'If you started running, they shot you' - inside Nigeria's growing kidnapping crisis

"If you ran into a room, they set the room on fire," says Fatima, describing a recent attack on her village in Zamfara, north-western Nigeria. "If you came out and started running, they shot you."

The gunmen, who struck at 02:00, split into groups to surround residents: one at the village entrance, one in the centre and one at the back.

"They opened fire without a care in the world, shooting indiscriminately," the 55-year-old quietly tells the BBC World Service.

It was one of many attacks that have caused havoc in the mainly Muslim community where residents live in fear of being kidnapped for ransom.

Fatima explains how the raids unfold: "You could have 100 motorcycles, and each one could be carrying three people."

About 70 people, including children, were killed from the village of Bia Buki in June, according to Fatima.

She describes how the attackers also targeted villagers as they fled and children were injured falling into ditches. Among the dead were her husband and six of his seven siblings.

Fatima is one of an estimated 800,000 Nigerians who the UN says have been displaced in the country's north-west. One of the main reasons people have left their homes is violence.

Some attacks have been carried out by militant Islamist groups, but the majority in this region are by gangs, locally referred to as bandits, who often move around on motorcycles and attack quickly then ride away, escaping before security forces arrive.

Thousands of people have joined government-backed vigilante groups to fight, and the BBC spoke to one who said his armed group had killed many bandits.

But the gangs keep attacking in what appears to be a deteriorating pattern of violence and abductions that is spreading southwards.

Fatima says when the bandits attacked her home, she ran into the nearby forest with other villagers to hide: "The forest became our sanctuary. We ran with our kids, if you couldn't find your child you'd take your neighbour's child."

She says people slept in the forest before moving on to the state capital, Gusau, "where we found a little bit of peace".

Fatima now lives in an informal camp in Gusau with her seven children, who are aged between nine and 30.

Dozens of women sit in groups on the dusty ground of the makeshift compound, many wearing brightly coloured hijabs. More than 1,000 people are here, she believes.

Conditions are tough with "no proper place to even lay your head". Food is scarce and assistance arrives irregularly.

Fatima describes two occasions where "good Samaritans" brought rice or potatoes. Children are sent out to gather firewood to sell so families can buy food, but 22 have been kidnapped by bandits, she says.

Gesturing towards a nearby building, Fatima says that there "you will find 100 or more women… maybe just two or three have had breakfast.

"When we had peace, we had our own wealth, but now the tables have turned and we have become beggars."

Her eyes fill with tears and she cries for a few minutes, wiping her face with her hands.

Despite being 16 miles (25km) from her village, the threat Fatima fled has not disappeared.

When she first arrived at the camp, the sound of gunshots kept her awake at night. Things have since quietened, she says, crediting patrols by the army and government-backed vigilantes, but the atmosphere is still tense.

The bandits are mostly people from the Fulani ethnic group, who traditionally make their living by raising animals. Some of them have swapped cattle trading for kidnapping and extortion, which is seen as a faster, easier way to make money.

They attack towns and villages or ambush travellers, abducting people for ransom, stealing whatever they want - and sometimes killing those who resist. They also force communities to pay protection money, only allowing farmers into their fields if they hand over large sums of cash.

Attacks are now more frequent than ever. In the bandit heartlands of north-west Nigeria, the number of incidents recorded by the international conflict monitoring group Acled rose 78% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.

Data from Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission shows that the number of kidnappings across the country doubled over the same period.

Malik Samuel at Good Governance Africa, a research and advocacy non-profit group, says that "there is no region in northern Nigeria currently that does not experience one form of mass abduction or the other".

Nigeria's battle with bandits is just one part of a more complex security situation facing the country.

As well as the bandit gangs in the north-west, there is an Islamist insurgency in the north-east, separatist unrest in the south-east and clashes in central regions, where the main grievance is over access to land and water for grazing and farming and where ethnic and religious elements have also fuelled some of the unrest.

