the key cross-cutting mechanisms and wider environment that enable the insecurities outlined by interviewees in Chapter I, given their important implications for practitioners and policymakers.

Politicised Violence and Institutionalised Criminality

The types of insecurity outlined above – gangsterism, banditry, terrorism and military brutality – are arguably products of a shared system-level problem, based in part on the formation and defining logic of Nigeria’s political economy. Colonial legacies and the agency of elites have both conflated identity politics with access, or perceived access, to public goods, as well as, at times of stress, reframed the state as a resource in itself. This has fed into an informalisation of governmental functions, a diffusion (and privatisation) of violence, horizontal inequalities and the prominence of criminality as a mode of political competition. The result is an environment conducive to various forms of illicit, often predatory, behaviour. Tracking the implications of these dynamics, and the normative conditions they foster, can therefore offer useful insights into how different insecurities are reproduced and instrumentalised at different levels.

As noted, interviewees considered graft ubiquitous, “starting at the very top” and “eating deep into society, affecting every institution” and emerging as a symptom, propellant and inherent feature of “bad governance”. Reflecting a consensus among respondents, one union worker summarised: “[It] is not hidden; 90% of our leaders are [crooked] and that is why nothing seems to be working … poverty [is] everywhere because of corruption”. State authority, resources and access all appear commoditised, with participants casting employment, investment and police coverage as contingent on kickbacks and cronyism. Elsewhere, functionaries, NGO delegates and elders were repeatedly accused of siphoning off aid money, distributing goodies to “political affiliates” or prioritising poorly managed vanity projects. Crucially, these modalities were perceived as “systemic” – normalised to the point of almost becoming “legal” – while simultaneously hollowing out public services and local security provision.

One interviewee said:

In hospitals, there are no drugs or equipment; in schools there are no or few teachers.

Another also remarked:

Diverted funds meant for provision of modern weapons [and] allowances for military personnel are embezzled by high- ranking officials.

And a third opined:

Corruption … erodes rule of law and creates [a] sense of impunity. It means money just disappears, the resources to respond aren’t there and security services aren’t effective. Security officials, the judiciary and politicians are profiteering for themselves and are complicit … [They will] share intelligence, ignore evidence, [and] let people go for a small fine. Corruption … means criminals aren’t prosecuted, so people are just released. There is little incentive to be honest, because you won’t achieve anything, and corruption creates the suffering and anger that makes people prone to violence or criminality.

Claims of government malpractice and “structural rot” echo those made in the wider literature, which catalogue a surfeit of clientelism, incompetence and inefficiency. Walker, for instance, cites disparities between “apparent” and “real” education spending, with school budgets sapped by fraud, favouritism and bureaucratic opacity. Others describe how kleptocracy has fostered “billionaire judges” while leaving Nigerian officialdom “under-staffed, under-funded, and demoralised”, contributing in part towards the country’s fall from 149 to 154 (out of 180) in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index. As Ebenezer Obadare argues, “rarely does anything get done without money changing hands. The greater the value of the service being sought, the higher the fee”. Although complaints about graft are often a “dominant discourse … in the post-colonial world” and remain a “national pastime” in Nigeria itself, it is telling how far these dynamics seemingly condition everyday “encounters, experiences, and [interpretations] of the state”, and have effectively become its very “fabric”. Crucially, every iteration of insecurity outlined above has exploited, or benefited from, analogous themes (to some degree). Boko Haram preachers regularly present their insurgency as a “radical alternative” to decadent elites in Maiduguri and Abuja; expectations of bribery are baked into the corporate culture of numerous security agencies; and bandit groups paint their activities as a form of “economic emancipation”, drawing on the frustrations of Fulani herders, or the despondency of subaltern youths.

Importantly, these issues enjoy a long history, with profligacy and patrimonialism having been ingrained (deliberately and incidentally) into Nigeria’s institutional anatomy from the beginning. With power understood in increasingly zero-sum terms, it is vital for policymakers and practitioners to appreciate how the country’s political economy frames, legitimises, reproduces and mainstreams such dynamics in persistent but destabilising ways. They are ultimately a product of structural arrangements working and malfunctioning at the same time.

