Violent Criminal Gangs Displace and Disrupt North West Nigeria
Criminal gangs in Nigeria’s North West region have grown increasingly lethal, routinizing mass abductions, seizing farms in an important breadbasket, and causing massive internal displacement.

The escalating violence of criminal gangs in Nigeria’s North West region has triggered growing instability in this ethnically diverse breadbasket of some 60 million people. The violence perpetrated by these criminal gangs, known locally as “bandits,” is on pace to make 2024 the worst year of insecurity in the region’s recent history. The 1,380 violent events and 3,980 fatalities projected for the year exceed the record levels observed in 2022, following declines in 2023. Fatalities linked to criminal gangs in the North West region now exceed those tied to militant Islamist groups in the North East region, a shift observed since 2021.