Over 5,000 people from more than a dozen rural communities in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state have evacuated their homes after a criminal leader ordered their departure, as reported by a lawmaker and residents to AFP on Monday.
According to Habibu Halilu Modachi, a local lawmaker, the bandits killed at least 12 individuals to force residents to flee, cautioning that the number of casualties and displaced individuals could rise as updates are still coming in.
“Between Saturday and Sunday, over 5,000 people have been forced out of their homes in Bafarawa and several nearby communities as a result of threats of attack from Bello Turji,” a notorious bandit leader in the region, said Modachi.
“Turji sent his men to these communities and asked them to leave by Sunday afternoon or risk being killed.”
Residents from multiple villages in the Isa District, close to the border with Niger, began leaving their homes from Saturday to Sunday due to threats of assaults from criminal gangs acting under Turji’s command, the sources indicated.
Locals refer to the heavily armed criminal groups as bandits, known for raiding villages, murdering victims, and kidnapping individuals for ransom.
The escalating collaboration between financially motivated criminal gangs and insurgents engaged in a 16-year armed rebellion for a caliphate in Nigeria’s northeast has worsened the situation.