Problems of corruption can be traced back to the hyper-extractive “estate states” characterising British colonialism since the early 1900s. By co-opting (or inventing) local political frameworks as a conduit for “Indirect Rule”, these modes of “imperialism on the cheap” depended on the personal tutelage of newly appointed “district heads”, which placed a “premium on … controlling sub-ordinate officials” through patronage. In the north, such mechanisms effectively became an “amalgam of continuity and change understood through the idiom of tradition”, whereby tax infrastructure from the Sokoto Caliphate was layered with various forms of Weberian bureaucracy. The imposition of a formal (and parsimonious) salary system, for instance, led to poorly paid functionaries unable to fulfil the social obligations of their role as babba mutum or “big men”, incentivising “embezzlement and extortion” as they sought to satisfy the expectations of their clients. As a result, Steven Pierce argues that this graft was not necessarily novel – the pre-colonial notion of zalunci or “oppression” drew clear connotations between prestation and “possessors of office”, meaning that emirships and their subsidiaries received goods as “tangible symbols of political position”. But the introduction of external reforms did alter the logic, scope, incentives and modalities for carrying it out, encouraging or openly facilitating the “appropriation of public platforms for private ends”. At the same time, British authorities exported, and deliberately politicised, the “charge” of corruption, selectively (and performatively) prosecuting those they “wanted to depose for other reasons”. A corollary was the creation of a “moral economy” in which “changing administrative structures both enabled material malpractices and determined the ways in which those malpractices were conceptualised and, to some extent, dealt with”. They were not a “pathological deformation” of colonialism so much as its “natural consequence”.

The same regime also indelibly blended ideas of identity, power and property, reshaping the perceived boundaries of ethno-regional “homelands” and militarising intercommunal relations as a convenient, cost-effective method for preserving imperial authority. Some may consider Nigeria to be a paradox: a colonial confection explicitly created as a “business enterprise”, merging discrete polities (such as the Hausa, Yoruba, Delta City, and Jukun states, the Kanem-Borno empire, and Igboland) together while legislatively balkanising their demography. Policies like the “Land and Native Rights Ordinance” not only limited internal migration between (the majority Muslim) north and the (incrementally Christianising) south, but compounded educational and economic imbalances across different regions, most obviously in relation to the disproportionate investment funnelled to the port city of Lagos. Uneven, spatially determined processes of Westernisation; urban segregation via sabon gari (“stranger” or non-Muslim quarters); inflexible tenure systems; stacked police departments; tribal codification and the privileging of specific groups; and the later creation of a “tripartite federal structure” (divided between north, south and west) all fed into violent social competition. As Attahiru Jega attests, British occupiers encouraged polarisation along several lines as a means of curbing embryonic strains of nationalism, accentuating the “Muslim versus Christian, northerner versus southerner, and Hausa-Fulani versus Yoruba versus Igbo syndrome” evident today.

The exploitation of corruption (as “near mandatory for Nigerian officials”), local “bossism”, cultural (and institutional) pluralism, and sectional rivalries have all therefore contributed to what A H M Kirk-Greene calls a “burdensome inheritance”, with post-colonial governments recycling much the same political circuitry. In the absence of sustainable party structures or distinct ideological positions, for instance, stakeholders in Nigeria’s First Republic often resorted to ethnic sentiments and overlapping networks of clientelism as a way of building social capital and mobilising support. This does not imply such identities were innate so much as they offered an expedient vehicle for extracting largesse, effectively reducing public office to an “eatery” regulated by kinship and social affiliation. The conflation of individual and collective interests not only drove conflict between different regions, as ethno-elites allocated state contracts, jobs and development money to their “own”, but also internalised patterns of discrimination within regions, as minorities or “settlers” were either neglected or actively disenfranchised by dominant “indigene” populations. While different federal formulations (both military and civic) attempted to defuse these pressures by imposing greater consistency on the distribution of national resources (accounting for 80% of most state budgets), they also “played the unintentional role of reinforcing fundamental inequalities of citizenship”, given the majoritarian mechanics that routinely determined how goods and political power were shared at the local level. Rather than tempering inter-group friction, this reliance on state-creation and subdivision effectively merged “formal institutions … with the informal ethnic patronage networks that [many] Nigerians still trust to provide them with their best chance at upward mobility”.

Although temporarily eclipsed by the pan-national rubric of the early 1970s, perceptions of government as an “arena of exploitation” have endured over time, ramping up with the oil boom, and later austerity measures tied to structural adjustment programming (SAP). Even the “hyper-presidentialism” of successive military regimes – featuring a top-heavy executive (nominally) able to suppress political competition – proved inflammatory, as exemplified by General Ibrahim Babangida’s coup-proofing efforts between 1985 and 1993. Offsetting the impact of SAP reforms (characterised by a hike in living costs and unemployment), and buying the loyalty of army officers, involved manufacturing new “states” (and majority groups) to dispense gubernatorial positions and petrodollars: “supercharging divisions of ethnicity, religion and regionalism” as different communities fought for their cut. By adopting consociational policies as a “short- and midterm survival strategy”, Nigeria’s “militaricians” not only “infected” federal and local governance with a predatory logic – turning institutions “to the business of [self] enrichment” – but underlined the existential value of “indigene rights” in the popular imagination.

