By Sara T. Thompson

Banditry is a current problem in Nigeria. Historically, banditry has been a problem around the world. A review of the trends of banditry can help to identify and understand patterns that are present related to such criminal activity. To further understand and analyze this problem, this paper outlines the methodology for the systematic collection and creation of one major dataset that provides detailed information about bandit attacks in Nigeria. A review of around 1200 publications from peer-reviewed journals, news articles, and other relevant publications containing information about bandit attacks in Nigeria resulted in a dataset containing a sample of almost 1000 bandit attacks over the course of a decade in Nigeria. Upon analysis of this dataset, there are spatial concentrations related to where bandit attacks occurred as well as the identifcation of common types of bandit attacks. This paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

Security Journal, 2025, 17p.

By Eric Hobsbawm

“Two brief methodological notes. First, it will be clear that I have tried to explain why social banditry is so remarkably uniform a pheno­menon throughout the ages and continents. Can this explanation be tested? Yes, insofar as it predicts, broadly speaking, how bandits will act and what stories people will tell about them in areas hitherto un­studied. The present essay elaborates the ‘model’ originally sketched out in my Primitive Rebels, which was based exclusively on European - mostly Spanish and Italian - material, but does not, I hope, conflict with it. Still, the wider the generalization, the more likely it is that individual peculiarities are neglected. Second, I have relied largely on a rather tricky historical source namely poems and ballads. So far as the facts of banditry are concerned, these records of public memory and myth are of course quite unreliable, however remotely based on real events, though they give much inci­dental information about the social environment of banditry, at least insofar as there is no reason why this should be distorted. But there is a more serious difficulty. How far does the ‘myth' of banditry throw light on the real pattern of bandit behaviour? In other words, how far do bandits live up to the social role they have been assigned in the drama of peasant life ? There is plainly some connection. I hope that in formulating it I have not gone beyond the bounds of common sense.”

London. George Wedenfield & Nicolson Ltd. 1969. 157p.