Disir
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It was a set-up and Buharin Daji walked right into it. The notorious cattle-rustling kingpin had arrived for a meeting in the northern Nigerian bush, ostensibly to settle differences with one of his senior lieutenants, but instead was shot dead.
Daji’s murder in March has had consequences in an already deeply troubled Zamfara State, where years of building unrest have claimed thousands of lives and driven whole communities into destitution.
This underdeveloped yet agriculturally rich region has been unstable for many years. What began as unresolved clashes between Hausa farmers and Fulani pastoralists over access to land has transformed into a lucrative illicit economy of banditry and cattle-rustling dominated by men like Daji.
Zamfara is different from highly politicised farmer-herder clashes in other parts of Nigeria where largely Muslim pastoralists push south in search of pasture and meet increasingly populated Christian farming areas. Instead, Zamfara is overwhelmingly Muslim and, human rights groups argue, the violence here is fundamentally about the government’s abdication of its responsibility to protect its citizens.
According to Amnesty International, more than 370 people have been killed by the outlaws so far this year. Others have been kidnapped and held for ransom – payments are encouraged with phone calls to loved ones as those being held undergo torture.
Daji was viewed as a solution to the crisis. In a case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, he was put on the state government’s payroll at the end of 2016 to help stop the violence he himself had stoked.
The idea was that Daji would use his influence to rein in other brigands and help with a gun amnesty drive, all in exchange for a salary and impunity. But this didn’t address the underlying causes of Zamfara’s lawlessness, and the state government’s dysfunction prevented it even from making the regular payments to Daji, Adamu Abubakar, director of the Centre for Community Excellence, a local NGO, told IRIN.
The death of Daji was the final blow to already frayed attempts to forge peace. With him gone, Zamfara risks unravelling further and faster.
Zamfara: Nigeria’s wild northwest
And there it is, failure of the State to protect it's peeps.
Daji’s murder in March has had consequences in an already deeply troubled Zamfara State, where years of building unrest have claimed thousands of lives and driven whole communities into destitution.
This underdeveloped yet agriculturally rich region has been unstable for many years. What began as unresolved clashes between Hausa farmers and Fulani pastoralists over access to land has transformed into a lucrative illicit economy of banditry and cattle-rustling dominated by men like Daji.
Zamfara is different from highly politicised farmer-herder clashes in other parts of Nigeria where largely Muslim pastoralists push south in search of pasture and meet increasingly populated Christian farming areas. Instead, Zamfara is overwhelmingly Muslim and, human rights groups argue, the violence here is fundamentally about the government’s abdication of its responsibility to protect its citizens.
According to Amnesty International, more than 370 people have been killed by the outlaws so far this year. Others have been kidnapped and held for ransom – payments are encouraged with phone calls to loved ones as those being held undergo torture.
Daji was viewed as a solution to the crisis. In a case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, he was put on the state government’s payroll at the end of 2016 to help stop the violence he himself had stoked.
The idea was that Daji would use his influence to rein in other brigands and help with a gun amnesty drive, all in exchange for a salary and impunity. But this didn’t address the underlying causes of Zamfara’s lawlessness, and the state government’s dysfunction prevented it even from making the regular payments to Daji, Adamu Abubakar, director of the Centre for Community Excellence, a local NGO, told IRIN.
The death of Daji was the final blow to already frayed attempts to forge peace. With him gone, Zamfara risks unravelling further and faster.
Zamfara: Nigeria’s wild northwest
And there it is, failure of the State to protect it's peeps.