These legacies, and the accompanying reliance on cash and coercion they engender, continue to shape structural violence across northern Nigeria, exacerbated in part by the democratisation processes instigated since the late 1990s. With polling considered a “winner-takes-all” contest by elites and laypeople alike, profligacy and so-called “stomach infrastructure” – the satisfaction of immediate needs – have encouraged abuses and illicit behaviour (vote-rigging, intimidation, extrajudicial killings and the renting out of local gangs) to preserve (or overthrow) existing systems of “patrimonialism, prebendalism, and patronage”. Crucially, much of this electoral violence “occurs in parallel to major and long-standing armed conflicts and … large-scale communal [hostilities]”, not least because “collective memories of discrimination and grievance” enable politicians to stoke social tensions when the outcomes look unfavourable. Borno offers an instructive example. Following the accession of President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba from the southwest, in 1999, northern powerbrokers increasingly tapped into demagoguery and identity politics as a means of securing and retaining office. This included wedge issues like “full Sharia”, an expansion of religious penal codes that “many in the Muslim community [saw] … as a panacea for the complex and messy problems of social injustice, poverty [and] unemployment”. Introduced across 12 northern states in 2000 and 2001, these reforms were a partial response to greater demands for regional self-assertion, pressure from grassroots ideologues, and antipathy towards “secular” federalism. However, they also allowed a new crop of elites to exploit expressions of piety, populism, and sectional solidarity, with aspiring candidates outbidding incumbent governors by superficially maximising the remit of Islamic law. Violence and intimidation consequently assumed theological inflections, as studies document (controversial) allegations that politicians “cultivated a symbiotic relationship with Yusuf, in which Boko Haram would deliver votes through endorsement, persuasion, or force, in exchange for influencing the terms and implementation of sharia”. While these alleged linkages have been repeatedly denied by prominent officials, and, if true, quickly collapsed, the accusations allude to a wider reliance on social polarisation as a way of accessing and maintaining power, precipitating cycles of grievance and conflict that have gradually assumed a momentum of their own.

To summarise, long-running processes of state formation continue to permit and facilitate local experiences of insecurity, in part because they produce government bodies prone to weakness and rapacity. Institutional pathologies, widespread impunity, and manipulation by political strongmen have not only sapped the army of munitions, food and equipment (as outlined in Chapter I) but have also consistently undermined the capacity of federal law enforcement (despite liberal injections of donor funding to help to improve the National Police Force’s accountability, efficiency and corporate culture). While day-to-day extortion may be as much about bureaucracy (offsetting the budget deficits of local stations and meeting quotas for promotions) as it is about individual profiteering, the end result – a normalisation of graft and subsequent loss of public trust – is the same, leaving many interviewees to criticise the state as ineffective or partisan.

At the same time, the “rules of the game” conditioning Nigeria’s political economy rely on informal modes of patronage, exclusivity and social fragmentation that seem inherently destabilising. Competition over resource access, for instance, has arguably legitimised what Maggie Fick labels a “thug democracy”, where coercion, sleaze, bribery and “everyday” graft may not only be tolerated but actively demanded by constituents keen to preserve their slice of the “national cake”, reflecting a social morality that “trumps … notions of civic duty tied to the state or national polity”. As Daniel Jordan Smith explains, “obligations to kin … are rooted in a moral economy that privileges reciprocity, sharing, and interdependence”, effectively legitimising specific types of corruption or hankali (“good sense”) in government operations. In this context, change is not just contingent on buy-in from those “Big-Men” and “Godfathers” benefiting from the status-quo, but ordinary Nigerians reliant on “patron-client … and other identitarian relationships”, with many left “compelled, enticed, trapped and resigned to participate” in the country’s “corruption complex”. As one respondent conceded, “[we] are ourselves part of the bribery/extortion machine … making contributions and payments to survive … but also … for our [own] convenience”. When these informal distribution networks function, they are liable to become centrifugal over time, marginalising minority groups and those on the outside, and thereby driving resentment, polarisation and violence. When they fail – either due to greed, negligence or a lack of liquidity – the inability of both official and clientelistic arrangements to appease local needs cedes space for radical alternatives. In short, the cumulative systems now defining the Nigerian state appear increasingly entropic: incentivising, licensing and reproducing different forms of predatory practice.

Social Responses and Self-Reliance

It should be stressed these insecurities are not just enabled by high-level machinations or top-down prebendal politics. They also exist in an environment shaped by autonomous societal forces, particularly driven by those at the margins responding to deficiencies in government coverage and capacity. A longstanding reliance on alternative providers of protection, opportunity or empowerment – and on informal economies to sustain local livelihoods – has encouraged the proliferation of new authority structures. These eclectic methods of political organisation and self-help not only speak to an ecology marked by violence, but tend to operate outside of, or in contravention to, the state. As a result, they are liable to generate negative feedback loops that might quickly become self-reinforcing: heightening vulnerabilities, creating new grievances and opening further vectors of instability. An exposition of these factors can therefore help to better understand and contextualise the perceptions of insecurity outlined in Chapter I.

As noted, chronic mismanagement and political fragmentation have exacerbated inequalities within and between regions (see Table 2), leading to disaffection and rural immiseration. Graft continues to undermine the quality of healthcare, infrastructure, and the efficacy of poverty reduction schemes. LGAs – the most proximate tier of government for many Nigerians – have “all but ceased to function”.

