COLUMN | When terror has no boundaries
By Abdulqadir M. Habeeb
It all began quietly, almost invisibly. In the early 2000s, a preacher in Maiduguri started drawing crowds with a message that burned hot and fierce. Mohammed Yusuf stood before people and spoke against Western education, against the corruption eating away at society, against a government that had already lost the trust of so many. To the ears of many who listened, he sounded like someone finally speaking truth to power, someone willing to name the rot out loud. But what started as passionate sermons slowly turned into something much darker after his death in police custody in 2009. His followers, filled with anger and now armed with weapons, declared war on the Nigerian state itself. Boko Haram was born in blood, and that blood has never stopped flowing.
At first, their message seemed to carry the weight of real grievance. They said they were fighting to purify society, to cleanse it of all the things that had gone wrong. They claimed to be defenders of Islam, protectors of the faith. But very quickly, the mask slipped and then fell completely away.
Under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram transformed into a ruthless killing machine. Bombs exploded in crowded markets where mothers shopped for food. Armed men raided villages in the dead of night. Children were snatched from their schools, ripped from their classrooms and their futures. Entire communities were reduced to ashes, their homes nothing but smoking ruins.
And here is the part that many people often forget, or perhaps choose not to see clearly enough. The victims were never from just one faith. Muslims and Christians alike fell under the same hail of bullets. Mosques were bombed on Fridays while worshippers knelt in prayer. Churches were bombed on Sundays while congregations sang hymns.
Imams who dared to speak out against Boko Haram’s twisted teachings were killed in cold blood. Pastors and their entire families were slaughtered without mercy. Traders were ambushed on highways, cut down without anyone bothering to ask their religion first. Boko Haram called itself a religious group, wrapped itself in the language of faith, but its violence never once paused to spare anyone based on religion.
The early days of Boko Haram’s terror marked a defining shift in Nigeria’s modern security history, a moment when everything changed. In 2009, after the death of Mohammed Yusuf in police custody, the group’s structure hardened like steel in fire. By 2010, they had already begun striking police stations and military barracks across Bauchi, Yobe, and Maiduguri. Then in 2011, a car bomb tore through the United Nations building in Abuja, killing over twenty people and injuring dozens more. That single attack was their declaration to the world that this was no longer just a local insurgency, no longer just Nigeria’s problem.
In 2012, they turned the entire North into a minefield where death could come at any moment. Christmas Day church bombings in Madalla, just outside Abuja, killed scores of worshippers who had simply come to celebrate. In Kano, multiple coordinated explosions ripped through the city, killing nearly 200 people in a single, bloody day. The symbolism of it all was absolutely chilling. No corner of the North was safe anymore. No faith offered immunity. No one could feel protected.
Their violence kept escalating, kept pushing further into unimaginable territory. In 2014, the abduction of more than 270 schoolgirls from Chibok drew global outrage and made headlines around the world. That same year, the town of Gwoza fell to Boko Haram and became their self-declared caliphate, their own twisted version of a state. Villages across Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa were burnt beyond recognition, turned into ghost towns. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes, and many of them never returned, never could return. Among the most shocking acts was the assassination of General Mamman Shuwa in Maiduguri in 2012. Shuwa, a deeply respected elder and one of Nigeria’s genuine war heroes, was gunned down in his own home in broad daylight. It sent a chilling message that no one, not even the guardians of our history, was untouchable.
Then came the 2014 Kano Central Mosque bombing, an act so horrific it defied comprehension. Over a hundred worshippers were killed during Friday prayers, cut down in the house of God. The horror was complete and absolute. Muslims slaughtered while praying, while their foreheads touched the ground in submission to Allah. Boko Haram had become the very thing it claimed to fight against. Around this same dark period, they attempted to assassinate Muhammadu Buhari, who was then a former head of state, by targeting his convoy in Kaduna. The attempt failed, but it exposed just how far the group’s reach extended and how audacious they had become.
By 2015, Boko Haram had fractured from within, splitting into factions. Some members pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State, forming what became known as ISWAP, while Shekau’s faction continued its relentless bloodletting. Even after Shekau’s death in 2021, the various offshoots have persisted like a disease that refuses to be cured. Each faction claims to have a purer cause, a truer mission, yet each one lives off the same chaos. They are all fueled by the same despair, the same corruption, and the same complete absence of justice.
