By Peer Schouten and James Barnett

Contemporary banditry in northwest Nigeria is a multifaceted phenomenon that encompasses a wide spectrum of violence waged by heavily militarised yet loosely organised rural gangs. These groups engage in everything from cattle rustling to kidnapping for ransom and extortion of peasant communities, with bandits becoming important de facto authorities in swathes of rural northwest Nigeria. 

Underpinning the contemporary bandit conflict, we argue, is an ongoing ‘battle for the bush’ — a struggle over land, governance and rural livelihoods. Historically, the bush functioned as a shared space for farmers and pastoralists. However, land use data shows that the expansion of cropland farming has gradually overtaken grazing lands, reducing pastoral mobility and generating increasing conflicts. The state’s failure to mediate these tensions or provide equitable land policies, coupled with the breakdown of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms, has allowed grievances to fester. In response, bandits have violently reclaimed and reshaped the governance of the bush, not only as a refuge but as a domain of coercive rule, imposing levies on farming and controlling access to land and cattle.

We examine the historical drivers of this transformation and analyse how opportunistic criminals and social bandits have evolved into de facto rural rulers. Along the way, the trend of cropland expansion is being reversed. Yet instead of reestablishing a pastoral idyll, banditry is reproducing the very conditions that gave rise to it, further undermining rural livelihoods in the northwest. This has compounded rural poverty and food insecurity while depriving pastoralist youths’ access to government services and education that could provide for a better future. Our analysis implies that the crisis cannot be solved through military interventions alone but requires a rethinking of rural governance.

Schouten, P., & Barnett, J. (2025). Battle for the bush: banditry and violent agrarian change in northwest Nigeria. 

Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). DIIS Working Paper Vol. 2025 No. 12

2025. 34p.

By Richard Ekins KC (Hon) and Sir Stephen Laws KCB, KC (Hon)

Between 2010 and 2024, successive Conservative governments made various half-baked or half-hearted attempts to reform the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights.  Reform was, and still, is very much needed – this body of human rights law distorts parliamentary democracy, disables good government, and departs from the ideal of the rule of law.  But the reform attempts largely failed.  Unless parliamentarians and others learn the lessons of these failures, no future programme of human rights law reform is likely to succeed.  This paper explains these lessons and outlines how to develop a workable programme of reform.