▲ Table 2: Inequalities Between Regions

Against this backdrop, Kate Meagher summarises:

Northern cities have been turned into tinderboxes where hordes of young men … face the daily indignities of economic desperation and police harassment in their struggle to get by. And every day, [they] are confronted by the lavish consumption styles of a stupendously wealthy and corrupt political elite.

Across Kaduna, interviewees acknowledged the role of these long-running grievances in the current banditry crisis, with criminal syndicates capitalising on herder “struggles for recognition” and youth “idleness and lack of ways to make money”. These conflicts are effectively a “symptom of … broader contradictions in … a postcolonial state that exploits the masses and appears incapable of protecting its citizens, of curtailing corruption and abuses, and of providing public goods to marginal mobile groups”. As a result, Ejiofor argues that “pastoralists” illiteracy, lack of education, and inability to graze [their livestock] not only contributed to their abjection but also predisposed them to armed violence in order to eke out an existence’. Brandon Kendhammer similarly suggests that other cases of sectarian strife are “steeped in the language of marginalisation and exclusion”, with studies casting Boko Haram as “the misguided cry of a disgruntled youth, crushed by the socio-economic system on the one hand and then repressed by the state on the other”. To this end, respondents referenced neglect and poor governance – amid a wider context of poverty, illiteracy and joblessness – as crucial in enabling JAS and ISWAP to gain traction by recycling a “makeshift religious [vocabulary] that [is] both anti-state and anti-elite”. Young people with no livelihoods or prospects were offered cash, status and a “way out”, while recruiters exploited heavy-handed security crackdowns as confirmation of discrimination against Nigeria’s Muslim population, weaponising local grievances and re-packaging the insurgency as a palatable alternative to authorities in Abuja. Crucially, this framing is not unique to Boko Haram but reflects the value of theology as a vernacular for resistance, protest and social change. Contemporary terrorism shares a long genealogy with past expressions of revolutionary activism across northern Nigeria, from “purifying movements” like Uthman dan Fodio’s jihad (1804–08), to post-colonial millenarianism, and the anti-Sufi firebrands of the 1960s and 1970s. Encompassing a wide spectrum of doctrine and praxis, this heterodoxy signals a “fragmentation of sacred authority”, with dissident sects drawing on popular frustrations to contest the legitimacy of societal conventions and power structures. Although JAS has gradually shifted from Salafi polemics to a more “stripped down, propagandistic style of jihadism”, and remains ideologically distinct from previous forms of religious militancy, it is arguably the latest iteration of a violent counterculture that has reshaped, acculturated and/or challenged local politics for decades.

Importantly, these grievances also tend to be cyclical and self-reinforcing, with chronic state failings driving insecurity, which can entrench underemployment and undereducation and thereby expose communities to additional instability and conflict. The kidnapping of schoolchildren, for example, has led to 600 school closures, and Boko Haram has reportedly killed over 2,000 teachers – further restricting service provision in the already disadvantaged north. Similarly, cattle rustling destroys livelihoods directly (through the theft of herds and violence towards those who confront the culprits), and indirectly (by co-opting licit markets and therefore undermining business for those legally living off cattle). The loss of livestock and farmers’ vulnerability to coercion, as recounted by several respondents, has also led to the abandonment of arable land, thereby “crippling food production capacities” and worsening food insecurity across northern Nigeria. Many of those displaced by the violence – around 3.3 million people across northeast, northwest and north-central – chose to relocate to urban areas, which has contributed to demographic changes that bring IDPs into conflict with host communities. This was highlighted by interviewees who felt that IDPs are worsening issues like food insecurity, rising prices and jobs shortages. As a consequence, economic pressure is concentrated on those who remain, intensified by mass displacements that put additional demand on limited resources. Across the three states, this has become a cycle of violence and deprivation, with vulnerability increasing the risk of recruitment to extremist or criminal groups, and, in turn, driving further conflict. The result is a self- sustaining ecosystem of instability.

Other informal social responses and coping mechanisms are evident as residents have tried to mitigate local insecurities in the absence of effective government coverage. Interviews offered a glimpse into the forms this can take. One participant from Borno, for instance, highlighted how tricycle keke riders “contribute money weekly so that they can come to each other’s defence and support one another in times of need … which creates a sense of economic security and belonging”, while displaced youths “formed groups and organised … to protect themselves and obtain [the] means of survival”. In neither case was it clear if these strategies included criminality or violence. Meanwhile in Yobe, community leaders have tried to “interact with at-risk youths and provide services to them” as well as working to “promote stability through mediation and conflict resolution”. Local stakeholders have also attempted to negotiate with bandit and violent extremist groups, although such interactions often elicited a backlash, either due to their unpopularity “among the civilian population” or their condemnation by security personnel. That said, this appeared somewhat contingent on sequencing. While pre-emptive negotiations were considered illicit, post-hoc engagement (usually mediation efforts following an attack or kidnapping incident) could be implicitly encouraged by officials themselves in recognition of the government’s inability to intervene, leaving the acceptability of grassroots bargaining confused and highly circumstantial.

