By Rekpene Bassey
In the pale light of dawn, the mosque in Unguwan Mantau was alive with quiet devotion. While the worshippers bowed in unison, and their whispers rose softly toward heaven, a burst of gunfire cracked the silence. Within seconds, the tranquillity was replaced by chaos. Faithful fell where they had knelt in praise and worship of the Most High God! Flames soon consumed nearby huts.
By the time the bandits retreated, several people were left dead; 30 were shot inside the mosque, and 20 more were burnt alive in surrounding villages.
The Mulumfashi massacre, which unfolded on August 19–20, 2025, has seared itself into the collective memory of Katsina State. “They came like shadows,” said a 48-year-old survivor and eyewitness, who lost his brother and two sons. “We prayed to God as the bullets rained. But God seemed silent at that moment.”
This latest atrocity, unfortunately, underscores a reality Nigerians have lived with for years now. Banditry is no longer a peripheral problem. It is evidently not a Christian versus Muslim or tribal problem either. It is a national security emergency.
In the first six months of 2025 alone, 2,266 Nigerians were reportedly killed by bandits and insurgents, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
This figure is double the fatalities recorded during the same period in 2024. For communities like Malumfashi, the numbers are not statistics. They are names, faces, and unmarked graves.
The crisis is complicated. The Katsina State Governor recently revealed that 90 per cent of the bandits terrorising the State are locals; men raised in the very villages they now terrorise. This is a war fought among neighbours, where trust collapses overnight and betrayal wears familiar faces, according to a widow whose eldest son was abducted during the attack. Another source said they played football with his children, but now they come with guns.
Geography compounds the nightmare. Northern Nigeria’s vast, ungoverned forests, stretching from Katsina through Zamfara and into Sokoto, have become sanctuaries for armed groups. Dense thickets conceal hideouts, while porous neighbouring borders allow weapons and fighters to flow freely.
Unfortunately, security forces often arrive too late. By the time intelligence reaches them, the attackers have melted into the forests, admitted a senior security source who requested anonymity.
The humanitarian fallout is catastrophic. Médecins Sans Frontières reports that 652 children in Katsina died of malnutrition between January and June 2025, a 208 per cent increase compared to last year. With farmers abandoning fields and pastoralists forced off grazing routes, food production has plummeted. Starvation has become a silent accomplice to violence. Hunger is now the “weapon after the gun,” declared an aid worker in Malumfashi.
The economic devastation is equally profound. A recent study on Katsina’s pastoral households revealed steep income losses, collapsing herd sizes, and widespread forced migration.
Families that once thrived on centuries-old cattle-rearing traditions are now landless, stripped of livelihoods and dignity. They used to be respected; now they beg to survive.
Fuelling this chaos is a steady stream of illicit arms. It is estimated that tens of thousands of unregistered weapons now circulate across northern Nigeria, smuggled through porous borders and financed by criminal networks trading in minerals, cattle rustling and kidnapping for ransom. Bandits, emboldened by firepower, impose their own systems of governance.
After the Malumfashi massacre, residents report being forced to pay levies totalling ₦15 million for permission to farm or fetch water. It feels like they are living under a parallel government.
Nigeria’s security architecture appears overstretched and underfunded. The ₦50 billion defence budget for 2025 pales against the scale of the threat. Zamfara’s former governor, now a federal minister, recently claimed that “with 50 armoured personnel carriers, banditry in Katsina could be defeated in two months” — a statement that drew widespread scepticism given the military’s current resource constraints.
Despite these shortcomings, there are flashes of resilience. The Nigerian Hunter and Forest Security Service (NHFSS), a paramilitary outfit of more than 50,000 members, brings unique expertise in tracking militants across dense forest terrains. But a bill formalising their integration into national security operations has languished on the official desk for months.
Grassroots initiatives are filling some of the void. Drawing from lessons in Borno, where the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) helped roll back Boko Haram, Katsina communities are mobilising local volunteers to gather intelligence and assist patrols. They can no longer wait for the army to save them. If they don’t defend their villages, nobody will.
Security experts argue that this bottom-up approach must be institutionalised through community policing. “A centralised security model cannot succeed in rural bandit strongholds,” said retired Major General Abdullahi Usman. “Only by empowering locals, training, arming, and integrating them can we break the siege.”
Technology offers another path forward. Experts recommend deploying drones equipped with thermal imaging and LiDAR sensors to locate hideouts hidden beneath dense canopies. These tools, used effectively in anti-poaching campaigns in Southern Africa, could provide Nigerian forces with real-time intelligence and pre-emptive capabilities.
Yet defeating banditry is not merely a matter of firepower. Poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion remain fertile recruiting grounds. In some northern states, youth unemployment rates exceed 60 per cent, while thousands of schools remain shuttered due to insecurity. If they don’t give these young men jobs and hope, someone else will provide them with guns and targets. Dr Aisha Sule, a development economist, alluded to this.
Reform must also reach Nigeria’s security institutions themselves. Corruption drains resources and undermines public trust. Soldiers complain of sundry delays in incentives, while reports surface of security agents colluding with criminal networks. Without transparency, accountability, and inter-agency cooperation, billions spent on defence will yield little security.
Mulumfashi’s survivors are demanding change. Local leaders have called for permanent military bases in Karfi and Yaba wards, arguing that current deployments are too transient to deter attacks. Many residents blame the massacre partly on the military’s withdrawal from nearby checkpoints just days before the tragedy; a failure they fear will be repeated without systemic reform.
Beyond the ruins, there is also invisible damage: trauma, displacement, and the slow erosion of community bonds. Thousands have fled their homes entirely. Those who remain live like fugitives on their own land, returning by daylight to tend crops but retreating by dusk to safer shelters.
The Malumfashi massacre must mark a turning point. Nigeria’s leaders face a stark choice: to continue patchwork responses or to embrace a comprehensive, integrated, and accountable strategy. Such a strategy must rest on four pillars: strengthening security operations, leveraging technology, empowering communities through governance and opportunity, and regional cooperation to choke off arms and finances.
The alternative is unthinkable. If Nigeria fails to act, banditry will metastasise beyond the northwest, deepening the collapse of state authority and fraying the social contract. The killings in Malumfashi are not just another tragedy; they are a warning shot at the nation’s very stability.
*Rekpene Bassey is the President of the African Council on Narcotics (ACON), and also a Security and Drug Prevention Expert