While the Northeast was being consumed by Boko Haram’s fire, another storm was quietly rising in the Northwest. It started as nothing more than whispers about cattle rustling in places like Zamfara and Katsina. Small groups of armed men would raid villages under cover of darkness, steal livestock, and then vanish into the thick forests like ghosts. Over time, though, those whispers turned into roars that could not be ignored. By 2018, what had once been disorganized rustling and petty crime had transformed into full-blown, organized banditry.
These bandits found their strength in numbers, in weapons, and most importantly, in the weakness of the state. They built networks that stretched like spider webs across forests from Zamfara to Katsina, Niger, and Sokoto. Some groups operated around the Kamuku and Kuyanbana forests. Others hid deep within the Rugu and Dansadau forest ranges, places where the government’s reach simply did not extend. From these forests, from these hidden camps, they launched their attacks. They kidnapped schoolchildren in massive numbers. They collected ransoms like they were collecting taxes, like they had become the government themselves.
In Zamfara, names like Bello Turji struck pure fear into the hearts of villagers. Turji, a young warlord with his own twisted sense of morality and justice, once claimed that he was fighting against injustice committed by government forces and local vigilantes. Yet his men killed innocent people, raped women, and razed entire communities to the ground. In the same breath, he would sit down to host peace talks with officials and then turn around to issue new threats. His camp became a powerful symbol of how completely blurred the line between rebellion and pure criminality had become.
In Sokoto, there are groups like the Lakurawa, fierce and fiercely territorial, often locked in violent clashes with rival gangs over control of areas and routes. They thrive off ransom collection and the illegal cattle trade that moves across borders. In Katsina, leaders such as Ado Aleru emerged from the chaos, claiming to defend Fulani herders from attacks and injustice but ending up orchestrating mass killings and abductions that had nothing to do with defense. In Niger State, particularly around Shiroro, Munya, and Rafi, figures like Ali Kawajo and Dan Bokolo controlled large territories like feudal lords. Sometimes they would collect levies from residents in exchange for so-called “protection,” a protection racket straight out of organized crime. These men operate like warlords from another century, with radio networks to communicate, spies planted in communities, and informants linking them across state borders.
Further south, bandit operations have slowly but surely crept into Kwara State. Forest belts that border Niger State, areas such as Kaiama and Baruten, now experience sporadic attacks and kidnappings where there were none before. The movement of these gangs shows a deeply worrying trend. They are expanding their territory, adapting to new environments, and learning from one another’s successes and failures. What began years ago as local survival crimes, as desperate acts by desperate men, has now morphed into organized chaos with structure and hierarchy.
The links between these bandit factions and jihadist groups are no longer just rumors or speculation. In Zamfara and Niger, credible intelligence reports indicate tactical cooperation and arms-sharing arrangements between ISWAP cells and certain bandit networks. The goal is mutual benefit on both sides. The jihadists get manpower for their operations and safe routes through territories they do not control. The bandits get access to better weapons and a layer of protection from a larger, more organized force. Some bandits have even begun adopting religious slogans, raising black flags over their camps to gain either legitimacy or fear, or perhaps both.
The internal rivalries among these groups are also incredibly complex and constantly shifting. In the Northwest, some gangs have turned viciously against each other in battles over territory and resources. The death of Dogo Gide, once one of the region’s most dreaded and powerful warlords, opened up entirely new fronts of conflict. His death reshuffled alliances like a deck of cards, giving rise to others like Mahamuda in the Zamfara axis. Mahamuda’s influence now stretches across rural corridors and forest routes that once belonged entirely to Gide. Every new leader who rises brings new violence with them, new rounds of negotiations, and new betrayals that spin the cycle forward again.
The scale of displacement caused by banditry now rivals that of Boko Haram’s war in the Northeast. Millions of people across Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, and Niger have been forced to flee their homes, leaving behind everything they knew. Villages stand empty, like monuments to abandonment. Schools have closed their doors, sometimes forever. Farming, the lifeblood of these communities, has become almost impossible. What makes this crisis even more haunting, even more psychologically damaging, is its randomness. There is no clear ideology driving it, no specific enemy you can identify and oppose. Everyone, absolutely everyone, is a potential target at any moment.
It is no longer about cattle or revenge or old grievances. It has become something far more sinister. It has become an entire economy built on fear, run by men who found power in the complete absence of the state. And the deeper truth, the one we must face, is that both Boko Haram and these bandits are symptoms of the same wound. They are different infections of the same disease. This is a country bleeding from injustice, from crushing poverty, and from decades of neglect by those in power.
‘Posterity shall vindicate the just’
Mr. Habeeb is a Tech, Strategy, and Innovations consultant based in Abuja. He can be reached via habeebajebor@gmail.com