The prominence of vigilantism outlined in Chapter I provides another example, fitting into a long-running pattern of self-reliance and security management parallel to, and occasionally in conflict with, state authority. Community “defence forces” are not new – studies document numerous pre-colonial incarnations across Hausaland, including the Yan Banga (Community Protectors), Yan Baka (Hunters) and Dogarai (Palace Guards) – but the scale, capability and power of these groups have ramped up in reaction to both Boko Haram and the later profusion of banditry and organised crime. While interviewees emphasised the ability of militiamen to collaborate with official security services, many also warned that they had, in certain contexts, the propensity to usurp government bodies rendered “powerless” by “incompetence, [poor] resourceing, and rampant corruption”. Crucially, respondents claimed police and military coverage may actually be contracting as the state effectively outsourced day-to-day operations to the Kaduna State Vigilante Service, hunter groups, community police and several other outfits aggregated under the generic label “vigilante”. Nevertheless, the lack of clarity over their role and remit has raised concerns, with frustrations over the “voluntary” nature and sparse renumeration of these positions accentuating problems with accountability and discipline. Some, such as the Borno Youth Empowerment Scheme, continue to be equipped, paid and overseen by governing boards, and others like the “Neighbourhood Watch” receive monthly stipends, but most are not eligible for any support, training or wage. As a result, regulations are often “feeble” or only exist on paper, especially for those out in the rural periphery, compounding both a “sense of impunity” and a need for cash. Interviewees in each location described local contributions of money, food or other resources, casting these inputs as an expression of communal buy-in. Although originally organic and somewhat ad hoc, collection methods have become increasingly organised over time, as noted by participants in Kaduna and Yobe. The first claimed:

We have a committee that goes round to collect the cash and issues out receipts for the payment. The payment was a total of 3,000.00 Naira per person per month.

The second said:

The head of every household contributes to this payment no matter their gender. This is collected by the community leader and paid to the local vigilante office.

While many stressed that such donations are made willingly – corroborating recent survey evidence of public support for vigilante activities – stakeholders also referenced the impact of peer pressure and social expectations. Numerous reports similarly cite shakedowns, tolling, intimidation and extortion of surrounding constituents, prompting several regions to ban voluntary mobilisation entirely.

This speaks to a broader set of tensions and contradictions characterising Nigeria’s ever-more congested security arena, where local militia groups not only tend to enjoy a privileged position among their host community but fill a gap in security provision left by federal agencies. At the same time, they exist in a liminal grey zone, simultaneously empowered and disenfranchised by the state, valued and feared by nearby residents, while collaborating with and replacing official security services. The details of these dynamics, and the dispositions of the vigilantes themselves, are highly localised, complicating top-down efforts to formalise, standardise and monitor their various functions. Nor does there appear to be a plausible framework (or political appetite) for their demobilisation. By 2016, the government had only absorbed about 500 CJTF members into the army, with another tranche “employed as firemen and vehicle inspectors” and a “sizable chunk … sent to farm with modern agricultural equipment”. Such programmes do not necessarily have the scope or financial clout to satisfy paramilitary demands for compensation and recognition, encouraging gunmen to compete with traditional powerbrokers and public institutions for “political capital and authority”, and further undermine the state’s legitimacy. As former Borno governor and current Vice President Kashim Shettmia warned: “we have created a Frankenstein’s monster”, one liable to produce new cycles of insecurity, violence and corruption.

Communities have also come to depend on survival economies that blur the cognitive and symbolic boundaries between licit and illicit activity, adopting fluid and sometimes incongruous ways of understanding the insecurity-generating behaviour of others (and themselves). While accounts of local complicity and cooperation with Boko Haram seemed cross-cutting in terms of scope and form – usually involving banal transactions and logistical support (from food deliveries and carpentry to vehicle repairs, transit and surveillance) – their motivation and legitimacy were more contested. For instance, interviewees highlighted that residents who offered material backing were generally not seen as terrorist sympathisers, if it was done in the course of the normal business and did not involve violence: as a respondent explained, “[complicity is] based on the damage to the community, but we usually differentiate between people who committed violence and those who provided support”. Some ascribed collaboration to improvised coping mechanisms, given the lack of formal (or effective) security provision: “people are forced [into making concessions]. They feel abandoned by the government; they have no opportunities … it is the only option for them”; “government [stakeholders are] trying their best, but they sometimes leave people at the mercy of the insurgents”. Accordingly, one participant claimed that “most people who did this were arrested as terrorist supporters … [but] we in the community didn’t necessarily view it that way”. Others suggested a more mercurial logic: “[ISWAP] has their networks … there is always someone willing to do what they need, so long as the money is right”; “they’d sell to anyone … they turn a blind eye to whom the customer is, if it might benefit them” – but often delineated between urban and rural settings. Those colluding in the “bush”, for instance, were branded “dangerous, hypocritical, or conniving”, in contrast to Maiduguri’s vendors who earned a “legitimate income” from the same activities.

