By Abiodun JAMIU

ACROSS the north-west region of Nigeria, the extrajudicial killing of persons suspected to be informants of bandits has left a trail of ruin that represents a broader institutional failing, as uncovered in this investigation.

Shukuriya Abdullahi firmly believes one thing: her husband was innocent. It was a little after 11 p.m. on a Wednesday in January 2024. Abubakar Anas had just returned home from his makeshift stall, where he sold provisions around the Sabon Fegi area of Tsafe in Zamfara, northwestern Nigeria.

Shoulders slumped, a weary Abubakar dropped the polythene bag in his left hand just at the entrance and, without a word, shuffled to the mattress tucked in one corner of the room and sank onto it.

As a trader in provisions, Anas’ days were often gruelling; he rises early before everyone else in his large family and retires late in the thick of the night, exhausted. He also sold cow milk and was popular among the locals. People called him, “Ididi, Mai Nono in Hausa; [Ididi, the milk man],” due to his popularity in the community.

He rasped out to his wife, Shukuriya, to prepare his bath water. As she rose to fetch the bucket, he started to doze off. But his eyes flew open the moment he heard ominous footsteps by the window.

He grabbed his torch and shone it through the darkness but there was no one behind it. The footsteps had also grown quiet. So, he relaxed and laid back.

“I heard another movement from the fence, like someone jumping into the compound,” Shukuriya recalled. Anas heard it, too. They were becoming more and more clumsy. So, he asked her to stay calm and reached for his nail-studded club to see what was happening outside.

That was the last time Shukuriya saw him!

“He [the husband] only went out to check. Then I heard a dagger being drawn, followed by his [the husband’s] exclamation, “barawo [burglar],” Shukuriya stopped abruptly.

Her one-year-old son, Muhammad, loitered near the door. She called out, wrapped him in her arms and began to feed him.

“They came in groups that night, cut him all over his body, plucked his eyes, cut off his nose and tongue. When he was taken to the hospital in the morning, he was unrecognisable. His corpse was brought back later by 9:pm,” she said.

Anas was accused of being an informant to the terrorists plaguing the region. But his wife disagrees.

“We got married just over two years ago. And throughout our stay together, I never saw him keep unknown or suspicious company. He never even travelled out of Tsafe,” she defended him.

Reign of killing, kidnapping

For close to a decade now, the north western part of Nigeria has been a hotspot of unbridled killings and mass kidnapping. Armed gangs, known as bandits, have become more deadly as they spread their campaign of terror, especially in rural communities where security response is slow or totally absent.

There are believed to be as many as 30,000 of them operating in more than 100 gangs in the region. They sack villages, sexually assault women, impose levies on communities, kill locals, and control a million-dollar kidnap-for-ransom enterprise to keep their operations running.

Authorities have clamped down and launched offensives into their hideouts in the forests, including air raids, shut down telecommunication services in the past and even designated them as terrorists to allow for stiffer sanctions.

They had also dialogued and offered them amnesty in the past with a view to disarm them. Yet, thousands of them continue to occupy large swathes of the region’s ungoverned spaces which they use as springboards to launch attacks, stockpile weapons, and hold their abductees.

Informants’ extrajudicial killing

The armed gangs operate alongside a web of suspected informants who stay within local communities and provide them with information and other essential things like motorbikes, fuel, foodstuff, recharge cards, etc.

Two years ago, the  authorities in Zamfara state passed a law that subjects convicted bandit informants to death sentence. But vigilantes — known among the locals as Yan Sakai — a loose band of local hunters and young people affected by the crisis, have now vowed to protect their communities from the raging storm of the conflict. Infamous for extrajudicial killings, they do not have the patience for the laws’ slow grind so, they take it into their own hands.  Vigilantism thrives in these areas because the country’s security agencies are unable to adequately deal with the situation in the region.

They throw the label of “informant” indiscriminately such that suspected individuals like Anas are summarily executed without recourse to the law. Sometimes, local residents and researchers say, the accusation is just one way of settling personal scores.

Over the years, the state has wavered on how to keep the rise of vigilantism at bay, sometimes outlawing the group and, at other times, giving tacit support to residents taking up arms.

Early this year, local authorities in the region formally floated security outfits to complement the activities of security forces and — to some extent — address the scourge of local vigilantes.

