12 People Feared Dead as Bandits Attack Niger Communities, Burn homes And Rustle Cattle

Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.

According to reports, the attackers first struck Tungan Aljana, where three people were killed during the assault. The bandits were also said to have burned sections of the village before rustling a significant number of cattle belonging to local residents. After the attack on Tungan Aljana, the gunmen reportedly moved to nearby Tungan Makeri, where nine more people were killed. Residents said the attackers again made away with livestock after unleashing violence on the community. The assailants subsequently advanced to Daidanai community, where additional casualties and cattle losses were reported, although the exact number of victims had yet to be independently confirmed at the time of filing this report. The attacks have left communities devastated, with families mourning relatives killed during the raids while others count losses from the destruction of property and theft of livestock, which constitute the primary source of livelihood for many residents.

In response, hundreds of local vigilantes drawn from communities across Borgu Local Government Area have reportedly mobilised to pursue the attackers. According to residents, the vigilantes have been joined by volunteers from neighbouring Benin Republic, reflecting the cross-border nature of security challenges facing communities located near Nigeria’s international boundaries. The search operation is said to be focused on forests and remote areas believed to serve as hideouts for armed groups operating along the Nigeria-Benin border corridor.

Reacting to the carnage on Wednesday, security analyst and conflict tracker Bakatsine, known on X as @DanKatsina50, lambasted the state and federal governments for leaving border communities at the mercy of non-state actors. “As rural communities continue to bury their dead and organize their own response to insecurity, how many more villages must come under attack before authorities can guarantee the safety of those living in these remote areas?” Bakatsine queried. Insiders familiar with the geopolitical security dynamics of Niger State told SaharaReporters that the latest bloodbath in Borgu is the direct consequence of the military’s failure to flush out criminal syndicates from the Kainji Lake National Park. Over the last few years, the vast forest reserve, which stretches across Niger and Kwara states and borders the Benin Republic, has been completely overrun by Ansaru terrorists and heavily armed bandit factions.

The latest assault is not an isolated event. Borgu has been under sustained pressure for months, with Reuters reporting in February that armed assailants on motorbikes killed at least 30 people and burned houses and shops during raids on three villages in the area, while AP put the death toll at 32. UNICEF later said its preliminary verification pointed to about 56 fatalities in the earlier February attack, alongside around 17,000 displaced people and multiple wards that remained largely inaccessible. The recurrence of attacks is what makes Borgu so alarming, with a resident quoted by AP delivering the bitterest judgement of all, saying the attackers were “operating freely without the presence of any security.” That is the real story here: not just the killings, but the persistent sense among villagers that the state shows up only after the attackers have gone.

Borgu’s strategic location makes the problem worse. Reuters has repeatedly described the area as lying close to the Benin Republic border, while the Institute for Security Studies warns that the Borgu-Kainji axis is part of a widening corridor of violence along Nigeria’s western frontier. In its April analysis, ISS cautioned that a “reactive counter-terrorism posture” risks entrenching armed groups rather than uprooting them. That warning matters because Borgu is not simply facing crime in the ordinary sense; it is confronting a mobile, adaptive security threat that feeds on forests, porous borders and the absence of a lasting security footprint. UNICEF’s February situation report is especially revealing because it goes beyond casualty counting and exposes the collapse of state reach in the affected belt. The agency said multiple non-state armed groups, including JAS-Sadiku, Ansaru/Mahmuda and Lakurawa, were operating across the Kainji Forest belt, and that only two of Borgu’s ten wards were accessible at the time. In plain language, large parts of Borgu were being governed, if at all, by fear rather than by law. That is why cattle rustling, arson and mass murder cannot be treated as separate incidents. In Borgu, they form one economy of violence. Livestock is not merely property; it is income, savings and survival for many rural households.

In a separate but related development, bandits also abducted four women, including a pregnant woman, during a night raid on Maikadauri village in Kontagora Local Government Area of Niger State on Monday. Sources said one person was killed during the attack and a vigilante identified as Amos sustained a gunshot wound to the leg while attempting to assist residents. A resident of Kontagora, Habibu Mohammed, called on the government to take urgent action to address the growing insecurity in the area. The attack in Kontagora occurred a day after two young men, Sidiq Musa and Bashar Bisalla, were shot dead by gunmen while collecting firewood in a forest in Wawa, Borgu Local Government Area. Residents told Daily Trust that at least seven young men have been killed in the same Wawa forest within the last 110 days while engaged in firewood collection.

The coordinated attacks in Borgu and the surge in violence across the state have now drawn the Northern Elders Forum to demand that the Federal Government declare a national security emergency. The forum warned that worsening violence, kidnappings and bandit attacks across the country pose a serious threat to Nigeria’s stability and economic survival. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the spokesperson for the forum, Abubakar Jiddere, said communities in states including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, Plateau, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Borno, Oyo, Edo, Enugu and Imo continued to face attacks from bandits, kidnappers and other armed groups. The forum described the security crisis as a national rather than regional concern and declared: “The time for assurances has passed. The time for measurable action is now”.

Meanwhile, panic also spread across Minna, the state capital, following rumours that bandits had invaded the city and were targeting Christian schools. Schoolchildren hurriedly ended sessions and fled to their homes on Wednesday over fears of a bandits’ invasion. Parents rushed to pick their children from schools, with some suggesting that the government should declare a public holiday because parents were still too scared to send their children back to class. A reverend sister, principal of a Catholic school who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Punch that she had been receiving calls from parents of her pupils wanting to find out if their children were safe. “I don’t know what to believe again because the way bandits are abducting schoolchildren and the government, both at the federal and state levels, appears helpless is a major cause for concern,” she said. The Niger State Police Command later debunked the rumours, stating that having visited all the schools mentioned, no such attack had occurred in any school within the state.

The Niger State Police Command’s spokesperson, SP Wasiu Abiodun, did not respond to calls when contacted, and the state authorities had not issued an official statement on the Borgu attacks as of Thursday evening. The coordinated assaults on Tungan Aljana, Tungan Makeri, Daidanai and Maikadauri villages have left at least 12 people dead, dozens displaced, hundreds of cattle rustled, and families burying their dead while the attackers remain at large in the forests along Nigeria’s border with the Republic of Benin.

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