These discrepancies could, in certain cases, be part of a process of moral disengagement, enabling people to partake in illicit activities without acknowledging their own criminality. Experts described how stakeholders may only participate in specific stages of the kidnap for ransom supply chain, for instance, engaging solely in abduction, transportation, storage, negotiation, payment or “return” as a means of deconstructing their culpability. This reflects Albert Bandura’s argument that individuals can rationalise or justify harmful behaviours through the “cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification … displacement of responsibility … [or] minimising the injurious effects one’s actions”. In doing so, local people can justify their behaviours in such a way that evades their collusion in the insecurity that impacts their communities.

However, the parameters between licit and illicit could also be a product of wider social inequities conditioning the public imagination, which often display ethnic or gendered inflections. For example, suppliers associated with ISWAP or JAS were typically considered “normal people”, whereas the “cooks and cleaners” catering for them in the bush were “infected with the jihadist gene”, irrespective of whether they “joined voluntarily or had been coerced”. The nuances applied to one category – differentiating between local retailers cooperating out of necessity, and the profligacy of “big tradesmen” collaborating out of greed – lapsed into blanket coverage for others. This was a pattern later evident in the ostracisation of female returnees and their children. The predominantly “Kanuri” makeup of Boko Haram’s early membership – and anecdotal evidence of “non-Kanuris” being preferred for suicide missions – has likewise encouraged what Claude Mbowou calls “interpretative shortcuts”, with efforts to reframe the insurrection as a “tribal insurgency”. Much like the conflation between Fulanis and banditry, entire populations have become suspect, with Kanuri commuters routinely selected for military spot-checks and interrogation. In reality, the group’s social base has always been “trans-communal”, integrating fighters without a consistent “demographic profile”. Accordingly, Michael Baca (among others) argues that Boko Haram’s complexion should be understood as a symptom of geography – given the Kanuri are a majority in the area surrounding Maiduguri – rather than some sort of “mechanical solidarity”; the presumption of which masks a complex sociological process of recruitment that disrupts or “ruptures” established social hierarchies.

Of course, these perceptions and popular understandings of legitimate and illegitimate behaviour are undoubtedly shaped, at least partially, by political, security, religious and media elites, as shown by the outcomes of Operation Safe Corridor. By imposing an overly broad inclusion criteria, the scheme tended to absorb “civilians who [had] fled areas controlled by Boko Haram” and “mistakenly categorise [them as] jihadists”, which transformed programme “graduates” from “normal people” (or those coexisting and interacting with extremists out of necessity), to “terrorists” and local outcasts. As one interviewee in Borno noted, once individuals had gone through Operation Safe Corridor, “society [had] a different perception of them, and it actually stigmatised them even more”. However, this shift also speaks to broader power dynamics, prejudices and societal polarisation, creating an audience that is not only receptive to discriminatory discourses, but in some cases is ready to externalise blame.

To conclude, the formation and dispensation of Nigeria’s political economy has profound implications for the moral context and norms framing community perceptions and experiences. The cumulative impact of state informalisation, elite-induced identity conflict, patronage politics, and the profusion of pseudo-and non-state actors may have not only fostered a “culture of impunity” but also damaged public belief in government as a legitimate arbiter of moral authority. Evidently, this resonance is not consistent across time and place, and local conflicts are “unique” in terms of the specific “combination of forces that [fuel] them”. Nevertheless, they all manifest in environments conducive to predatory behaviour, partially facilitated by government failure and the various societal responses to those deficiencies, whether induced by survival, resistance or profit. As a result, terrorism, gangsterism, banditry and military brutality may arguably be symptomatic of the same systemic problem, even if they have their own drivers and dynamics.

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

As this report has highlighted, northern Nigeria faces a range of overlapping, multifaceted and cyclical crises, facilitated in part by systemic corruption, institutionalised criminality and a bottom-up dependence on various coping mechanisms.

The government’s responses were seen by many as slow, heavily militarised and marred by the involvement of security actors in graft and human rights abuses. State-level amnesty and disarmament initiatives seem to lack coordination and federal and local buy-in, while successive development efforts in the northeast are constrained by funding shortages.

International approaches have similarly been criticised for their securitisation, claims echoed by a participant who warned: “the focus from the outside is on terrorism but that’s just one thing happening”. The importation of foreign templates, assumptions and norms was repeatedly cast as evidence of acute information deficits among national elites and external donors, with interviewees describing an “over-reliance” on theory, “arm-chair analysis” and generic reportage from Abuja. Perhaps tellingly, respondents rarely made any specific reference to interventions but stressed widespread cultural insensitivities and the peripherality of local CSOs in transnational humanitarian networks. While these narratives do not necessarily capture the full breadth of aid and security coverage, they imply exogenous projects may have limited reach, even across those regions receiving a relatively high proportion of resourcing (for example, the “BAY states” of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe).