The Nigerian laws guarantee the right to life and dignity. Late last year, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) raised concerns on the spate of unlawful killings of suspected informants by vigilantes in Zamfara.

The commission revealed that it was investigating five of such cases and urged the state authorities to devise measures to curb the atrocities. Sadly, rights violation persists.

Why informants’ extrajudicial killing is rampant – Human Rights Commission

The NHRC coordinator in the state, Abdullahi Abubakar, says extrajudicial killings of suspected informants are rampant in the state partly to the breakdown of order across rural communities in the state.

“The perpetrators of these acts, especially the Yan sakai are deeply rooted in the communities and mostly go  scot free because of the breakdown of law and order in most of these areas.

“They killed and massacred their victims, most of whom were innocent, in the presence of their relatives,” Abdullahi said’ adding: “It’s also unfortunate that the state government is tacitly aiding the killings because they could have made a strong statement against the acts and arrested culprits, but they kept quiet. By that silence, innocent lives are being lost.”

“When communities feel that they have no recourse through the formal system of justice and security forces are unable to prevent attacks by bandits, and when communities feel that they have the tacit, if not explicit, support of the government to mobilise and arm themselves, it creates the conditions to initiate their own forces that engage in what is often another form of criminal behaviour, even though it’s under the guise of vigilantism,” explained James Barnett, a specialist in Nigerian politics and security at the Hudson Institute.

How suspected bandit informants are killed

There are no official figures on the number of people who have been extrajudicially killed on the mere allegation that they are bandits’ informants.

Local researchers say most suspects are killed slowly and in the most excruciating way, either in their homes or picked up along roadsides. Some have had their throat shredded and then left to choke in their blood. Some have hoods tied over their heads and their body parts cut into pieces until life trickles out of them; others are simply shot and left to rot away.

Such extrajudicial killings are not new in the region. In fact, analysts argue they are responsible for stoking up the conflict that has killed over 20,000 people, according to figures gathered by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project. The crisis has also displaced no fewer than 600,000 people across Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina and Zamfara, says the International Organisation for Migration.

The fault line

“It was the local vigilantes that killed her,” Binta Musa bitterly alleged as she sat stiff-backed, peeling some potatoes. The backyard where she sat was once a lively gathering place for the family but became a hollow reminder of what she had lost.

She had barely uttered another word when she let out a bout of cough. Since that fateful day when her stepdaughter, Zeenatu, was brutally cut down by local vigilantes on the allegation that she was an informant, Musa’s whole life had not remained the same.

A day hardly goes by without the 50-year-old thinking about the easy-going daughter she single-handedly raised from childhood. She sees her in everything she does.

In her daughter, Fatima, she sees a glimpse of Zeenatu, the same infectious smile that lights up family gatherings. Even though her presence made it a little easier for her to cope with her loss, Musa could almost hear Zeenatu’s pitiful voice echoing to her whenever she went out to fetch water from the well.

Musa remembers everything that Zeenatu was.

The trouble leading to the death of the mother of three began with her husband, Yahaya, who was accused of conniving with armed gangs in the area. It was said that he would often slip into the bush, under the cover of night, to villages where the terrorists had stamped their authority.

When the rumours reached a fever pitch, the vigilantes went after him, but he was able to escape before they could swoop on him.

Zeenatu, 30, had also grown restless by this time and could no longer bear the weight of his alleged crime. One Friday, she gathered all she had and left with her daughters, Khadija and Fatima, hoping for a fresh start. It had been three months, but none of that mattered on the day she was killed.

The mother of three was returning from a visit to a grieving friend whose daughter was abducted when a blue car pulled beside her. Fatima gripped her mother’s hands tightly as two men jumped down from the car.

“Are you Ladu?” one of them who crossed her, looking fiercely, asked.

“What’s the matter?”Zeenatu retorted and attempted to walk past the two men as she held her daughter firmly. “They overtook us and stood in front of her and said, ‘We are talking to you,” Fatima, now 15, recalled.

“One of them said, ‘what are we waiting for then; let’s do our work.’” That was when she was hit in the head with a club even as another attacked her with a machete.

Fatima could not complete narrating her ordeal as tears streamed down her cheeks, settling on the deep green hijab she wore with a quiet splat.

“I was home when her little daughter rushed to me saying, ‘mama, mama, help me! My mother is being attacked. They want to kill her,” Musa chipped in.