Most analysts agree that armed groups have waged campaigns of violence that affect all communities, regardless of background or belief.

Schools are a common target. When the Islamist Boko Haram militant group infamously kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the north-eastern village of Chibok in 2014, it made global headlines.

At the time the group forced its captives into sexual slavery, domestic servitude or used them as suicide bombers.

But a range of groups across Nigeria now use kidnapping to raise funds, focusing on soft targets such as schools, churches, mosques and remote villages.

This was mainly confined to the Boko Haram strongholds of the north-east or the bandit zones of the north-west - areas that are largely Muslim.

Then, in May this year, gunmen on motorcycles attacked three schools in Oyo state, south-west Nigeria, one of the few regions that was previously considered relatively safe. Thirty-nine children, the youngest just two years old, were abducted along with seven teachers. One teacher was killed during the raid, another's murder was filmed and shared online.

After 56 days, the remaining 44 hostages were released. The government said it refused to pay a ransom and that the children were released after an operation by security forces. Three men were sentenced to life in prison for the attacks and confessed to being members of an affiliate of Boko Haram.

The abduction spread fear throughout the south-western town of Oriire, with parents in the community pulling their children out of school.

"There is fear because many residents have run away and are yet to return," says the traditional ruler of the area, Oba Tajudeen Abioye, whose niece was among the kidnapped children.

"And for those of us who are left here, we are relying on the security officials, the soldiers" who were sent to protect the community, he says.

Nigeria already has one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) estimates the number is about 19 million.

The multiple, overlapping security issues mean Nigeria's military and police are overstretched and as a result struggle to tackle the violence.

A 2025 UN report said that police stations were often underfunded and not fully operational, citing independent sources that accused officers of lacking skills in hostage negotiation and forensic investigation.

President Bola Tinubu's administration has allocated the largest defence and security budget in the country's history, raising it by 10% in December 2025 compared to one year before. He has recently approved the recruitment of 28,000 new soldiers.

In the meantime communities are still suffering and in Zamfara thousands of residents have joined government-backed vigilante groups to fill the gaps in security.

But there are concerns about their involvement. In 2020 Zamfara banned a large vigilante group over concerns that extrajudicial killings were driving more violence, according to AFP.

The authorities say the new vigilantes are better trained, but Samuel, from Good Governance Africa, calls them a "time bomb waiting to happen".

"If citizens arm themselves how do you control them at the end of the crisis, how are you able to disarm them?" he asks.

One of the vigilantes meets us outside his group's headquarters, a single-storey concrete building, and agrees to speak on the condition of anonymity during our visit in July.

He perches on his motorcycle, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, a scarf across his face as a makeshift balaclava, gold and silver skull rings on his fingers.

"We are some of the people the governor hired to protect the community," he says, explaining that they are sometimes told where the bandits are and "with the help of God we fight them and defeat them".

"Let the bandits understand that when they attack a place and kill, they can also be killed," he adds.

He estimates he has fought bandits at least 20 times and says the calls for his group's help keep coming.

"It's hard to go a week without these reports," he says. "There are regions that became safer… but there are other regions where the same cannot be said."

He calls on the state governor, whom he supports, to hire and arm more people to take on the bandits. "These people won't be afraid of you unless you have proper weapons to fight them," he says.

Fatima also calls for more action: "These kidnappers are in every nook and cranny.

"I am not saying the government has failed but even if it is trying, it needs to do more. There are problems and we think with more effort and more security agents, villages will be peaceful."

She wants to return home, but is doubtful that will happen as she has heard her village has now been turned into a camp for the gunmen that attacked it.

The local bandit leader has become the de facto authority, and that families look to him to solve domestic disputes, she says.

Another nearby village "is completely empty, not even a chicken lives there… empty villages like that are countless", Fatima says.

"Even if you go back to our area, it's just difficulty you will face. There's nothing there, no food… you farm and when you go to harvest, they stop you or kidnap you."

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