As such, this report has sought to illuminate local understandings of these crises, and the wider mechanisms that sustain and facilitate violence. It also highlights the need for holistic programming that is sensitive to, and engaged with, the local community and which moves beyond the logic of militarised counterterrorism. Below, the report puts forward a range of policy implications and recommendations, informed by the practical suggestions from local interviewees and then by the analysis of the authors.

Local Recommendations

Prescriptions from respondents were not homogenous, and many were too broad to be immediately actionable for policymakers. For example, participants cited broad solutions such as “addressing corruption [should be] the number one priority” or “equal opportunities [should be extended to] all irrespective of tribe ethnicity and religion”. Nonetheless, the more practical of these measures highlights the willingness of local people to be involved in, and take responsibility for, catalysing change from grassroots (despite the scale and complexity of the insecurity threats that they face).

• Spaces for dialogue and collaboration between civilians, state actors and security personnel may help to improve local confidence.

  Interviewees wanted community members to be empowered “for active participation in addressing issues and challenges facing the community” in order to “foster a sense of ownership and responsibility”. They suggested that avenues to improve “military–civilian relations”, or “peace and security committees in every community” would help to reduce tensions and keep residents informed about new policies and emerging risks, while increasing transparency. Respondents also advised that the inclusion of local stakeholders in decision-making may help to reduce vulnerability to bandit groups and other forms of insecurity by rebuilding a sense of community, eroding the distrust that has developed because of crime and violence, and strengthening neighbourhood resilience.

• Community members should be engaged in anti-corruption efforts.

  Interviewees acknowledged that “corruption is for everybody to control and reduce, as it is becoming institutionalised across society”, arguing that the public tends to “provide an enabling environment”. They suggested education and sensitisation campaigns across communities, starting at a young age. Respondents also called for top-down reforms such as improved transparency, protection for whistleblowers and harsher punishment for graft among political elites and security personnel, but they wanted this to supplement bottom-up efforts to ensure a holistic, and potentially more effective, approach.

Wider Recommendations

These more practical recommendations are often hindered by Nigeria’s broader context, with local-level insecurities existing within, and facilitated by, a wider permissive arena. The cumulative impact of neo-patrimonialism and societal responses to an unequal, predatory and inefficient political economy has diminished trust vertically (in formal governance and state actors), and horizontally (within and between communities), especially among those on Nigeria’s geographic and socioeconomic fringes. Across the focal states, these dynamics have enabled the diffusion and normalisation of violence, strengthened a culture of corruption and impunity, driven a dependency on alternative forms of security and self-preservation and eroded the social compact. The resultant insecurity ecosystem has important consequences for those seeking to identify plausible pathways for change and attendant intervention strategies.

Such approaches must also consider two specific challenges facing foreign engagement in northern Nigeria. First, as outlined above, interviewees described how international donors have to contend with local and national scepticism of external interventions, which stems from historic and contemporary understandings of donor programming as exploitative, harmful and discriminatory. Second, they must navigate a precarious and at times antagonistic relationship with the federal state. This may manifest as the active obstruction of donor efforts, such as the Nigerian government’s 2018 suspension of the activities of UNICEF and various NGOs (amid accusations that they were failing to provide humanitarian services and supporting the insurgency). Additionally, donors are perhaps more likely to face tacit barriers, including various “no go policy areas”. Nevertheless, this report offers reflections to help to inform policy and programming. These overlapping takeaways and recommendations are indicative of the need for both the Nigerian government and relevant donors to avoid siloed programming in favour of an interconnected and mutually reinforcing approach.

• Porous boundaries between licit and illicit economies complicate programming.

  The adoption and shedding of interchangeable identities to suit individual priorities creates an ecosystem of individuals willing to engage in insecurity-generating behaviour, complicating the landscape for donors looking to implement development and peacebuilding programmes. A focus on behaviours rather than national-legal, group-level definitions of terrorism and crime may help donors to avoid overlooking the key actors who are generating insecurity. However, the blurred lines between licit and illicit activities, and the ways in which people have navigated this for their own benefit in the context of violence and extreme economic hardship, should be considered. Doing so may help to avoid antagonising local communities, and assist donors in ensuring their programming is sensitive and responsive to local understandings and survival strategies.

• Trust deficits must be overcome to facilitate meaningful community engagement with, and ownership of, donor programming.