Before they could get to the main road where the incident happened, the worst had happened; Zeenatu lay lifeless on the ground, her brain splashed across the road.

“She had no friends like that. You would hardly see her standing in the street with anyone. She was always in the midst of her children; they were her friends.

“They went everywhere together. After she was killed, they made a call saying that it was her former husband’s fate that befell her,” Musa told the reporter during an interview in her home in Tsafe around late April.

Public distrust

The inertia of the slow-turning wheels of the Nigerian justice system has over the years sparked public distrust among local population and makes extrajudicial killings an attractive alternative.

In addition to pervasive corruption in the country’s judiciary and unequal access to justice, court cases in the country often drag on for as long as 20 years just as many suspects languish in jail awaiting trial.

In rural north-west, the formal justice system operates parallel with the traditional justice mechanism and is also plagued by the same challenges.

Barnett believes the situation in the region represents this broader, institutional failing.

“The problem of informants is very real; the bandits have extensive networks and are able to utilise them, Barnett started, adding: “But the issue is that when there’s little recourse to the formal systems of justice, anyone can accuse anyone else of being a bandit informant.

“Even without due process, they take justice into their own hands. Of course, very often, this happens along ethnic lines with individual Fulani being targeted and accused of being informants, when in fact they’re not. This breeds grievances that contribute, in turn, to the broader crisis.”

Rights groups kick

Human rights groups have condemned the spread of extrajudicial killings in the region. Isa Sanusi, country director for Amnesty International in Nigeria, said authorities must hold such vigilante groups accountable.

“No reason can justify killing people based on suspicion of being informants. In most cases, people are labelled informants without due diligence and without recourse to the rule of law.

“The vigilante groups must bear in mind that they will be held to account for such atrocities. The state must also bear in mind that they are directly responsible for whatever atrocities committed by such vigilante groups,” he said.

Zamfara government keeps mum

Although authorities in Zamfara were contacted for comment as of the time of filing the report, multiple texts and calls made to the state commissioner for Security and Home Affairs, Bala Mairiga, were not returned.

Similarly, the spokesperson for the governor, Sulaiman Idris, promised to get back, but failed to do so by press time. Sulaiman said he was out of the country on official duty and promised to get back when he returned. Our reporter sent him reminders, but they were unanswered.

It was later learnt there was an order that bars government’s appointees and civil servants in the state from granting media interviews, especially as it relates to the security situation in the northwestern state.

Living on the edge

The pain of losing her daughter has taken a significant toll on Musa. She now lives in sorrow, unsure of what the future holds for her grandchildren even as she battles her own health challenges.

Before her gruesome death, Zeenatu sold food items, including other daily essentials and had big plans for her daughters. They attended one of the best schools in the area aside enrolling in Islamic classes, which they attended after school. But now, their education had taken an abrupt pause. The eldest daughter was married off recently. Musa has also become hypertensive.

“I really sympathise with the children because their mother also didn’t grow up with her biological mother. She died when Zeenatu was young. It’s sad,” she said, with Fatima in her lap.

“This one,” she continued, pointing at Fatima, “would often sit staring blankly. It saddens me a lot to the extent that it made me cry. And when I do, she would still be the one to console me, saying, ‘mama, please stop crying. Your health is weak and should anything happens to you, I would be all alone.”

She wants her daughter’s killers brought to book, but as with other victims of extrajudicial killings in the region, Musa is not close to finding justice or support for the children Zeenatu left behind.

Less than two kilometres away, in the dusty terrain of the Bakin Makabarta area of Tsafe, Zamfara state, Shukuriya sat numb under a tree in the compound, staring blankly into the distance. The mother of one is only bidding time before she starts selling the little, she has left to feed her family.

Life has since taken a dramatic turn for her. She barely has enough to feed herself and her one-year-old son, Muhammed, whom she is particularly concerned about. Most of the time, it is Muhammed’s piercing cries that reminded her they have not had any food for most of the day. And on other days, she relied on the benevolence of neighbours to get through the day.

A region blighted by poverty and lack of socio-economic opportunities; the north west is home to 45 million people who are living below the poverty line, according to the country’s statistical agency, National Bureau of Statistics.

The region also has some of the country’s worst health indicators. In Zamfara, for instance, no fewer than 950,000 women in the state are at high risk of maternal deaths, says the State Commissioner for Health, Aisha Anka.

