Abstract
Nigeria’s North West region has become a cesspool of violence occasioned by the activities of armed bandits. This chapter examines Yan Sakai vigilantism as a community response to armed banditry in Nigeria’s North West. The chapter identifies factors which have enabled contemporary armed banditry in North West Nigeria to include: existence of ungoverned spaces; illicit gold mining; and multidimensional poverty. Anchored on the theory of civilian autonomy, the chapter argues that Yan Sakai vigilantism is a product of state failure to protect the civilian communities from the ravages of armed bandits. The Yan Sakai was established by the Hausa communities as a vigilante group to protect themselves from armed bandits. However, the ethnic profiling and other obnoxious practices of the Yan Sakai group which include extra judicial killing of suspected Fulani bandits led to reprisal attacks by the Fulani ethnic group who organized themselves under the Yan Bindiga group. The chapter submits that the weakness of the Nigerian state in the area of security provisioning and regulation of activities of vigilante groups explains the emergence of Yan Sakai and the concomitant internecine violence between the Hausa and the Fulani communities in North West Nigeria. The chapter calls for strengthening of legal and institutional frameworks for regulation of vigilante groups in Nigeria.
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Okoli, C.R. (2024). Yan Sakai Vigilantism and Community Response to Armed Banditry in Nigeria’s North West. In: Ojo, J.S., Aina, F., Oyewole, S. (eds) Armed Banditry in Nigeria . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45445-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45445-5_11
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