  Given widespread corruption and insecurity, many local communities appear to have lost trust in the Nigerian government and its various affiliates and agencies – while also remaining suspicious of international donors – thereby disincentivising public engagement with top-down initiatives. Simultaneously, residents are wary of undertaking community-led peacebuilding initiatives, in case the government labels them as terrorist or bandit sympathisers. Meanwhile, conflict-driven fragmentation has resulted in distrust within communities. The social isolation and exclusion this engenders can limit the effectiveness of poverty- reduction efforts and can exacerbate instability – factors to which donor interventions should consider and respond. Community-led social activities have helped to erode distrust and fragmentation in other contexts of protracted conflict, and there are prior examples of programming focusing on social cohesion in Nigeria. Donors looking to replicate these will need to consider how they can be scaled, while remaining considerate of local nuance and sensitivities. Similarly, this challenge highlights the need for community engagement with, and ownership of, any donor programming focused on security sector reform. This is to ensure community buy-in and regain the trust of local people in state security services and external interventions.

• The disconnect between local and national/international understandings of insecurity in northern Nigeria needs to be addressed.

  Interviewees expressed concern that donors and the Nigerian state are often detached from realities on the ground in northern Nigeria. While some programming is built on extensive evidence, poorly informed responses risk neglecting local experiences, thereby reinforcing the disconnect between Abuja and Nigeria’s peripheries and overlooking the informal structures of governance and legitimacy on which people in many northern communities rely. This has ramifications in terms of programming, leading to the “othering of north-east Nigeria” and the propagation of Western-centric and imperialistic counterinsurgency narratives which justify a reductive preoccupation with, and acontextual application of, counterterrorism interventions and nationalised approaches to regional issues.

  This exacerbates the frustrations of local people who continually see donors and the Nigerian state as failing “to look beyond terrorism” and as “addressing surface-level issues without addressing underlying causes” which “leads to temporary improvements but not long-term stability”. Moving beyond tokenistic attempts at localisation to ensure genuine community engagement with, and ownership of, security and peacebuilding initiatives is necessary. Donors and the Nigerian state must acknowledge that local people’s experiences and perspectives can meaningfully inform culturally sensitive programming.

• Interventions should be integrated and cross-cutting, ensuring different lines of effort are mutually reinforcing and commensurate with the system-level problems they are tackling.

  The bounded typology of policymakers often results in piecemeal, parochial and short-lived efforts to address insecurity, as strategies and programmes fixate on specific issues without appreciating the wider ecology that enables, shapes and perpetuates them. To take one example, VE is typically the product of a broader conflict ecosystem, intersecting with and becoming transformed by other forms of insecurity and violent mobilisation. As Thurston argues, “organisations like Boko Haram – even if they are in dialogue with global trends – develop localised doctrines that evolve through interactions with their surroundings”. Simply put, jihadism conditions, and is conditioned by, the context it occupies. Any effective response must therefore be holistic and cross-cutting to account for this permissive environment. Strategic communication or deradicalisation programmes, for instance, may not necessarily be suitable “for a context in which most militants are not motivated by religious ideas”, while conventional disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration efforts risk overlooking differences between inter-communal drivers across the northwest and insurgent-state dialectics in the northeast. Of course, there are still practical and conceptual difficulties to actually integrating prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) within wider intervention efforts, from development and governance to stabilisation and peacebuilding. Understanding how these competing logics can be reconciled at a programmatic and policy level is therefore essential if P/CVE (and counterterrorism) is to remain a relevant resource for delivering real security.

• Progress is hampered by minimal political appetite for reform.

  The limited appetite for structural change among Nigeria’s political and economic elites has sometimes led to the imposition of anti-corruption laws, initiatives and technical “fixes” without a concerted effort to address the normalisation of graft across the private and public spheres. The nature of this corruption has also eroded the judiciary, thereby creating an “entrenched culture of impunity and [a] flagrant disregard for the rule of law”, which further limits Nigeria’s ability to tackle criminality and creates a vicious circle for donors to navigate. External stakeholders are unlikely to be able to instil a “big bang” reform to break this self-reinforcing cycle of corruption, given the lack of domestic buy-in. Continued support for “sustained, cumulative incremental reforms” may yield more long-term success, along with the identification and provision of support to political, institutional and civic islands of integrity both locally and nationally.

Michael Jones is a Senior Research Fellow in RUSI’s Terrorism and Conflict team, focusing on political violence, non-state armed group governance and conflict ecosystems across Sub-Saharan Africa. He has led fieldwork in West and East Africa, was accredited as a member of the Department for International Development/Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s conflict adviser cadre in 2020, and has worked as a consultant analysing peacekeeping in Somalia and corruption in Sudan.

Genevieve Kotarska is a researcher of peace, conflict and organised crime, focused on non-state armed groups and “bottom-up” dynamics of conflict. She is an Associate Fellow in RUSI’s Organised Crime and Policing Team, a PhD candidate in Security, Conflict and Human Rights at the University of Bristol and an Associate Lecturer at the University of West England. She has undertaken fieldwork in West Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and also works as an independent consultant.