As the conflict continues to spread across the region, an unprecedented level of malnutrition follows through as locals displaced from their homes struggle with basic needs like food and shelter  — a situation, studies have shown, the terrorists are exploring to recruit more hands into their folds.

“The only means to ensure that people do not weaponise their grievances is to allow the rule of law to reign supreme. Firstly, the state needs to reach out to traditional communities and traditional institutions to bring offenders to justice. Otherwise, grievances will be weaponised and become a tool through which people are recruited into criminal gangs,” Oluwole Ojewale, an analyst at the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies, adds.

Shukuriya recalled days not long ago when there was enough food in the house, much laughter, and enough fortune.

“This is not the life we ever thought we would experience. Food was always in abundance. But right now, it is like a daily struggle. We are currently out of food and may start selling our possessions to get food out of desperation. And if these things go, there’ll be nothing left between us and the streets,” she said.

A pit of despair

Musa Haruna, 26, is tired of the label that follows him like a shadow everywhere he goes. His mother, Hadiza, was killed on January 18 this year on the allegation that she was a bandit informant.

Hadiza had been bedridden for nearly seven years. She was diagnosed with fibroid and scheduled for surgery at the State Specialist Hospital in Gusau the week she was killed.

“She was home, confined to her bed. Most of the time, you would even think she was pregnant because she was always home, laying down,” Haruna, who is the eldest of four siblings, said as he fought back tears.

It was just another ordinary day at his barbershop in Tsafe, Zamfara and Haruna was giving an elderly customer a trim when his younger brother burst through the door, eyes red with horror. “Yaya, come home. They have killed mommy,” he cried out between bated breaths.

“Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihir rajiun (indeed, we belong to Allah, and to Him, we shall return),” Haruna murmured as he felt the world crumbling beneath his feet. He stood there stunned as the clipper slipped from his trembling hands.

“I know that my mother has no connection with bandits. She was unwell and bedridden for almost seven years. How could someone accuse her of being an informant when she was unable to even afford her medical bills?” he asked no one in particular.

Like Anas, Hadiza was said to have been cut repeatedly until she breathed her last.

During her lifetime, Hadiza worked as a cleaner at the General Hospital in Tsafe. Though it was originally her grandmother’s job, she took it over as the former grew too old to cope. Each month, Hadiza would receive a small percentage of the pay to supplement her other income from selling cloth.

Later, rumours began to swirl that she was mistaken for someone else.

“They said they got the wrong information. Although we were encouraged to report the incident, I felt it would not bring her back and we don’t have any powerful backing,” Haruna added.

“In many of such cases we receive, people labelled ‘informants’ are just suspected without evidence,” Sanusi observed. “Sometimes calling someone an ‘informant’ is a way of settling personal scores. In some cases, it is only when the informant has been killed by mob violence that people discover he is actually not an informant.”

Lauwali Musa, commander of a vigilante group in Kaura Namoda, Zamfara, agrees that there are incidents of such extrajudicial killings in the state, but said he ensures that suspected informants arrested by his men are handed to the authorities.

“Some places do it (kill suspected informants) but from our side we don’t. When they bring suspects, I make sure they don’t kill them. It’s a must for the law enforcers to investigate first,” he said.

Lauwali has also had a bitter experience of extrajudicial killing of suspects like Hadiza as a family member had fallen victim in the past.

“My mother-in-law’s younger brother was accused of being an informant. He was just a farmer. He didn’t even have a phone, motorcycle, or even a bicycle. So, how could he be an informant?” He held his thoughts, before clearing his throat over the phone. “I have been trying so hard, really hard, to find out who killed him, but I could not.”

Hadiza’s death has created a big vacuum for her loved ones. Haruna is now responsible for his younger siblings. But one burden haunts him in the night: the stigma of being associated with bandits.

“Our name has been stained. The rumours that she was wrongly killed gave me a little comfort,” he said. “I will not avenge her death even if I get the chance. I will not repay evil with evil. Allah is sufficient,” he emphasised in a soft tone and sighed resignedly.

For a moment, Fatima paused, her fists clenched as she quivered, unsure of what to say next. In that heavy silence, fresh tears rolled down her chin. “I would avenge her death if I get the chance. She was killed in my presence. She committed no offence. But Aunty wouldn’t want that path for me. There is nothing I can do now but to beg the government for justice.”